Not all Hulk battles are equal.
While some are thrilling, some do a disservice to the strongest Avenger.
But almost all give us plenty of smashing.
From one-on-one gladiator matches to the big guy facing a whole horde of baddies, here's
our picks for all the Hulk's MCU fights from worst to best.
If you've never heard of the Worf Effect, it's simple you take the biggest, toughest
good guy, and you have the bad guy beat the tar out of him right out of the gate.
That way, your audience knows the villain means business.
This is exactly what happens in the opening minutes of 2018's Avengers: Infinity War.
The Hulk attacks Thanos, only to get easily beaten unconscious by the Mad Titan.
Even if you forget the fact that this makes no sense when we consider how well less powerful
heroes like Captain America fare against Thanos, the Hulk/Thanos bout works hard to earn its
lousy spot on our list because the green guy never gets his shot at a rematch.
Worse still, we hardly see him at all in the final battle of 2019's Avengers: Endgame.
Treating the Hulk to a taste of the Worf Effect is bad.
Making it his last major action scene in the MCU's decade-long Infinity Saga?
That's pretty unforgivable.
Avengers: Age of Ultron opens with the team reunited and raiding a Hydra base in Eastern
Europe.
We don't see a lot of the Hulk during the fight compared to some of the other heroes,
but what we do see is definitely impressive.
Among other things, we get to see the Hulk plow into the Hydra bunker threatening Hawkeye
and Black Widow and walk through it like it isn't even there.
We also get some great shots of the Hulk, including during our introduction to Black
Widow's technique of effecting the Hulk's transformation back to Bruce Banner.
In 2017's Thor: Ragnarok, Thor has Loki unleash the fire giant Surtur, who fulfills his destiny
by destroying Asgard and the villain Hela in the process.
"You can't defeat me."
“ No, I know.
But he can."
As Surtur demolishes the Golden Realm, the Hulk returns from his fight with Fenris the
wolf, and no one's bothered to tell him the plan.
So the Hulk does what the Hulk does he smashes.
Or, at least, he tries.
Once Hulk lands on the Bifrost, Thor manages to stop him from attacking Surtur again.
It's one of a bunch of funny moments the Thor/Hulk odd couple enjoys in Ragnarok.
As good as it is, we have to admit there was some disappointment, especially since the
Hulk leaping at Surtur was used prominently in Ragnarok's trailers.
It's a great gag, but you can hardly be blamed if you were primed for a full-length world-shattering
clash.
While the other "Revengers" clash with Hela and her undead army in Thor: Ragnarok, the
Hulk has another job.
The green Goliath goes one-on-one with Hela's favorite pet, the giant wolf Fenris.
Their battle has them topple off the Bifrost and into the water below.
Fenris gives the Hulk a good fight, biting deep into his emerald hide at one point and
thrashing him around underwater, but the Hulk gives his canine foe one last massive punch
that sends the beast falling into the void.
It's a good fight, though it feels like we don't really get enough of it.
There are shots of it here and there in between the battle on the Bifrost.
Honestly though, it seems like they only bothered with putting Fenris in this movie at all so
the Hulk had something to do at the end while everyone else was busy with character development.
The battle between the poor S.H.I.E.L.D.
pilot who opens fire on the Hulk during the man-monster's Helicarrier rampage in the first
Avengers film isn't much of a battle but it's scary, funny, and it tells us a lot about
the Hulk early on.
Maria Hill orders the pilot to engage the Hulk, and when he opens fire, the big guy
just gets mad.
"Target angry Target angry!"
Remember, this was the first "Hulk out" sequence since 2008, and it lets us know right away
Joss Whedon intends for his version of the Hulk to be much more powerful than the one
in the earlier film.
The very fact that he's able to survive the explosion of the jet and the subsequent drop
makes him seem much more powerful than the Hulk of the 2008 movie.
Bruce Banner doesn't want the Other Guy to get involved in the final battle of Avengers:
Age of Ultron, but when Black Widow pushes him off a ledge, she doesn't give him much
of a choice.
Once he and Widow are on the floating island that Sokovia has become along with the rest
of the team, Nat tells him to "go be a hero," and he does.
At first, we don't really get to see much of it.
We only get a couple shots of Hulk stomping Ultron's drones before the villain's final
assault on the team at the center of town.
But that's when the Hulk gets really busy with the robot smashing, even destroying robots
with his teeth.
And of course, after Vision, Iron Man, and Thor turn Ultron into mostly melted slag,
the green guy shows up to give him a punch that sends him flying for miles.
As soon as the Hulk's attack on Black Widow is interrupted in The Avengers, and it was
revealed her savior was Thor, any old school Marvel fan had to be excited.
Who wouldn't be up for a bout between these two heavy hitters with technology that could
finally do it justice, unlike the cringe-worthy battle in 1988's The Incredible Hulk Returns.
This fight has some great moments, with perhaps the most memorable being Thor's epic hammer
shot to Hulk's face,and the Hulk's failed attempt to lift Mjolnir.
For the most part, Hulk dominates the thunder god during their first match, but the two
don't really have the room on the Helicarrier to truly let loose like they could.
