Marvel Scrapped A Wild Captain America 4 Idea Involving Red Hulk
It's probably fair to say that only the most prescient people had "Harrison Ford plays Red Hulk in a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie" on their bingo cards a few years ago. For me, at least, that sentence has continued to have a certain air of absurdity even after William Hurt's death in 2022 led to Ford taking over the role of Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross in the otherwise mostly forgettable "Captain America: Brave New World." This is, of course, not a swipe against Ford himself, who does a great job as the increasingly out-of-depth warmonger president — it just feels like the mere existence of a Harrison Ford Red Hulk is proof that the whole timeline is slightly askew.
That being said, the version of Ford's Red Hulk that ended up on the big screen is actually fairly tame compared to what could have been. In an interview with JoBlo Celebrity Access, "Captain America: Brave New World" director Julius Onah revealed that at one point in the filmmaking process, there were plans for Red Hulk to have a gun:
"There was a point in time, actually, it didn't make the movie, where Red Hulk, arcing back to publishing, wielded a gun, and it just didn't feel quite right for the actual movie."
Strange as it may seem, giving Red Hulk a gun would actually make the adaptation more accurate
On the surface, giving a Hulk a gun seems to make as much sense as a tiger trying to hunt with a pair of nunchucks: Both make for an interesting visual, but at the end of the day, they have far better tools to get the job done. As such, it's very, very understandable that Marvel opted against a firearm-toting Red Hulk.
Despite this, Red Hulk actually has a track record of using guns in the comics. He has been known to carry a Hulk-sized handgun, and some adaptations have also shown him using more powerful artillery. This makes sense when you remember that the comics version of the character has Thunderbolt Ross' full mental faculties at his disposal, and that Ross is a military man whose training likely makes him far more comfortable with using guns than it does with physically moving mountains with his bare hands.
This may actually explain why the movie ended up opting against the gun approach. Since "Captain America: Brave New World" villain Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) specifically designs the live-action Red Hulk to be a chaos-causing physical manifestation of Ross' out-of-control anger, throwing some marksmanship abilities in the mix would have undermined the whole point.