...to carry off the plot of this show in this day and age of ubiquitous mobile devices?
shareIn the comics Banner being the Hulk is widely known mostly to his pursuers. If it were done now all the secrecy would last a few episodes or one season.
shareSubsequent Hulk adaptations ignore the secrecy part and have everyone know Banner is The Hulk which had been in the comics since Tales To Astonish.
shareIn practical terms, that is really the only sensible approach. After a while, it becomes absurdly contrived that Banner always turns into the Hulk only when no one else is around to witness the change. And it becomes increasingly laughable that none of the people around him when he changes is able to put 2 and 2 together and figure out that the Hulk is Banner.
shareNobody knowing did have a lot to do with the codes at the time that nobody could know he is The Hulk and always have to cheat out of situations which was dictated in the TV series. The whole secrecy that most superheroes have is hard to pull off with The Hulk because his transformations could happen anytime, having everyone know adds more dramatic possibilities, because Banner turns into something monstrous people hate him fear him and try to destroy like the angry villagers from Frankenstein, the more problems any character has the more interesting the story is.
shareDoesn't quite work in the world of CCTV and smartphones.
shareIf the show was done now it would have people knowing he's The Hulk. It feels time worn and too much of a stretch of credibility for people to not know.
shareThink they had no one witness him change into The Hulk because they feared people seeing him change would kill the tension.
shareIf you think about how many times the Hulk has to smash up shit in public until people start pointing fingers, in the Hulk movies and MCU he has the army and S.H.I.E.L.D on to him.
shareHaving people know he's The Hulk would bring in more storylines and more drama.
shareNowadays he would be living in isolation.
shareHaving people thinking Banner is dead and not know he is The Hulk is kind of hard to be effective at all when it's pop culture commonsense not just in the world of CCTV and Smartphones.
shareNot really that difficult to pull off today, if you remade the show with it being a secret the hulk would become a modern day bat boy headline that no one would believe because it was ridiculous. The only snag would be the hulks need to smash all the cellphones and recording devices in every place he happened to hulk out in.
shareNowadays it being a secret would be a one season thing otherwise it would get old very quickly like with Smallville.
shareSmallville got old quickly, but it had more to do with the producers unwillingness to kill off characters and willingness to jump back and forth into and out of Superman canon. It could have worked if they had at the least ignored canon completely but the continued acts of trying to embrace it but on a random sort of way became a problem.
shareSmallville was a five year plan that last ten years, if a show goes on from two, three or four seasons you may have to change things up otherwise the audience will think "been there done that".
shareBanner would be tracked by government agents not just a reporter.
shareThe show was made in the ancient times where TV shows were not made with long arcs or character development changing halfway through, every episode had to be stand alone and the show's basic premise and status que never changes everything stays the same throughout the entire run of the show, nowadays you would flip it like a character who you think is a bad guy that turns out to be a good guy or a character you think s is an OK guy turns out to be a bad guy or a character has a secret life that other people don't know but becomes an open secret to them.
shareImpossible.
They've got gamma radiation firmly under control nowadays. An accident like that could only have happened back in the 70s...
Unless it was a lab explosion with a reactor.
shareWell... It's been twenty years since the last reported prompt criticality accident, but those are always a possibility and they do produce gammas as well as a shower of neutrons. And for fiction, we needn't assume they are all reported. Come to think of it, North Korea or someplace like that might have had such accidents and nobody need know... You tidy up the worst of it, lock up the facility, file the victims under "non-person" and jail or execute the persons responsible (the ones you don't bury in lead caskets).
shareNorth Korea is too far, just think Fukushima.
shareI dunno, Bigfoot, Nessie, Mothman, and the Dogmen do a pretty good job at it.
shareEasier that you think I suspect.
i. The Internet is wide and deep. Would it even go viral in a big way with so many other things competing for the limited attention-span of people today? A lot of people would never even see it.
ii. The Internet is full of disinformation and wacked conspiracies. A lot of people might believe it, but an equal mass of people would dismiss it. Forums would rage about it, but in the end no one would do much about it. See just about every 'faked moon landings', "Area 51", "pizzagate", etc conspiracy. None of these exist in the mainstream... you have to actively look for it to find it.
iii. The average person can produce Hollywood-level special effects on a PC. Youtube is full of some impressive vids from people seeking to promote their skills to studios. A lot of people would assume it was some sort of publicity stunt just like that 'eagle snatches a baby at park' vid that went viral years ago. See also 'bear chases downhill skier'. Or the 'UFO hovers over South American city'.
People would go 'ooh', 'ahh' and then move on to other things.
I think it could be done... indeed, that could fuel a few of the stories instead of the formulaic "The Fugitive" style of the series.
For example, the government itself could engage in a disinformation campaign as they try to track down Banner for their own purposes. That was the basic premise of the mythology of The X-Files.
Soldiers, X-Files type feds or CIA agents would be tracking Banner not just a reporter.
sharePossibly. Probably. Not at all. It depends on how you want to write the story.
I tossed out a few spitball ideas simply to answer the original question, i.e. I don't think the basic premise -- Banner/Hulk on the run week to week -- would be as hard as you would think despite the "age of ubiquitous mobile devices".
If the Internet has taught us anything, it's:
i. Disinformation travels much faster and further than the truth.
ii. Government/military intelligence isn't.
Subsequent Hulk adaptations have everyone know Banner is The Hulk because it's too much of a scratch of believeability for people to not found out Banner is The Hulk.
Banner/Hulk on the run would be handled differently now, wouldn't be a constant coincidence of Banner always happens to get caught up in some crime in every job he gets, be like people seek out Banner for his knowledge or come after him because of something The Hulk did.
Not hard. Half the country still thinks Antifa is a myth and the KKK is everywhere.
share