The Hulk steals 'The Avengers'

What's green, 8½ feet tall and steals the show from the screen's greatest collection of superheroes in The Avengers?

Answer: Mark Ruffalo's turn as the Hulk, which has fans buzzing that the angriest superhero has finally lived up to his massive screen expectations. Speaking more grunts than actual words, Hulk smashes — in every way.

"They finally got Hulk right," says Borys Kit of the Heat Vision fanboy blog. "He's a total breakout character."

Even Lou Ferrigno, who played the title role in the 1978-1982 TV series The Incredible Hulk, is impressed. "This is the best I have ever seen on-screen," he says. "He looks more realistic than the other two movies. He steals the whole show."

There have been other screen versions of Bruce Banner, whose experimental mishap with gamma radiation leads to a big, green transformation whenever he's angry. But Eric Bana's 2003 Hulk and Edward Norton's 2008 The Incredible Hulk received mixed audience and critical reactions.

Ruffalo and director Joss Whedon used motion-capture technology to achieve a realistic Hulk, working extensively with a special-effects team at Industrial Light & Magic.

"Technology has advanced to where the actor playing Banner can actually play the Hulk," Ruffalo says. "It was something I had always missed in the previous movies. The Hulk parts always felt like another movie."

The downside: Ruffalo had to wear a "humiliating" tracking suit that included a Lycra onesie. But his Hulk is so real that his 4-year-old daughter, Odette, freaked when she saw the character chasing Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow.

"My daughter was saying, 'Why do you want to kill that girl, Papa?' She really thought I turned into the Hulk," Ruffalo says. "I had to leave the theater to convince her that it wasn't me."

The Hulk humor and Ruffalo's everyman performance as Banner have led to calls for a solo Hulk movie. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige is not ready to commit but promises to fix the Hulk onesie.

"Rest assured," Feige says, "we have already discussed ways of redesigning that suit."