How Avengers: Age of Ultron almost introduced the Grey “berserker” Hulk

As if AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON wasn't already completely stuffed, the film came very close to introducing another version of the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) to the film. Screenrant spoke with AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON VFX supervisor Christopher Townsend who revealed how different the Hulk could have been during the film's Hulkbuster sequence in which the Hulk was under the spell of Scarlet Witch.

What Joss wanted to do was he said, “I wanted to have a Hulk that’s this berserker Hulk.” Berserker Hulk was this Hulk that Hulks out, was what we had come up with on set. And then we sort of started talking about, “Well what are those extremes?” And ILM started playing with a deformed body with a deformed face with one eye larger than another. You know, like crooked teeth, and drooling, and red eyes, and all this kind of stuff. Then we started playing with color and we started to de-saturate him and give him sort of red around his eyes and made him look strung-out heroin addict Hulk was the idea. Sort of like where he has totally lost it and he’s gone totally crazy. And then we gradually tended towards a grayer and grayer version till effectively we got gray Hulk.

After trying out several shots with the Grey Hulk, Townsend and the team decided to back off as they were worried that audiences would confuse this with the Grey Hulk from the comics. Most people know that Stan Lee originally choose the colour grey for the Hulk back in 1962, but after the colourist ran into problems, Lee changed the Hulk to the green we all know and love. The Grey Hulk later returned as Joe Fixit, a more intelligent version of the Hulk who served as a mob enforcer and was one of several different Hulk personalities that emerged. With Mark Ruffalo's Hulk seemingly out of the picture for CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR in order to serve a "larger purpose", our next glimpse at any version of the Hulk may not arrive for several years.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON will be available on Blu-ray/DVD on October 02, 2015.