Choreographing the live action TV version of the Hulk versus Spider-Man, round one

A great fight scene for Marvel’s top TV heroes of the late seventies, Spider-Man and the Hulk!

OK, first twenty-five minutes of story sets up Banner being kidnapped to the Rosslyn Hotel in NYC. Peter’s looking for tips about the famous research scientist who has supposedly turned up in the Big Apple. At this point, Spider-Man’s spider-sense begins bringing him closer. He changes, climbs to the top of the hotel, and continues homing in on his signal.

That danger sense grows when Dr. Banner is pushed too far and Hulks out. Now, we’re setting them up to meet in the hallway- and cut to commercial!

Wow! Imagine what might happen next! Well, as I have no concern over the health of stunt men nor of a budget at risk, here’s what I picture, using their television counterpart power levels.

Ok, FADE IN: Hulk roars. Spider-Man uses his ability to do the unexpected: leap onto the ceiling. This confuses and infuriates the Hulk, which provokes a kick in the face. This doesn’t do too much to the Hulk, however, and he kneels, braces, and leaps for the ceiling, himself, to smash it apart, and Spider-Man, with it!

Spider-Man rolls away quickly. Now he tries something that might’ve worked better, he says, before he made this creature angry: he starts covering the hallway between them with a wall of webbing. Hulk grasps the gossamer, and tests its strength. He continues to run forward while the wall-crawler tries to desperately wrap him up in time. The Hulk bulls through, covered in webbing, leaping straight into Spider-Man. Spider-Man gets to his feet, in front of an elevator, and tangles Hulk up in the webbing, delivering a couple of punches, too. The elevator then opens with people inside. They scream as the Hulk grabs Spider-Man by the face, and shoves him back into the elevator car. Everyone evacuates, with Hulk glaring after their heels. A punch into the wall, narrowly missing Spider-Man, gives the former occupants time to flee.

Then, Hulk tears open the elevator doors. The car is above him. He leaps from this floor below it. Just then, Spider-man climbs out the top of the elevator. He climbs and looks around, to see the Hulk taking the elevator cable as his way down. Spider-Man swings down at him, and knocks them both into the interior wall. Hulk holds on with his incredible grip, while Spider-man gets oriented to see the elevator car coming down the shaft. They are still three stories from the bottom, but Hulk simply lets go. Landing with a Thoom!, the Hulk bursts out into the garage parking level, slapping a car away from a near-collision with his entire body, but wrecking the driver into the garage wall.

Spider-Man comes out nearly twenty seconds afterwards. A rival photographer I would say is Lance Bannon (introduced in the comics around 1979?) takes a photo of Spider-Man and the upset, wrecked driver. Now the Daily Bugle will have a field day with blaming ol’ webhead!

The rampaging Hulk's got a lead on Spider-Man, and this time, he'll get away.

With a show like this, there’d be a second encounter, if it was an hour or hour and a half long. Action was so expensive to film in those pre-CGI practical effects days. But if this is what I could budget, my inner child would do something like this. I imagined something with exterior swinging (Spider-Man) and falling (Hulk), but I’d end that with Spider-Man capturing the Hulk, temporarily, maybe with some help from the NYPD Swat Team.
Fred Waugh was the stunt coordinator on THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN tv series; that's Fred, climbing the building in the opening sequence!

What’s the over-arching plot? Who cares? If it was left simple and had an action scene like this around halfway in, boy, people would still remember it! Here are some pictures posted at the Stunts Unlimited FB page, which you can go Like.

I personally would’ve liked to disregard company trademarks and throw Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and the Hulk together in a plot. (|They were all on CBS at one point.) Though her and Captain America makes more intuitive sense.