13 years after Mark Ruffalo’s MCU debut as the Hulk in The Avengers, the story of how Robert Downey Jr. helped convince the actor to take on the role seems all the more significant, and I can’t believe I didn’t know about it sooner. Iron Man and the Hulk are two of the most famous figures in Marvel’s comic history, and the same can be said for their MCU timeline counterparts. As such, the casting of both roles was paramount, with Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo taking on some of the most focal figures in the MCU’s Infinity Saga.

Now most of the original MCU Avengers are ᴅᴇᴀᴅ or retired – with Iron Man himself included – Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is in an arguably more important position than ever, making the matter of whether the character will appear in the story of Avengers: Doomsday all the more interesting and pertinent at this time. However, it’s interesting to note that this is far from the first time Ruffalo’s path as the Hulk has been uncertain looking, since the actor has commented on his initial doubts and uncertainty about whether he’d pick up the role for the first Avengers movie itself to begin with.

Mark Ruffalo Almost Wasn’t The MCU’s Hulk

The Actor Wasn’t Initially Sure About Playing The Hulk

While Mark Ruffalo playing the Hulk seems inherently par for the course over a decade into the MCU timeline – since he’s appeared as the character in so many installments between the beginning of the franchise and now, and seen the Hulk through a considerable arc during this time – things weren’t as definite before the actor’s debut as Bruce Banner in The Avengers. Ruffalo himself explained as much in a 2020 interview for The Late Show With Jimmy Fallon, commenting that:

“I was scared. I didn’t know what I could add to what I’d already thought had been done so well before me… and I’d only been doing indie movies until that point, so I was like ‘I don’t know if I’m the right person for this.’“

This makes a lot of sense given both the position of the MCU at this time, and the Hulk’s own trajectory within it. With Edward Norton’s portrayal of the Hulk in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk setting a precedent for the franchise – and suggesting what the role of the MCU Hulk could be like – it’s easy to see how this could make the prospect of taking on the role more daunting, because the two different versions of the role were bound to be compared given how close together they would be, and because the role was already defined in some ways.

Similarly, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk depicted a far more serious version of the Hulk than ended up appearing in The Avengers and onwards in the MCU. Without the context of what the future could hold – and a prior movie that suggested a considerably different depiction of the Hulk to what we got was on the horizon – it’s understandable that Ruffalo would have had questions and uncertainties when looking at the idea of playing the character at this point of the process.

Robert Downey Jr Helped Convince Mark Ruffalo To Be The MCU’s Hulk According To The Actor

The Iron Man Actor Helped The MCU Hulk Casting Become Reality

During this period of uncertainty, Mark Ruffalo described getting a call from Robert Downey Jr. – who had already become the MCU’s Iron Man at this point in the franchise’s real-world release timeline – to talk to him about potentially becoming the franchise’s Hulk. According to Mark Ruffalo, the conversation provided some significant encouragement in terms of convincing him to accept the role during a period of time where he was going back and forth about it, with Ruffalo explaining that:

“It must have made it to him that I was… hemming and hawing, and he just simply said, ‘Ruffalo, let’s go. We got this.’ in true Iron Man fashion. And then after that, I was like, I guess I have to do it.“

Given Downey Jr.’s prominence in the MCU even this early on, this certainly makes sense, as getting a proverbial stamp of approval from an actor who’d already had considerable success with the superhero movie genre – and with the MCU more specifically – certainly could be seen to have boded well even before the franchise properly kicked off with the crossover success of The Avengers. Similarly, knowing another major MCU actor thought Ruffalo was the right pick for the character could potentially have also helped deal with any concerns in that regard.

That said, this doesn’t appear to have been the complete end of Ruffalo’s decision-making process, as he explained that what cemented his belief he could be the right person for the Hulk gig was reading a few pages of The Avengers‘ script, which allowed the actor to see the different iteration of the Hulk the MCU was aiming for, and get a better sense of how he could handle the character. However, from his own comments, it seems the phone call with Downey Jr. was a notable turning point in things, and encouraged him to further consider the role.

How Mark Ruffalo & Robert Downey Jr’s Marvel Roles Changed The MCU

The Hulk & Iron Man’s Significance In The MCU Is Colossal

Looking back now, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr.’s roles as the Hulk and Iron Man respectively in the MCU installments they appear in. Not only did both actors provide performances that have come to define their respective heroes, the shared scenes between Bruce Banner and Tony Stark also let audiences see the creation of the friendship between the two iconic Marvel protagonists in the cinematic universe, further fleshing out their characters and setting the stage for things like the MCU’s Ultron origin story.

The Hulk has certainly not had an easy or flawless path in the MCU – both in terms of his limited on-screen capacity and the decision to have major points in his storyline like his transformation into the Smart Hulk happen off-screen. With that said, Mark Ruffalo’s ability to nail a character who can be both light-hearted comedy relief and a deeply tragic figure in Marvel’s lore helps ensure that the Hulk is still beloved in the franchise, and that audiences are left wanting to see more of the green giant and his arc in the MCU itself.

Now we have over a decade of hindsight, it’s more interesting than ever to see how the stories of these two characters and the actors behind them correlate, and how the real-world encouragement Robert Downey Jr. gave to Mark Ruffalo looks to have played a role in us having gotten years of their two Marvel heroes appearing side-by-side on-screen. With Robert Downey Jr. returning to the MCU as Doctor Doom – and Ruffalo’s Hulk story set to continue for the foreseeable future – it seems the significance of both actors is only set to grow further as the franchise continues.

Upcoming MCU Movies

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