Among the many attacks it has received she hulk (Disney +) the only one that does not give rise to debate is the one that criticizes its poor CGI —Computer Generated Imagery, translated into Spanish as computer-generated images—. When Jennifer Walters transforms, the special effects seem more typical of sharknado than from a series in the burgeoning Marvel Cinematic Universe. The failure was so obvious that after leaking the first images, the series returned to the post-production room. The least destructive fandom he had said about the special effects, not without retraction, that they were “a little green”.
Those who have as a reference the first appearance of the giant on the screen followed the controversy with an ironic distance. In The incredible Hulk, the series that swept half the world between 1978 and 1982 (in Spain it premiered on Sunday afternoons in 1981 and became an instant success that continued to be rerun for decades), the special effects were reduced to three: white contact lenses , a shaggy wig and a pot of green paint. There was no CGI (it took five years for tron became in 1982 the first film to use computer-generated images in a relevant way), only the imposing muscles of Lou Ferrigno (Brooklyn, 70 years old), a titan of 1.96 and 140 kilos who won the role in detriment of Arnold Schwarzenegger himself.
The Austrian had been the first choice to play La Masa, as the character was known in Spain, but the Hulk not only needed to be strong, but giant, and Schwarzenegger had the muscles, but with his 1.88 he was short. The chosen one was Richard Kiel, the Jaws from the James Bond movie moonraker, a true giant of 2.20 meters. Production started with Kiel until the director’s son visited the set and told his father that the crazy-eyed bulk was nothing like the character created by Stan Lee.
![Promotion of 'The Incredible Hulk' and 'Wonder Woman' appeared in the American magazine TV Guide on March 25, 1978.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/uhFOs4bm3dLaWM3fz7pVvnXPsEk=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/GYQRCA5AVNDZZATPVRKOQ5CHEY.jpg)
After a casting which all the strongmen in the United States passed, they ended up opting for Lou Ferrigno, a bodybuilding star who had won the Mr. Universe contest two years in a row. His physique was perfect and, in addition, he showed a certain innocence that fit the role. “I went to the screen test and they painted me green, they told me to be like the Hulk, so I was like the Hulk and they hired me that day! The next day, I was in makeup for like 12 or 14 hours, I looked in the mirror, I saw white eyes and green teeth and I thought, ‘What am I doing here? remembered the actor in an interview granted to the website specializing in comics 13th Dimensions. The rest is history.
It was his debut as an actor, although the cameras were no strangers to him. He had already been with Schwarzenegger one of the protagonists of pumping iron, iconic bodybuilding documentary chronicling the days leading up to the 1975 Mr. Olympia contest in which both competed. Schwarzenegger had won the contest five times and would win once more. Ferrigno’s resume was far inferior, but his own biography was worthy of becoming his best film.
A broomstick and two buckets of cement
The son of a strict police lieutenant of Italian descent, a severe ear infection suffered when he was a baby had taken away 80% of his hearing, which caused him trouble speaking and the consequent taunts and insults from the rest of the children in the neighborhood. To overcome the harassment he took refuge in the comics, paradoxically, in those of Hulk. “He was obsessed with power. He wanted to be strong enough to be able to defend me”, declared to People in 2021.
![Lou Ferrigno being made up to become the Hulk.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/_17V2unvugoADSYMS5yQZBSwPQg=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/MXTQQ6HEAZCZLIRQKOLWDKWT7I.jpg)
![Promotional image of 'The Incredible Hulk', with Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk and Bill Bixby as David Banner.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/SdEj1r67j3HP3iVUTckVfXdlevk=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/EEASA6N5UNFELKSGOEPTLZOIDI.jpg)
With no money to go to the gym or buy sports equipment, he used a broomstick and two buckets of cement to train, he had found his way. “He changed my life, gave me drive and determination. If I hadn’t discovered bodybuilding I would have gone down the wrong path, self-pity would have led me to drugs.” Encouraged by his father, he tried his hand at American football, but the result was disastrous. “During a game a guy came running towards me, as he didn’t want me to get knocked down, I hit him with all my might and broke both his legs.”
He never hid his lack of hearing on set. It would have been impossible: since he was little he was forced to wear a cumbersome audiometer. “I knew he had to pay special attention because he had to constantly read lips. Sometimes on set the hearing aid would not work well and he would end up wearing two instead of one.” At 68, he had a cochlear implant inserted and he was able to hear clearly for the first time.
The incredible Hulk It gave him an inordinate fame. The series was Marvel’s first serious attempt to start an audiovisual project inspired by comics and the result was very successful, although the licenses taken by director Kenneth Johnson, architect of the successful vwould have unhinged the character’s admirers if they had a social network to complain on.
