Mark Ruffalo's 5 Best Marvel Movies, Ranked

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Published Feb 27, 2026, 7:57 AM EST

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Mark Ruffalo is MCU’s silent selfless king. The dude got no individual movie and yet we all know Hulk like the back of our hands. And the credit goes to the actor. The best Mark Ruffalo MCU performances hit in that exact sweet spot where Bruce Banner feels like the smartest person in the room and also the most emotionally scrambled. Ruffalo gives Bruce this nervous humanity, this constant internal negotiation, and then the Hulk side comes in with chaos, pride, fear, or raw pain and changes the temperature of the whole scene.

So this ranking is about where Ruffalo gets the most to play, not just big Hulk moments, but real Bruce material too. The strongest entries let him be funny, conflicted, awkward, wounded, and unexpectedly moving, amazingly human, and sometimes all of these in the same stretch of the movie. Ruffalo isn’t credited enough for the amazing work he did as Bruce Banner and it’s time we give him some credit for it.

5 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' (2015)

The Hulk during battle in Avengers: Age of Ultron

A lot of people remember Age of Ultron for the bigger chaos, but it’s a really solid Bruce Banner movie because Ruffalo gets to lean into Bruce’s discomfort in a team that’s starting to feel too comfortable with destruction. Bruce Banner is already carrying that quiet dread, the sense that every mission could become a situation where Hulk does damage nobody can cleanly justify later. Ruffalo plays that tension in his posture and timing, and it gives Bruce a nice emotional texture while everyone else is talking louder.

The Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) connection is where the movie gets more layered for him. Ruffalo plays Bruce like a man who wants closeness and still instinctively flinches from it, which fits the character’s whole life. Then the Hulkbuster fight turns that fear into spectacle, and it works because Bruce’s worst anxiety becomes visible to the entire world. By the end, his exit lands with sadness because you can feel how tired he is of being both the solution and the problem.

4 'The Avengers' (2012)

Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk looking dismayed among a dust cloud in The Avengers.

The Avengers is one of Ruffalo’s most lovable MCU performances because he walks into a giant ensemble and immediately gives Bruce a clear vibe: brilliant, wary, polite, and one bad day away from disaster. The Avengers had to reintroduce Banner and make audiences care fast, and Ruffalo nails that in minutes. The way he talks to Black Widow, the way he enters the helicarrier, the way he watches everyone else’s energy before joining in, you instantly get a Bruce who lives in self-monitoring mode.

And then the movie rewards that setup with one of the best character-payoff lines in the whole MCU. Ruffalo’s “I’m always angry” moment was epic. It makes you see how he played with so much contained tension before it. The transformation in the final battle feels triumphant and a little scary at the same time, which is exactly the right mix for Banner/Hulk. He also brings sneaky humor all over this movie, and that compounded in the later MCU installments as well. All in all, Ruffalo made Bruce feel like a real person inside the blockbuster machine.

3 'Avengers: Infinity War' (2018)

Bruce Banner looking intently somewhere off-camera in Avengers: Infinity War

What makes Ruffalo great in Infinity War is that the movie flips his usual Banner/Hulk dynamic and lets him play panic, embarrassment, and desperation in a really entertaining way. Bruce Banner arrives with catastrophic information, nobody has time, and he’s trying to get the team to understand the scale of what’s coming while also dealing with a Hulk who suddenly refuses to come out. That reversal gives Ruffalo a ton to work with. Bruce is used to fearing Hulk’s presence; here he’s terrified of Hulk’s absence.

It also makes the comedy sharper because the jokes grow out of a real character crisis. The Hulk “won’t perform” angle could have felt throwaway, but Ruffalo played Bruce’s frustration beautifully . His Wakanda material was especially fun too because he’s still fully committed to helping, even when he’s improvising with technology and pride on the line. The movie keeps him active, useful, and emotionally frazzled, which is generally a great Ruffalo zone.

2 'Thor: Ragnarok' (2017)

Mark Ruffalo as Hulk pouting next to Chris Hemsworth's Thor in Thor: Ragnarok

Thor: Ragnarok showed the most different version of Hulk too — not just Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth). It gave him room to be weird, funny, and vulnerable without losing the Bruce/Hulk tension. Bruce Banner wakes up after being gone for a long time, and Ruffalo plays the disorientation beautifully, confused, chatty, anxious, and trying to piece together what Hulk has been doing with his life on Sakaar. It’s funny right away, but there’s also a genuine sadness underneath it because Bruce realizes time and control have slipped through his fingers again.

The movie let Ruffalo bounce off Hemsworth in a way that brings out a totally different rhythm in Bruce. Their chemistry is great because Thor is all momentum and Bruce is all internal noise. Then the story keeps pushing Bruce into situations where he has to choose whether to become Hulk again, knowing what that choice may cost him. Ruffalo makes those beats land with actual emotional weight. By the end, he feels both hilarious and deeply fragile, which is exactly what made him so watchable here.

1 'Avengers: Endgame' (2019)

Mark Ruffalo as Professor Hulk eating at a dinner in Avengers: Endgame.

This gets the top spot because Endgame finally lets Ruffalo play the result of years of conflict instead of just the conflict itself. Bruce Banner, at this point, had merged Banner and Hulk into Smart Hulk. While the performance could have been a gimmick, Ruffalo made it feel like a coping strategy, a breakthrough, and a slightly awkward new identity all at once. There’s confidence in him now, but it’s still Bruce's confidence, gentle, nerdy, eager to be helpful, a little self-conscious in social situations even when he’s in a giant green body.

What pushes it to number one is the emotional layering in the middle and back half. The time-heist scenes let Ruffalo be funny in a fresh way, especially when Bruce has to confront older Hulk-era chaos. Then the snap aftermath gives him real weight. He’s the one who uses the gauntlet, and Ruffalo plays the cost like a man choosing pain because he can survive it better than the others. In Endgame, Hulk was not the loudest Avenger, but he felt essential at every step. He was steady, wounded, still fighting. It’s Ruffalo’s fullest MCU movie.

Avengers: Endgame

PG-13

Adventure

Action

Sci-Fi

Superhero

Release Date: April 26, 2019
Runtime: 181 Minutes
Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
Writers: Keith Giffen, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Don Heck, Jim Starlin, Joe Simon, Steve Englehart, Jack Kirby, Steve Gan, Bill Mantlo, Stephen McFeely, Christopher Markus