Cultural Crossovers: The Incredible Hulk

So, remember this?

Well, now that our long-delayed rewatch of the MCU is restarted, we’ll be getting the rest of them, starting with The Incredible Hulk. What do our merry protagonists think of this, the hurling of popcorn at the screen to yells of “Gamma rays do not work that way!” aside?

Let’s find out as I live-comment in-culture:

• So, we only get to see the enhulkification experiment in the credits? That’s going to confuse people who don’t already know the outline.
• Blood-transmissible? Gamma radiation REALLY doesn’t work that way.
• Seriously, General, your plan to catch a giant green berserker is to send a bunch of regular dudes with standard weapons to hunt him down, without briefing them on the target? You have the tactical acumen of a rutabaga.
• (Also, 200 bpm? I can buy experimentally discovering the hulking point, but that is a… suspiciously regular number. The sort of thing that, yes, the eldrae audience will care about. Careless, y’know?)
• (And could someone please hang a lampshade on the conservation of mass issue for the sciency audience? Since the Hulk obviously ain’t made of Styrofoam.)
• “That man’s whole body is property of the US Army?” Welp, you just grabbed the villain ball right hard, didn’t you?
• So, you have one giant, uncontrollable berserker and your weapons plan is to make more just like him? So, your balls are the villain AND the idiot.
• Ooh, fancy sonic weapons. (Also, you’re a lousy family man, too.)
• So, not only is the general an idiot, but his minion is also an idiot. Seriously, who let these asshats into the military? The Legions would have cashiered them ages ago.
• Awww, the big green guy has a heart.
• Oh, man, adrenaline-triggered powers are so Blessed-With-Suck-esque.
• Ah, Mr. Blue, you’re our kind of scientist. “More curious than cautious”, indeed. Nice ambitions, too.
• Okay, let’s forget cashiered, and go for shot.
• …and this is why you need a control group. Hey, General Asshat, how d’you like your new weapon?
• Guys, you’re bringing a rocket launcher to a KEW fight.
• The audience makes “collateral damage” jokes right about now.

So, to sum up: you would need a lot of work, but you could salvage things: you’d need to firm up the handwavium (the standards even for comic books are higher in such a scientifically literate culture) and remove the subtext about Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, but the basic thematics on power and wrath and self-control would resonate nicely with the eldrae, so you’ve got a substructure there to work with.

Also, the antagonists are going to need work, because no-one outside the cosmopolitans is going to believe that any vaguely civilized culture is going to let those guys be in charge of, or in, anything military. Professionalism, don’ch’know. Also, competence.