The Incredible Hulk

Chronologically, this is where the saga's other founding trauma sits: not a cave in a war zone, but a lab experiment gone wrong and the years afterward spent running. By the time we meet Bruce Banner here he isn't discovering his condition, he's already a fugitive who has spent a long time perfecting the art of staying calm, favela to favela, one heart-rate monitor away from catastrophe.

That framing — deep into hiding, not at the beginning of the problem — is what makes this chapter feel different from everything around it in the run. There's no workshop, no suit being built, no choice to become something. Just a man trying to out-run the worst version of himself and a general who wants to weaponize it. The film's best moments are the quiet ones: a heartbeat spiking on a screen, a whispered countdown to calm down, the dread of a low simmer that both the character and the camera know is about to boil over anyway.

Watched here, fifth in a run about people choosing to become more than they were, this is the one entry about someone who never wanted the power at all — which makes it the clearest possible contrast heading into whatever comes next.