In een interview met The Wall Street Journal sprak Mark Ruffalo over zijn personage The Hulk, die hij speelt in de superheldenfilm The Avengers. Hij sprak onder meer over de evolutie van het moeilijk tembare groene monster: "I don't think Bruce Banner's any longer trying to run from the inevitable, which is his voice, and that's a kind of maturation that all of us go through. At this point, I think he's ready to turn and face this beast that he's partially created and try to integrate it into his life and use it for the good that he intended it to be used for."
En The Hulk, of althans zijn alter-ego Bruce Banner, heeft volgens Ruffalo ook voldoende humor: "There's a lot of world-weary charm in the character. A lot of sense of humor about himself and where he finds himself. He has this maturation that I think makes him ready to accept whatever his fate may be."
In het artikel komt ook ene Joe Wos aan het woord. Deze is een algemeen directeur directeur van een museum over "Comics & Cartoons" in Pittsburg. Volgens Wos is The Hulk één van de meest populaire superhelden, ná Spider-Man, Batman en Superman. Wos voegde daar wel aan toe: "The Hulk is a very difficult character to pull off without making it cartoonish."
Volgens Wos is het bijzonder moeilijk om het personage het spelen in een film: "This is a character whose power comes from his anger. But, at the same time, once he's in that position, he still has to struggle to maintain that control so that anger doesn't go too far."
Tegenover The Wall Street Journal zegt acteur Ruffalo ook e.e.a. over het originele idee dat regisseur Joss Whedon heeft met The Avengers. De superheldenfilm zou een soort personificatie moeten worden van de Amerikaanse en zelfs de mondiale samenleving: "You have all these disparate egos, superheroes in this and that, and they refuse to give up some of their positions in order to make a more perfect union and to join the team. That's really what the whole movie is about: subjugating your own best interest momentarily to further that of the whole."
"I didn't know it a year ago that it was going to speak to so many of the issues we're having here in the United States and throughout the world, the same kind of theme. These movies reach a lot of people, they're our modern mythology, aldus Ruffalo, die sinds kinds af aan comic-fan is. "I think a lot of the beliefs I have and cherish were fostered by the decency of our superheroes, and what they were about and what they were fighting for."
