Thus spake Marvel Studios star-tsar Kevin Feige:
There had been discussion as to where to take … the part [of the Hulk] and Joss [Whedon] had some ideas. He came to us and said, “I’d like to think about another actor,” and we said, “Well, much of what we like about The Avengers is we’re taking all the actors we had before and putting them together again, so we said it depends on who you’re thinking of – if you’re thinking of A, B or C maybe not, if you’re thinking of Mark Ruffalo, we’d be open to a conversation.” And he goes, “Holy shit!” and takes a list out of his pocket, and at the top of his list was Mark Ruffalo.
Okay, so does that mean that Feige was lying his head off two years ago when he said, or at least strongly implied, that the change was made because Ed Norton was too difficult to work with?
Have a listen to Norton’s excellent commentary track with Fincher and Pitt on the Fight Club dvd/bluray and you can judge for yourself if he seems to be difficult to work with. Certainly Pitt and Fincher wouldn’t have said so.
Ruffalo is a good actor, he was especially good in “You Can Count on Me”, but he isn’t in Norton’s league.
The four actors who’ve played live-action Banner are certainly an interesting quartet.
I’m surprised they didn’t use Rick Jones in either flick, considering he’s such a huge part of the Hulk storyline. He’s been in the cartoon and the comic, and he’s supposedly Bruce Banner’s best friend. But they changed the origin of the character so radically in the flicks that Jones wasn’t a part of it anymore.