The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The Incredible Hulk (2008) Full Recap

158 days. That's how long Bruce Banner has gone without losing his temper. And he keeps count. He lives alone in one small room, high up in a giant favlla in Brazil, thousands of miles from home. Every morning he sits on the floor in the dark and slows his breathing down. If his heart ever beats too fast, something terrible comes out of him.

It all started years ago in a lab back in America. Bruce was a scientist and he sat in a chair with his head locked in place while a green beam hit him. A woman in a lab coat watched from the controls. Then the machine went wild. When it was over, the lab was wrecked and she was lying in a hospital bed with her father, an army general, by her side.

Since that day, Bruce has been running. The newspapers talk about a green monster, and the army is still looking for him. In Brazil, Bruce lives a quiet, careful life. He cooks for himself, studies a Portuguese dictionary, and watches old TV shows dubbed in Portuguese with a stray dog at his feet.

A few times a week, he walks down the colorful steps of the city to an empty warehouse. There, a martial arts teacher works with him, not on fighting, but on breathing. The best way to control your anger, the teacher says, is to control your body. Bruce closes his eyes and breathes.

His job is at a soda bottling plant. One day, a machine breaks down and the workers can't fix it. Bruce takes a look and gets it running again. The owner is impressed. 5 months Bruce has been helping out like this, and the man thinks he's too smart for day labor, so he wants to put him on the payroll.

Then Bruce slices his finger on a piece of metal. He checks the heart monitor on his wrist right away. A drop of his blood falls onto the line and the bottles keep moving. The boxes from this line are headed to the USA. Later, a big bald worker grabs a young woman by the arm and Bruce just stares at him.

Get lost, Gringo, the man says. Bruce tries to warn him in broken Portuguese. Don't make me hungry, he says. At home, Bruce opens a secret chat on his computer. On the other end is a scientist in New York who calls himself Mr. Blue. Bruce goes by Mr. Green. Bruce tells him he's found it, a small white flower.

He makes a liquid out of it and tests it on a sample of his own blood under the microscope. Then he sends a package to a post office box in New York addressed to Mr. Blue. Far away in Milwaukee, an old man drinks one of those sodas. He ends up with what the army calls possible gamma sickness.

The report lands on the desk of General Ross in Virginia. He asks where that soda was bottled. Porto Verde, Brazil. He orders his people to find a white man at that plant, but with no contact at all. If Bruce even sees them, he's gone. At an army base in Florida, Ross meets a special forces soldier he pulled strings to get.

Emil Blonsky was born in Russia, raised in England, and he's on loan from the Royal Marines. On the plane to Brazil, Ross briefs the team. Their target is a fugitive who stole military secrets and he's tied to several deaths. Use tranquilizers, Ross says. Bring him back alive. That night, Bruce gets a message from Mr.

Blue. His blood sample shows a big drop in gamma levels. Bruce asks. Mr. Blue needs more data, like the exposure levels from the accident. But that data isn't here, Bruce writes back. Meanwhile, Blonsky's team creeps up the dark alleys of the FLLA. Bruce's dog starts barking at them, and a soldier picks it up and carries it away.

The dog wakes Bruce up anyway. He looks out the window and sees the soldiers. Bruce grabs his things and runs. He goes out over the rooftops, down the stairs, and through a soccer game in the street. The commandos chase him through narrow alleys and crowds of people. He keeps his breathing slow and moves fast.

Bruce slips into the bottling plant to hide, but the bald worker and his friends are already there. They corner him and punch him to the floor. Try those fancy moves again. The man laughs. Bruce begs them to stop. In broken Portuguese, he warns them he's getting angry. They don't listen.

His heart is racing now. Then something huge grabs the bald man and throws him across the room. Blonsky's team runs in with night vision goggles. They see a giant shape in the dark and fire every dart they've got. The creature tears through them one by one. It grabs a forklift and hurls it at Blonsky, who dives out of the way just in time.

