I feel like of all of the members of the Avengers The Hulk should be the one consuming the least amount of alcohol and as far as his story goes the same is true for everyone around him as well. There is almost no drinking in this film…not even the villains tie one on (at least not until the very end)
In the final scene we see General Ross drowning his sorrows in three glasses of highly viscous green syrup in quick succession in kind of a dive bar. What is the green stuff? Well, the bartender is pouring it straight from the bottle, it’s not a cocktail or mixed drink…so what are the options? Creme de Menthe? Midori? Whatever it is, I expect it’s a terrible thing to binge on.- The final bit, Tony Stark walks into the bar leading with the line “The smell of stale beer and defeat”
The thing about The Hulk is that he is the ultimate blackout drunk. It makes sense that David Banner doesn’t touch alcohol given his condition…that losing control can get extremely bad for everyone, however, The Hulk is the representation of that guy who has no self control around alcoholic beverages. There is no moderation; there is 0 or 11 and when it’s over there is property damage, hurt feelings, and he wakes up in strange places (sometimes naked) knowing that he’s got a lot of apologies to make. Even the antagonists didn’t stop to celebrate their wickedness with a toast. Ross and Blonski were motivated by other things, blind to the harm they were doing to achieve their goals, it would have been out of character to demonstrate their weakness as a lack of discipline. To be honest, the final scene with Ross pounding Creme de Menthe didn’t quite sit with me… or you just accept that this tough guy resets his game by spending a week bingeing boutique liqueurs. Real people do strange things too, I should just give the writers a break.
But also, the introduction of Tony Stark demonstrates how the MCU is integrated. Iron Man 2 is over before the final scene in The Hulk, so The Hulk started before and ended after Iron Man 2 (keep in mind, Banner had to walk and hitch rides from South America to the U.S., that could be a big contributor to the length of the story), but in Iron Man 2 we start to see how all of the films and the Marvel one shot videos all fit together to form what is known in MCU circles as Nick Fury’s big week. I will go into all of those next.
