Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth Tom Holland solo Spider-Man film, has arrived in cinemas and features a supporting appearance from Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner/Hulk. While the film is expected to be a major box office success for Sony and Marvel, IGN argues that Banner's portrayal exposes a long-running continuity problem in the MCU, where the character seems to change inconsistently between appearances without clear explanation.

In the new film, Banner appears as an Empire State University physics professor wearing a gamma inhibitor device, first introduced in Shang-Chi and later explored in She-Hulk, where damage to a similar device turned him back into his calmer "Professor Hulk" form. In Brand New Day, however, damage to the inhibitor instead triggers his more feral "Savage Hulk" persona, last seen in Infinity War, with no clear in-story explanation for the shift, despite Banner having previously said he had merged his two personas permanently. IGN suggests the filmmakers likely prioritised an exciting action sequence over strict continuity, since Hulk is not central to a Spider-Man film, but notes this fits a broader pattern of inconsistent Hulk characterisation across the MCU, starting from Edward Norton's original 2008 portrayal through to Ruffalo's various later versions.