Hulk Wasn’t a Marvel Mandate for SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY, the Director Had to Ask for Permission to Use Him

It was fun seeing The Hulk back in action smashing his way through scenes inSpider-Man: Brand New Day, but Marvel Studios didn’t tell director Destin Daniel Crettonthat he needed to squeeze the big green guy into Peter Parker’s latest adventure.

According to Cretton, Hulk was a character he specifically wanted for the story, and he actually had to ask Kevin Feige for permission to use him.

Mark Ruffalo returns as Bruce Banner in the film for a brief but important role. Banner offers Peter Parker some advice before things get considerably more chaotic when Sadie Sink’s Jean Grey uses her mind-control abilities and causes Bruce to Hulk out.

While discussing Jean Grey’s involvement in the movie on NPR’s Fresh Air podcast, Cretton explained that Marvel Studios wasn’t handing him a checklist of characters he needed to include.

"Kevin's not necessarily ever pushing things on us. Once we know what we want, we have to go to him and ask, like, 'Is that going to work? Can we use this character in our movie?'

“The same with Hulk, too. We had to ask Kevin. It made sense to our movie to have the Hulk, it wasn't a mandate to put him in. We had to request, and Kevin let us do it."

That’s an interesting bit of context, especially considering how easily a character like Hulk could have felt like a studio-driven addition designed to make Spider-Man’s latest MCU movie bigger. Instead, Cretton says Hulk came directly from what the filmmakers thought worked for Peter’s story.

The same thinking apparently applied to Jean Grey, giving Brand New Day some major Marvel characters without simply turning the movie into another massive crossover event.

The film picks up after the devastating ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home, where everyone Peter Parker loves and cares about forgot he exists. Rather than attempting to outdo that movie’s multiverse madness and three-Spider-Man spectacle, the filmmakers decided to focus more closely on Peter and the loneliness he’s dealing with.

Feige previously explained that approach during a D23 panel celebrating Spider-Man’s 65th anniversary. "When we made Brand New Day, we set out saying, 'Well, we'll never make more than No Way Home, never make it bigger than No Way Home. So, let's just go deeper and make it special," Feige said.

He continued by recalling a moment during the production of No Way Home that helped shape how he viewed the characters at the heart of these movies.

"And I have a memory, we were on set of No Way Home, which of course was about Tobey [Maguire] and Andrew [Garfield] and Tom, three Spider-Men together," he continued.

"How do you get bigger than three Spider-Men together? Well, sitting on a golf cart outside the set were Zendaya and Jacob [Batalon] and Tom. And it occurred to me, looking at those three, that that trio is as iconic as the three Spider-Men. And now Brand New Day has proved that."

It’s a smart direction for Spider-Man after No Way Home. Trying to top three generations of Spider-Man sharing the screen would have been a losing game. Giving Peter a more personal story while still letting him collide with characters like Hulk and Jean Grey offers a different kind of Marvel adventure.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is in theaters now.