Not counting the brief flashback montage in the beginning of 2008's The Incredible Hulk,
our first true "Hulk out" scene in the MCU is when Bruce Banner is cornered by his hostile
coworkers in the Brazilian bottling plant while he's trying to escape the Black Ops
team led by Emil Blonsky.
This scene feels more like something out of a horror movie.
We watch Hulk mercilessly bludgeoning the soldiers with his bare green fists, mostly
without us seeing more than shadows of the beast.
It makes it that much more powerful when he finally reveals himself to Blonsky, seconds
before hurling a forklift at him.
"Yes!"
The gladiator battle between Hulk and Thor in Thor: Ragnarok is classic.
It's beautiful to look at it, it's funny with callbacks to Natasha's lullaby and Loki's
epic beatdown in The Avengers, and it gives these two powerhouses the chance to really
cut loose.
It would get a higher spot on our list, except that it really doesn't make any sense.
Plot-wise, the battle serves mainly to introduce us to Thor's new Raiden-esque lightning abilities,
and in order to get there, the scene breaks from everything we've seen in the MCU up until
now.
The Hulk utterly dominates Thor in their battle on the Helicarrier in The Avengers, and the
only time Thor manages to get the edge is when he summons Mjolnir ... which is shattered
on a cliff in Norway at the time of his Sakaar battle with Hulk.
From what we've seen of the combatants' respective strength and stamina in past battles, Thor
shouldn't even last to the point where he gets his vision of power from Odin.
It's a fun battle, but it would be more fun if it made sense.
Yes, it's a bit of a stretch to call Hulk's sucker punch of Thor in The Avengers a "fight,"
but c'mon.
It's hilarious.
It's also a perfect character moment.
The Hulk doesn't play well with others.
Thor may be on his side at the time being, but to the Hulk, that doesn't make them friends.
It makes Thor someone he's not currently smashing ... much.
He's had plenty of fights with others, but so far, the MCU has given us exactly one big
knock-down clash between the Hulk and one of his most dangerous villains: the Abomination,
who throws down with the Green Goliath at the end of 2008's Incredible Hulk.
If you forgive that movie for its failings, you can see that final brawl as one of the
all-time great superhero clashes.
The Abomination starts off stronger than the hero, but as the fight progresses and the
Hulk keeps getting angrier, the Hulk's increasing strength puts him over the edge.
At the end, we get the Hulk uttering his famous catchphrase for the first time onscreen, and
dare we say it, it's… smashing.
In the comics, the Hulk's most persistent foe isn't a supervillain, it's the United
States military, led by General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross.
The Incredible Hulk gave us a great example of this conflict when the army corners Bruce
Banner on a college campus, forcing him to Hulk out and smash his way through them.
And smash he does.
While this Hulk doesn't express quite as much physical power as later versions, the battle
does a good job showing us exactly what he's capable of.
He's merely annoyed by the bullets, and even Tony Stark's sonic weapons just increase his
rage when he sees Betty in distress.
We also get a kind of preview of Captain America when pre-Abomination Emil Blonsky makes the
bad choice of trying to take the Hulk on solo with his new super solider abilities, and
gets punted into a tree for his troubles.
The Hulk's epic domination of Loki at the end of The Avengers is an absolute landmark
in the Infinity Saga.
It is, first and foremost, one of the funniest scenes in the MCU.
The comedy is the main reason the scene is so memorable, but it actually provides a perfect
climax to one of the film's themes.
Throughout The Avengers, we're hearing from less "super" characters like Nick Fury who
are talking about how the world is struggling to react to all of these thunder gods and
unfrozen super soldiers who are suddenly showing up.
The Hulk's abrupt and merciless thrashing of Loki is the perfect reflection of what
Nick Fury is talking about.
Not only have these heroes become people who "can't be matched" by ordinary humans, not
even an arrogant alien calling himself a god can compare to them.
"Puny god."
A lot of people had a lot of problems with 2015's Avengers: Age of Ultron, but the Hulk's
battle with Tony Stark's Hulkbuster suit, aka "Veronica," is a stunning, epic battle
and one of the high action marks of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
While the idea that Tony Stark has armor designed specifically to take down the Hulk is lifted
straight from the comics, the filmmakers add some wonderful touches that make perfect sense.
For example, there's the fact that Stark has to keep the suit in orbit while he isn't using
it so he can call upon it whenever he needs it.
And then there are all the cool features, like being able to turn one of the suit's
fists into a trap that grabs the Hulk's wrist and stops him from hurting anyone else.
While he doesn't win, the Hulk makes a good showing, and Tony's apology when he realizes
how mad his opponent is?
That's one of the MCU's most perfect moments.
"I'm sorry."
While 2012's The Avengers brought together heroes from all over the Marvel Cinematic
Universe, the Hulk stole the show in the final battle against Loki's Chitauri army in New
York City.
He tears through the Chitauri foot soldiers easily, and he's the character at the heart
of one of the MCU's most classic, memorable, and satisfying scenes.
"That's my secret, I'm always angry."
It not only shows us how staggeringly powerful the Hulk is, but it's a great character moment
as well, serving as the final ingredient the Avengers need to go from being a ragtag group
of superheroes to an actual team.
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