Then the thing smashes through the wall and is gone. The next morning, Ross looks at an old photo of Bruce with the woman from the lab. He doesn't think she'd help Bruce now. That door closed a long time ago. He wants to be alone. Blonsky wants to know what hit them in there. It threw a forklift like it was a softball, he says.

Ross answers that it was banner. When Blonsky asks him to explain, Ross says he doesn't have to. They're going home. Bruce wakes up in the middle of a jungle next to a waterfall with no shirt and torn pants. He has no idea where he is. He flags down an old man in a truck. You're in Guatemala, the man tells him, and he gives Bruce a shirt and a ride.

Bruce starts heading north. At a market in Mexico, he picks out a pair of pants that stretch. Back in the US, Blonsky stops Ross in a hallway. He's been on bad missions before, and he's seen good men die because nobody told them what they were walking into. This is a whole new level of weird, he says, and he doesn't want to walk away.

If Ross goes after Banner again, Blonsky wants in. Ross takes him into a huge hanger and tells him a secret. Back in World War II, the army started a program to build stronger soldiers. Ross brought it back. Bruce thought he was working on making people resist radiation. He was so sure of his work that he tested it on himself.

Something went very wrong, Ross says. Or very right. As far as Ross is concerned, every part of Bruce belongs to the army. Blonsky asks what else they tried. One serum, Ross admits, and it was very promising. Then he asks Blonsky how old he is. 39. Blonsky wishes he could put what he knows now into the body he had 10 years ago.

Ross says he could probably arrange something like that. Bruce makes it back to the United States and walks onto the campus of Culver University where the accident happened. He goes to an old pizza place and finds a man he knows, Stanley. Bruce promises him that whatever he's heard, it's not true.

Stanley says he always knew it. "Have you talked to her?" Stanley asks. Bruce hasn't. She has no idea he's in town. "She's seeing somebody now," Stanley tells him. a psychiatrist and a really nice guy. Bruce asks for a bed for a few nights and Stanley gives him the spare room upstairs.

The next night, Bruce puts on a pizza delivery shirt and walks into the lab building with a box. The guard at the desk doesn't think anybody up there ordered anything. Bruce hands him a free pizza and the guard is thrilled. Bruce walks right past him. Upstairs, Bruce sits at a computer and searches the old project files.

Nothing. He logs into the chat and tells Mr. Blue the data is gone. Without it, Mr. Blue can't help him. Late that night, a young woman walks into the pizza place with her boyfriend. Her name is Betty Ross. She's the woman from the lab, and she's General Ross's daughter. Come on, Stan.

It's Friday night. Stanley is closing up, but he lets them stay. From upstairs, Bruce sees her and slips out the back, but Betty catches a glimpse of him. She runs outside and calls his name. Bruce keeps walking down a dark road in the pouring rain. Headlights come up behind him. "It's Betty." She gets out in the rain and asks him to tell her if she saw what she thinks she saw.

Bruce can't find the words. "Please come with me," she says, and he goes. At her house, Betty hands him a small drive. It's their old data. She got to it before the army carted everything away. Betty wants to go and talk to her father together. Bruce shakes his head. Her father told him what he wants.

He wants to take this thing out of Bruce, study it, and turn it into a weapon. In the morning, Bruce tells Betty he has to leave as early as he can. It's not safe for him to stay. He asks to borrow some cash for a bus ticket. Betty says yes, but she wants to walk him to the station.

At an army base, Blonsky lies down on a table. A team of doctors gives him a small dose of the old serum. One shot goes deep into the muscle, the other into the bone marrow. The second one hurts a lot. Blonsky grits his teeth and takes it. Betty and Bruce walk across the campus together.

She fixes his hair and for a moment they both smile. Then Bruce spots an army truck parked by the road. They're here. He tells Betty to get as far away from him as she can. Soldiers come running across the grass from every side. In a truck nearby, Ross hears that someone attacked too early.

It's Blonsky. Bruce runs through the library with Blonsky right behind him. Outside, Betty runs up to the truck and sees her father. "Dad, please don't do this," she begs. Ross orders her to get inside. Bruce runs into a big glass greenhouse and the soldiers shoot gas canisters in after him.

