Before it landed in theaters, Captain America: Brave New World underwent a variety of changes and tweaks, something a number of big-budget movies have gone through over the years. In addition to a title change, production was paused on the film due to the 2023 actors’ and writers’ strikes, which allowed director Julius Onah to alter the trajectory of the film in a more significant way than other entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the sequel now out in theaters, Onah has weighed in on some of the tweaks made along the way, which includes addressing the fate of Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross and Red Hulk.
WARNING: Spoilers below for Captain America: Brave New WorldIn the movie, Ross takes a pill three times a day that Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) claims will keep his heart healthy, only for the film’s conclusion to reveal that the pills were laced with radiation, slowly subjecting Ross to the process that allowed Bruce Banner to become the Hulk. Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson bests Red Hulk in combat, resulting in Ross being imprisoned in the Raft, seemingly leaving Red Hulk behind.As far as whether Onah had ever considered more definitively killing off Red Hulk, the filmmaker confirmed there were some slight tweaks but that nothing came close to being permanent.
“You explore many different iterations of it. There was never a version where he explicitly died, but there were certainly versions of it where maybe the public didn’t know wha.