Johnson, who saw the character as a copy of Jean Valjean from The Miserables, transformed the nuclear scientist into a devastated widower for not having been able to prevent the death of his wife in a traffic accident who becomes obsessed with inner strength and during one of his experiments receives an overdose of gamma rays, which in situations of fear or stress makes him turn into a green giant. In addition to modifying the origin of the experiment, all the secondary ones of the comic were also eliminated and, as it happened in the successful The fugitiveDavid Banner (the character was originally called Bruce Banner, but as both its creator Stan Lee and Ferrigno himself confirmed to Johnson it seemed like a name “too gay”) traveled from city to city escaping from a tenacious journalist. Johnson also tried to make the character red instead of green, a color he considered more in keeping with anger, but Marvel stopped him.
![Lou Ferrigno and Dolly Parton pose together after a concert in 1979.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/rD3SBBjJZL3JI1KFgqtDhaPIB4I=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DTIPKNHUO5EQDBHBYVHHACIVGY.jpg)
![Lou Ferrigno, his wife Carla and their daughter Shanna, in 1982.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/J5c_FuNQ2uhOIWTcSXE0mV0cnUo=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/TH4DFAOZ6RDTZHQXKNJB7LFKF4.jpg)
Unable to develop convincing special effects, the producers decided to double the role: the taciturn Dr. Banner was played by Bill Bixby, a prestigious actor who had appeared on series such as Rich man, poor man (1976), and Ferrigno was the Hulk. In order not to disappoint fans, they never posed together. They wanted to preserve the charm of the transformation. The strong point of each chapter, the moment in which the seams of the shirt ripped to the Hulk, was the most anticipated. And a torment for Ferrigno. “It took three and a half to four hours to do my makeup, because then we didn’t have any spray, just a ball of clay. Just doing my face makeup took them an hour and a half. I was the first to arrive on set and sometimes I would leave at two in the morning, because I was shooting between 12 and 14 hours a day”.
The series became an unparalleled hit that ran for five seasons and continued for three movies. There could have been more, but Bixby died of prostate cancer in 1993 after years plagued by family tragedies (his six-year-old son had died of an infection and a year later his ex-wife, unable to overcome it, had committed suicide). . Ferrigno’s family life has been more fortunate: after a brief failed marriage, according to the actor, due to the pace of filming the series (“he recorded for 80 hours a week and the rest of the hours he used to train, eat and sleep” ), in 1979 he met the psychotherapist and former girl Playboy Carla Green. Today they are still married and have three children.
of the times of The incredible Hulk Ferrigno has some fond memories, like the day a gray-haired, bespectacled guy got into his RV asking for an autograph and it turned out to be Cary Grant. Others, especially those related to makeup, are nightmarish. He wore contact lenses that were so painful that he could only wear them for 15 minutes at a time. And after production ended, his toenails remained green for six months.
After the Hulk he played Hercules in a couple of revisitations eighties of the peplum, but her acting abilities were very limited and the reviews were devastating.
![Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno, during the premiere of the movie 'The Incredible Hulk' in 2008.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/ncLgwylkwPxDikIMq1L9TfvVSLY=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/PFWLO24J6JDCNE556OXIU4YPIE.jpg)
![Lou Ferrigno with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man from whom he snatched the role of the Hulk.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/kHT4gClqulpSIht-XcQXrWWkUrw=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/UMOD4OOZP5GDFLMILXKA5GX4CA.jpg)
Although he has never regained the immense popularity he experienced with Hulk, Ferrigno has continued to play small roles in series such as the king of queens, in which he had a regular character, and has remained linked to the Marvel universe. He had small cameos in the Eric Bana movies (Hulk2003) and Edward Norton (The incredible Hulk, 2008). Norton is his favorite Hulk, apart from himself, of course. And he has been the voice of the green man in all the movies (until Avengers: Age of Ultron) and in animation series and video games. Something paradoxical, since in the series the voice of the Hulk was not hers: she was played by the actor Charles Napier. His relationship with Marvel, and with science fiction sagas in general, is one of love/hate. Ferrigno considers that currently the use of CGI is disproportionate: “I think we have to retrain ourselves not to see too many special effects because the more authentic and organic the character is, the more believable it will be.”
Apart from his film career, he owns a lucrative bodybuilding-related products company and advises celebrities, was Michael Jackson’s personal trainer, when the singer died, Ferrigno was preparing him for the concerts he had planned in London.
In 2006, he was able to fulfill a dream that had nothing to do with celebrity: he was sworn in as a deputy sheriff in Los Angeles. “My father was a police officer in the New York Police Department, I’ve always had a lot of respect for officers,” she stated. “I want to give back to the community, and I want to work with young people and help them get off drugs.” More controversial was her endorsement of former Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He and Steven Seagal joined the controversial anti-immigration patrols that the controversial sheriff established in Arizona, a squad of volunteers who helped the police transport people detained at the border to jail.
Like his rival in his golden years as a bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ferrigno has strong Republican convictions. During Trump’s tenure, which he wholeheartedly supported, he was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports and Nutrition, a body whose purpose was to help Americans lead healthier lifestyles. He can lead by example: at 71, he sports an enviable physique that he boasts about on Instagram or Twitter. His muscles still don’t need CGI.
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