The Professor Hulk Problem
Here to talk about the current state of the Hulk in the MCU, and the shit he’s been getting from fans for years now. As everyone constantly says, they hate Professor Hulk because it “Ruined the character” or “Isn’t the real Hulk people care about”. Well I feel like I need to come on here to defend Professor Hulk as a character. Here’s the thing, I get that people, including myself miss the old savage hulk, because that is meant to be the main key trait when it comes to the Hulk as a character, and by making Professor Hulk, that takes away a lot from what people love or give a shit about seeing with this character. Here’s the thing though, when you really think about it, Professor Hulk isn’t the actual problem with Hulk’s character in the current MCU, it’s the usage of the character that’s the problem. Back when Endgame first came out, I don’t recall much of anyone complaining about Professor Hulk being the route they took the character, but years later people grew tired and annoyed of him, and just wish for the savage Hulk to come back. But people seem overlook the fact that real problem is that they’ve barely even fucking used the Hulk as a character in general post Endgame. The only time we have seen hulk since was in She-Hulk, and the woke showrunners of that show made a joke out of him, but again, that’s not the character of Professor Hulk’s fault, it’s the writers/producers fault. I think the real reason why people don’t like Professor Hulk isn’t because they don’t like that it’s not Savage Hulk, it’s the fact that they literally haven’t done or shown anything of him actively being the Hulk. Back in Endgame even though he was smart now, he still acted like the Hulk because he was still doing his thing in battle. But we literally haven’t seen Hulk fighting since then, and I think because of that it’s caused people to disassociate from the fact of that being the real problem. If they had actually used Professor Hulk in more stuff, and actually had him fighting and involved in action scenes, I feel like the whole arguement against Professor Hulk would be null, but since they haven’t, it’s caused people to wrongfully hate this version of the Hulk, instead of blaming/being annoyed with the showrunners not actually making any use out of him.
Commentaires
You get neither the INCREDIBLE savageness nor the likability.
Broccoli without seasoning.
The point of the first act as far as the Avengers' arc goes is to show them definitively lose and how radically a loss like that changed the team after five years of living with it.
So whereas I like the idea, by servicing the Hulk's individual arc (which imo is fine as it is) you sacrifice his place in act one of the Avengers' team arc
I’d get the anger if this was the character from now on, but I think it’s more interesting for him to lose it from such a seemingly good place than it is for him to just be savage for the sake of it.
Define "woke"
Woke ideology is defined by the idea that some facet of identity like race or gender produces irreconcilably different views of reality and morality, and that we have an obligation to seek alignment of society's view with the imagined views of groups associated with the political left like minorities and women.
In this sense Wokeness is distinct from older forms of liberal advocacy for minority rights which appeal to universally valid concepts like truth and fairness.
In arts and entertainment lower quality excused by inclusion of racial or sexual minority characters is used to deflect criticism from objective criteria as biased towards White Men, sometimes despite the actual identity of the author of the criticism.
I would guess this is the phenomenon u/romtastic10 is referring to.
Here Barack Obama uses the word "woke" as a pejorative for extreme leftist purity testing:
>You know this idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaHLd8de6nM
In the comics, Banner becomes profesor Hulk after he and his Hulk personas confront their past, fears and insecurities, so when their personalities eventually merge, it feels earned. In the MCU, it just happens, and obviously people are justifiably pissed.
Hulk getting smarter during Ragnarok is irrelevant because it was shown Banner was asleep for all those years, their relationship didn't improve at all, which is the key factor for creating prof.Hulk.
It's not that the character *doesn't* work when he's not living in constant fear of accidentally unleashing an uncontrollable destructive force, but he certainly doesn't work *as well*.
But it could have been fine as the payoff to his overall character arc if we had, you know, actually seen him earn that. Instead he just kind of disappeared for a while and then came back like, "oh, that thing where I was a dangerous anger-monster? Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I dealt with it a while ago. Don't worry about how. Anyway, you guys want to get a pizza or something?"