Filming on Thor: Ragnarok has only been going for about a month, but Mark Ruffalo has already wrapped on the picture. He announced his departure on his Instagram page:
Waititi and "Ruffles" on the set of #Thor3 last day. Had such a great good fun time making this movie. Thanks @taikawaititi @chrishemsworth , @tessamaethompson @marvel for the love and the laughs. A photo posted by Mark Ruffalo (@markruffalo) on
So what does this mean for Thor: Ragnarok? For starters, it means that Banner is likely to be in very little of the film. The real question is how much Hulk will we see in the picture? Back in January, Ruffalo said that Ragnarok was a “Universal road movie” and in May he told people to expect “a lot more Hulk”. While Ruffalo has done some mo-cap work for the Hulk, it looks like he’ll be handing the bulk of it over to mo-cap actors, which makes sense. You may only need Ruffalo for the close-ups and more character-centric moments for the Hulk, but for the running, smashing, and otherwise action-oriented bits, you can get stunt performers for that.
Although it’s a bit of a bummer we won’t be getting much of Ruffalo’s Banner in Thor: Ragnarok, I’m still excited to see how the movie will integrate elements from the comic series Planet Hulk and how Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Hulk will play off each other on their adventure. After the explosion of characters in Captain America: Civil War, it will be nice to just focus on a couple of superheroes, especially two that should play so well off each other like Hulk and Thor.
The film opens November 3, 2017 and also stars Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Idris Elba, and Anthony Hopkins.