I don’t know about you, but my top two sources for Marvel news are The New York Times, and McDonald’s Happy Meals Toys. Naturally, it was the latter that has seemingly spoiled the villain reveal for Captain America: Brave New World, by showing off a toy of — spoilers — Thunderbolt Ross as The Red Hulk.
To be fair, this is something that has been heavily rumored anyway. Harrison Ford is taking over the role of Ross in the fourth Captain America movie, which also stars Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Captain America, Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres/Falcon, and Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley. While footage was shown from the flick at CinemaCon in Las Vegas with Bradley going wild, seemingly brainwashed in some way, we’ve known for a while that the real villain of the movie is The Leader, with Tim Blake Nelson returning to the role that was teased way back in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.
And with The Leader came rumors that Ross would turn into Red Hulk, as he does in the comics. So, now we probably know thanks to the Happy Meal toys. In fact, the Brazilian menu (at least, that’s what it appears to be) revealed on Reddit shows off Joaquin’s new Falcon suit, two Captain Americas, Red Hulk, and two characters named “Cascavel” who is probably villain Diamondback, and “Ruth” who is Israeli superhero Sabra, played by Shira Haas in the movie.
That said, while we now know that Ross becomes Red Hulk, and the idea that we might get behind-the-scenes footage of Harrison Ford grumpily wearing motion capture equipment is a delight, we don’t know how it will play out in the movie. In the comics, Red Hulk was played as an ongoing mystery. Like Ross, he was a smart, calculating Hulk who manipulated the regular Hulk. Will this Red Hulk be the same? Or is he controlled/activated by The Leader is some way?
One thing we know for sure? Ford doesn’t have a mustache in the movie, which solves one of the biggest issues from the comics… There, Ross’s mustache would disappear when he turned into Red Hulk, meaning it somehow got sucked inside his body. You know, just like the delicious food inside a Happy Meal.
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