Edward Norton’s a pretty versatile guy. He’s able to ricochet between roles in heavy stuff like 25th Hour and American History X while still maintaining a presence in slightly lighter fare like Fight Club, The Illusionist, and The Incredible Hulk. You might notice that those seem pretty heavy for their genres, but then again, Norton’s a pretty serious guy.
He takes his career pretty seriously as well, which is why he won’t give a solid answer to the press about his potential involvement as Bruce Banner in the crossover Avengers film. The response he gave MTV when questioned about the role was ambiguous:
“I get very busy. You have to deal with the demands of your moment. I tend to keep my head in the thing I’m doing and I don’t speculate or worry too much about what two or three blocks down the thing is going to be. I know all these things will reveal themselves and work out or not.”
This isn’t to say that Norton isn’t interested in a crossover film; to the contrary, he seems very invested in the idea of creating a Marvel universe on film: “The thing about their universe that’s fun is that it all cross-pollinates,” said Norton. “Even when I was working on the Incredible Hulk script, I tried to plug in the whole super-soldier serum thing from Captain America … there are limitless permutations.”
I’m still cautiously optimistic about The Avengers movie — I think with talent like Norton and Robert Downey Jr. involved, it could be fantastic or a colossal debacle of unprecedented proportions. Time will tell as we get past the release of Iron Man 2, I’m sure.