Bruce chokes on the gas. His heart is pounding. A giant green hand slaps against the glass from the inside. The Hulk walks out of the smoke, huge and green. Machine guns on the trucks open fire and the bullets bounce off him. He rips one truck apart and flips another one. Ross' soldiers fall back across the field.

The Hulk rips a truck in half and uses the pieces like shields. Blonsky moves faster than the others now. The serum is working. He runs and leaps around the Hulk, firing the whole time. Then trucks with huge sound cannons blast the Hulk and he howls in pain. Blonsky stands in front of the Hulk with his gun.

"Is that all you got?" he shouts. The Hulk kicks him so hard that he flies across the field and slams into a tree. Every bone in his body seems to break. Betty breaks away from the soldiers and runs onto the field. Then a helicopter gunship flies in and fires missiles at the Hulk with Betty standing close by.

The field explodes in fire. The Hulk tears the helicopter down and it crashes in flames. Then he picks Betty up and carries her away through the fire. Ross can only watch. At Betty's house, Ross tells her boyfriend he did the right thing. Ross wants to know where Betty and Bruce are going.

The boyfriend has no idea, but he knows Betty will help Bruce if she can. He tells Ross he always wondered why Betty never talked about her father. Now he knows. That night, the Hulk carries Betty through a forest in a thunderstorm. Lightning flashes and he roars up at the sky and smashes a rock.

Betty steps up to him and calms him down. They spend the night in a cave behind a waterfall. In the morning, Betty is still there, sitting next to Bruce. He's himself again. At an army hospital, a doctor tells Ross that most of the bones in Blonsk's body look like crushed gravel, but he has a heart like a machine.

The doctor has never seen anything like it. Bruce and Betty hide out in a cheap motel. Betty comes back from a store with new clothes for him and she picks the stretchiest pants she could find. On the TV, a news report talks about a fight on the Culver campus. A college kid on camera says the thing was like a huge Hulk.

Betty sits Bruce down and gives him a haircut. They grow closer that night, but Bruce has to stop. His pulse is climbing. He can't get too excited, not even a little. In the army hospital, Ross goes to visit Blonsky and he can't believe it. Blonsky is already back on his feet. His bones have healed in days.

Ross asks him how he feels. Ready for round three, Blonsky says. At the motel, Bruce goes through Betty's things. No credit cards, no ID, no phone. The army can track all of it. They have $40. Meanwhile, the army is watching every phone and bank account they could use. Ross's team knows about Mr.

Green and Mr. Blue now. If Bruce slips up, they'll be ready. Bruce sends the data to Mr. Blue from a public computer. It's time to meet, he writes. The email goes to a college address. In a government database, a match comes up. Mr. Blue is a biology professor at a college in New York.

On the way, Betty asks him what it's like when it happens. Bruce says it's like someone poured acid into his brain. He only remembers bits and pieces. In the cave, Betty felt like it knew her. Maybe Bruce is still in there somewhere, but Bruce doesn't want to control it. He wants to get rid of it.

They drive toward New York, but the traffic on the bridge is stuck, so they ride a small boat into the city instead. The subway is out. Bruce says he's not going into a metal tube full of people, right? Let's get a cab. So, they take a taxi, but the driver turns nasty. Betty yells at him and they get out and walk.

At the college in New York, they find Mr. Blue in his lab. His real name is Samuel Sterns, and he's been dying to meet Mr. Green. He can't believe this quiet man is the one with all that power inside him. But he warns them it's dangerous. If the dose is even a little too high, it could kill Bruce.

If it's too low, Sterns could be in danger, too. He's always been more curious than careful, he says. That night, Ross' team flies into New York. Blonsky is with them, and there's a row of strange bumps along his spine now. He walks out to the helicopter in the dark. In the lab, Stern straps Bruce to a table.

