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As part of a brand-new trailer for Captain America: Brave New World premiering at Disney’s D23 fan event in Anaheim, California this week, the thousands on hand at the Honda Center arena got their first full-on look at the movie’s Red Hulk (following an indirect glimpse in the first trailer), the anger-fueled alter ego of President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Harrison Ford).
Ross’s transformation into the big red guy comes at the end of the clip (shown exclusively to the D23 audience), as he is speaking to a gathering of some kind outside the White House. Ross is overcome with a seizure and emerges from behind the official presidential lectern in full Red Hulk glory (it appears that it’s Ford himself doing the performance capture, because it’s clearly his face in there).
He rises to his full stature and unleashes a tremendous roar before the title of the film flashes onscreen, followed by one more close-up of his face, eyes blazing with fury, as he turns and no doubt heads into conflict with Captain America/Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who is at the event.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a Hulk of any kind in full, no-holds-barred anger mode. The MCU’s Incredible Hulk/Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) has gone through a complicated and somewhat divisive journey over the past few years, starting with Avengers: Infinity War. His confidence rattled thanks to an initial defeat by Thanos, Hulk refuses to come out at all for the rest of the film, forcing Banner to don the Hulkbuster suit instead for the decisive Battle of Wakanda.
Then in Avengers: Endgame, we find Banner having merged with the Hulk persona to create what most fans refer to as Smart Hulk: the Hulk’s body with Banner’s personality and intelligence. Except he’s a lot more mellow and less prone to anger than he used to be, even showing embarrassment at seeing his antics during the Battle of New York back in 2012.
Ruffalo’s Banner has since shown up on the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, where he served as an avuncular mentor to his cousin Jennifer Walters and even introduced his (yet-unexplained) son at the end of the series.
From what we can see so far, the introduction of Red Hulk serves as a return to an MCU Hulk with no such character evolution. He’s one furious mother***ker, and while we don’t know yet know how Ross gets there, we suspect it has something to do with The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson) and a plot to undermine the U.S. government.
We also don’t know if Ross/Red Hulk will survive the events of Captain America: Brave New World and whether he’ll participate in more movies going forward, but it will be interesting to see how his arrival impacts the MCU and whether he’ll end up going fist-to-fist with the Incredible Hulk himself.
The rest of the latest Brave New World trailer expands somewhat on the first teaser unveiled earlier this summer. It opens with Ross addressing a summit meeting in which he notes that the discovery of adamantium in the body of the Celestial left on Earth at the end of Eternals led initially to squabbling among the planet’s nations over obtaining it, until an agreement of some sort was hammered out.
From there, it makes it more explicit that Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) is behind a massive terrorist-type attack on the White House, but it also becomes apparent that Ross—after initially reaching out to Wilson to reconstitute the Avengers—wants the whole thing buried, even though Wilson has discovered evidence that someone in the president’s inner circle is involved.
From there, the trailer cascades through a series of action sequences in the air and ground, a look at Cap and the new Falcon (Danny Ramirez) working together, secret bases and labs, and lots of explosions and flames, culminating in the Red Hulk sequence. Whatever happens in Captain America: Brave New World, it’s good to see an angry Hulk again.
Captain America: Brave New World opens in theaters on Feb. 14, 2025.
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