Rann:  Okay, it’s not the ending itself, per se, that I have a problem with, but rather what the director said about it.

Rann:  I don’t think so. Just lemme explain.

I just got to watch The Incredible Hulk last night because I missed it in theaters. The ending is about what you’d expect of such a movie, and I was fine with it. Implying Bruce has gained some measure of control of his transformation is decent sequel fodder no matter how you slice it. Unless you slice it like this, from the trivia section of the movie’s IMDB page:

According to Louis Leterrier, the final scene (Banner grins as his eyes turn green) was a deliberately ambiguous shot: it was meant to show that Bruce finally learns to controls the Hulk (for a Hulk sequel) or will become a menace (as the villain for the film The Avengers (2011)).

My issue is with the “become a menace” thing. The Hulk has menaced the Avengers before, obviously… in fact, that’s how the original Avengers got together, they had to stop the Hulk. The PROBLEM here is Bruce grinning as his eyes glow green. With that, the idea that he might become a menace would imply that Bruce decides to become a menace. Which is completely contradicted by the entirety of the movie up to that point.

Bruce spends the entire movie trying not to hulk out, not to hurt anybody, and in the end goes through what he fears most (and rather risks going splat) to protect people as the Hulk. Then we’re supposed to believe that he just all of a sudden decides he wants to be a rampaging menace? That, like Blonsky, he’s addicted to the rush, the destruction, the power? For the entire movie Bruce is someone who defies power for responsibility, and then at the end he just goes “Nah, I think I’ll be a bad guy”? That is bullshit. That is some of the bullshittiest bullshit ever. That is some bad fanfic written by a fifteen-year-old bullshit.

Rann:  Yes, which does not bode well, it implies that the cancer that is destroying Marvel Comics has infected Marvel Studios too. Nothing we see of Bruce’s journey indicates that he wants anything other than a cure, or in the absence of that, control. Hell, his actions directly preceding the scene where he meditates and his eyes glow would seem to contradict it. I suppose technically there’s nothing to say that someone who has decided he enjoys being a rampaging engine of damage for the thrill of destruction wouldn’t make sure to send their girlfriend’s locket back to her first, but it doesn’t seem very bloody likely. “I no longer care about peoples’ lives and well-being, but here, let me make sure Betty gets her mother’s necklace back.” What? Yeah right. There’s no real catalyst presented for Bruce deciding to go bad, there’s no real reason given. General Ross doesn’t even turn on him once the Abomination has been taken down. If that had happened, if Ross had ordered the troops to start firing on the Hulk instead of just letting him go, then there might be the thinnest of justifications for it, but the worst that happens is the Hulk has a light shined on him by a helicopter. Somehow this doesn’t seem enough of a traumatic catalyst to break something in a good man’s brain after all he’d previously been through.

If Banner deliberately becomes a menace for the Avengers movie, it will be a capitulation to the pathetic, steaming pile of crap that is The Ultimates, a take on the Avengers so crude and distorted that it can only be assumed to come from hostility. And it will suck.