A machine will mix the antidote into Bruce's blood. Then Stern sends a jolt through him to make him change. Bruce turns into the Hulk right there on the table and the straps start to snap. Betty leans over him and tells him to look in her eyes. The Hulk looks at her. Then he slowly shrinks back into Bruce.

Sterns is thrilled. He's not sure if the cure will last or if it only stopped this one change. It's hard to tell, he says, because none of their test subjects ever lived. Bruce stops him. Test subjects. Sterns shows them a room full of his blood samples. Bruce only sent him a little, so Sterns made a lot more.

He thinks it could lead to hundreds of cures. Bruce tells him they have to destroy it all tonight. Sterns can't believe it. You don't understand, Bruce says. It can't be controlled. Outside, the soldiers surround the building. Blonsky goes in on his own. He crashes into the lab and pins Bruce to the floor until he passes out.

The soldiers carry Bruce out to a helicopter and Betty fights them all the way. On board, she turns to her father. She'll never forgive him for what he did to Bruce, and she never wants to be his daughter again. Back in the lab, Blonsky stays behind with Sterns. He wants what Banner has.

He's seen what Bruce turns into, and to him, it's beautiful. Sterns warns him that mixing it with what's already in his body could make an abomination. Blonsky doesn't care. Sterns puts him on the table and starts the machine. Blonsky's body starts to grow and twist. Bones push out of his skin like spikes.

He becomes a monster, even bigger than the Hulk. With one swing, he knocks sterns across the room. Then he breaks out of the building. Soldiers on the street open fire and the monster tears right through them. A soldier screams over the radio that the Hulk is in the street. Ross says that's impossible.

Then the helicopter turns around and Ross sees the creature for himself. It's Blonsky. The monster smashes cars and throws a police car down the street. Fires break out everywhere in Harlem. Blonsky screams for the Hulk to come and give him a real fight. In the helicopter, Bruce makes up his mind.

"It has to be me," he says. "Maybe he can't control the Hulk, but he can point him at the monster." Bruce tells the pilot to keep the helicopter high and open the back door. Betty begs him not to do it. He doesn't even know if he'll change. Bruce says he has to try. Then he jumps.

The Incredible Hulk (2008) Ending Explained

Bruce falls hundreds of feet and smashes into the street. For a second, nothing happens. Then the Hulk climbs out of the hole. The two monsters slam into each other. When the street goes up in flames, the Hulk claps his hands so hard that the blast puts out the fire. Blonsky is stronger.

He knocks the Hulk down and asks if that's all he's got. Ross' helicopter swoops in and fires on Blonsky. Blonsky leaps onto the rooftops and brings it down. It crashes into the street and Betty and her father are stuck inside. Blonsky pins the Hulk down and tells him he doesn't deserve this power.

Flames pour out of the helicopter wreck. The Hulk fights his way free and gets back on his feet. Hulk, smash, he roars. Then he grabs a heavy chain. The Hulk wraps the chain around Blonsky's neck and pulls it tight. Blonsky starts to choke. Then the Hulk hears Betty's voice. He looks at her and he lets go.

He throws Blonsky down in front of Ross and the soldiers. Betty walks up to the Hulk. He looks at her for a long moment. Then he leaps up the side of a building and he's gone into the night. Sometime later, Betty stands by the water in New York. She looks at a picture of Bruce on her camera and the battery is almost dead, far away in the mountains of British Columbia.

Bruce is living alone in a cabin. He writes on an envelope at his table. Then he sits on the floor and breathes. The counter says, "31 days without an incident." Bruce opens his eyes and they glow green. A small smile spreads across his face. Back in the city, Ross sits alone in a bar.

A man in a nice suit sits down next to him. It's Tony Stark. He tells Ross that the super soldier program was put on ice for a reason. Then he asks Ross something. What if he said they were putting a team together? Bruce wanted one thing, to get the monster out of him. Ross wanted it as a weapon and Blonsky wanted it for himself.

That greed made Blonsky into a real monster and it left the Hulk to stop him. Betty never once looked at Bruce like he was a weapon. Do you think Bruce should keep looking for a cure or learn to live with the Hulk?