Earlier this week, the brand new Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, began filming. The fourth of the Tom Holland-starring Marvel Cinematic Universe films is looking to bring the iconic character back to theaters after several years away and live up to the massive expectations that have been looming over the franchise ever since the prior installment, Spider-Man: No Way Home, became a billion-dollar zeitgeist-seizing bonanza. While that film was a multiversally-indebted legacy sequel of sorts, bringing together three generations of Spider-Man franchises under one roof, the new film is set to be something decidedly different. Both Holland and Marvel head Kevin Feige have reiterated in interviews that the fourquel is to be a “street level” film, which focuses solely on this Spider-Man, rather than another big multiverse-shattering behemoth.
Given the more intimate scale and scope that the film is aiming to achieve, the initial rumors that Mark Ruffalo might be included in the film, returning as Bruce Banner/The Incredible Hulk for the first time in several years, were interesting to say the least. Now, it has been officially confirmed that the character will be appearing in the upcoming sequel, which begs the question: What does a street-level Hulk look like?
Spider-Man: Brand New Day presents Marvel with an opportunity to bring back the true Incredible Hulk
Over the course of Hulk’s decades-long comic book career, he has been utilized in a wide variety of ways. Sometimes he’s a grey-skinned gangster name Joe Fixit, sometimes he’s a savage rage monster, and sometimes he’s an amalgamation of Banner’s intellect and Hulk’s brawn in a single green-skinned body. The character's more recent appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have embraced the latter-most of these approaches, with Hulk and Banner having been essentially merged into a single being in the films and TV series’ ever since Avengers: Endgame in 2019.
While this interpretation of the character made for some fun comedic beats that allowed Ruffalo to really showoff how well his comedic chops translated through the motion capture of the Hulk performance, it ultimately left the character feeling a bit sidelined. While the character is featured heavily in both Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, he doesn’t really have any memorable action beats in either of those films outside of getting demolished by Thanos in a fist-fight in the first few minutes of the earlier film.
Since then, the character has only showed up sporadically in minor or supporting roles such as the post-credits scene of Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings and in a few episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney At Law. The latter of these revealed that the character had journeyed back to space in the intervening time and even had a large adult son in the form of Skaar, a character who audiences were passingly introduced to at a backyard barbeque in the finale of the series. All of this is indicative of just how unwieldy and rudderless the character had become. However, his presence in Spider-Man: Brand New Day seems to indicate that he could be turning over a new leaf moving forward.
It’s hard to picture a street-level Spider-Man movie (that is also confirmed to co-star Jon Bernthal’s Punisher) featuring Hulk’s further space adventures with his semi-alien son. Rather, the words “street level” and Hulk summon up images of a much more visceral and rage-driven beast, confined within the tight spaces of New York City. The Punisher is obviously a very aggressive character in his own right, so it isn’t hard to imagine a scenario in which he and Banner come into conflict over beliefs, which escalates to a physical altercation that Peter Parker has to get involved in to help protect the people of the city.
Even if the MCU didn’t want to hard reset the character to the more primitive and rage-filled version as seen in The Incredible Hulk and first Avengers film, Brand New Day seems rife with potential to at least incite a much more physical take on the character out of the Smart Hulk characterization.
Perhaps now is finally the chance for Marvel to right the long-standing wrong and restore the Hulk to his original, more comic-accurate persona. If the rumors are anything to go by, the green one will likely be on a rampage at some point in the movie and that's really quite an exciting thought for MCU fans.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrives in movie theaters on July 31, 2026.
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