Mega Marvel Rewatch: The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk is the MCU film I'm the least familiar with, by far. I've only seen it once before, it's the only one I didn't see in the theater, and it's the only Phase One movie I don't own. Also, I first watched it after seeing The Avengers, so I didn't already have it in mind as backstory.

My impression remains that, although the film is officially part of MCU canon, it stands a bit apart from the rest. The recasting of Bruce Banner contributes to that, of course, as does Banner's lack of involvement in most of the other movies. But I also suspect that it wasn't really written with the rest of the series in mind -- it came out just over a month after Iron Man, and the MCU wasn't really a thing at that point, so I suspect those two movies were developed independently. And the later films don't treat TIH as a bedrock of MCU canon in the same way they do Iron Man. Consider The Avengers, and how it brings together elements from so many of the other films. The primary antagonist comes from the Thor mythos, and the MacGuffin is out of Cap's canon. Iron Man 2 introduces Black Widow, provides our first real interaction with Nick Fury, and gives us a glimpse of the inner workings of SHIELD. From TIH, we get the Hulk himself, but none of his context: no friends, no enemies, only the briefest glimpses of what happened to him in that space of time, and the ending seems to be wiped almost clean away.

( For length, mostly, though there are some spoilers too. )

I do wonder if anything from Bruce's backstory as it's told here will ever find its way back into the MCU. General Ross, Betty, Blonsky/the Abomination, and Stearns are all characters who could return and add to both the canon and Bruce's place within it. I'm okay with Bruce having a story that's only told within the big team pieces, but it would be interesting to see the people connected with him being a part of the larger scheme of things, too.