Everyone knows the Hulk, but do you know his effective origin story? We all know he turns green when he gets angry. On top of that, he is pretty much hard to kill, and I would run away when I see him.

In the 2003 movie, Hulk we get to see his origin for the first time. We get to see his insane father, who experimented on himself, which passed on his son. This all leads to Hulk’s creation. But is that his true origin story?

The movie’s origin story

The film begins with a retrospective. Brian Banner, Bruce Banner’s father, has made a genetic change to himself that automatically replaces cells in the body, so that wounds, therefore, heal instantly; so-called Nanomeds. Later on, Brian and his wife have a child together, Bruce. He has the same trait as Brian. However, there is a major downside to the genetic change. When angered, the person will turn into an iron-clad monster.

When Brian Banner realizes that, he wants to kill his son Bruce to protect the world. However, one manages to stop him. When the military decides to stop the research because it is too dangerous, Brian in frustration causes an explosion in a gamma reactor, killing his wife. He himself is imprisoned.

Things don’t seem so bad, because Bruce has never turned into a monster. After 20 years, Bruce works at the University of California at Berkeley. There he is doing experiments with gamma rays to achieve the same status as his father had. Then an accident occurs and the genetic defect he inherited from his father surfaces. Bruce’s wounds heal automatically, but unlike his father, he becomes a monster, the Hulk, when angry.

The comic book’s origin story

The Hulk is actually Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, a nuclear physicist. You can already guess it, Bruce is a great genius. However, as a child, he was abused by his father, who also abused his mother. He held back his anger over this, which gave him a split personality. At school, he was bullied by other students. However, he passed through school with ease and went on to study physics at university.

In adulthood, he went to work for the US Army as a nuclear physicist. The military base, where he comes to work, is headed by General Thunderbolt Ross. Of course, Bruce falls in love with his daughter, Betty Ross. In addition, Bruce comes to work on a new type of weapon called the “gamma bomb”; a nuclear weapon with high gamma radiation. On the day the bomb was to be tested, Bruce discovered at the last minute a teenager named Rick Jones, who was wandering around the test site because of a bet. Bruce managed to rescue Rick before the bomb went off, but in the process was himself exposed to the blast with his body absorbing a high dose of gamma radiation. Rick took Bruce to the hospital, where he turned into the Hulk for the first time.

Comparison

The movie definitely took some inspiration from the comics. When the accident happens in the film, Bruce tries to sacrifice himself to save someone else. This resembles the part where he saves the teenager in the comics. After waking up in the hospital, he becomes the Hulk for the first time.

However, in the movie, there’s something else triggering the Hulk. It’s the experiments that the father did on himself, but got passed through birth to Bruce. That wasn’t originally part of his origin story. So his origin story isn’t 100% accurate, but then again, it’s a comic book movie so it’s always acceptable to change some stuff.

In addition in the comics he has a split personality due to his childhood trauma. However, in the movie, he still has a bad childhood but he doesn’t remember much of it. Furthermore, he does not seem to have split personalities except when he turns into the Hulk.

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