Abomination
Real Identity: Emil Blonsky
The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Characteristics and Powers: Emil Blonsky doesn’t get much backstory. He’s a career marine with skills in firearms and combat. He has no ambition to be a leader because “he’s a fighter”. But he’s getting older. General Ross thinks he’s 45, but he’s actually 39. And he’s feeling it, especially when it comes to Hulk. After the first encounter in Brazil, he realizes he’s outmatched. And he needs an edge. Ross responds by offering Blonsky a variation of the super-soldier serum (something that won’t have an introduction for five more movies–I wonder if they knew they were doing Captain America when they wrote this).
This gives him the standard set of superpowers–increased strength, durability, speed, agility, stamina, reflexes, and healing factor. Basically he gets +5 to all stats. Unfortunately, all the pluses in the world don’t amount to a hill of beans against Hulk. Blonsky tries to take him toe-to-toe and gets thrown into a tree, breaking all his bones. We next see Blonsky in a body cast, barely alive. Yet he heals back up to 100% (thanks, Captain America!)
When he becomes Abomination, he gets +15 to all stats, now capable of taking on the Hulk (but forever ruining his Tinder profile). His phenotype is similar to Hulk’s, except for a few things. His skeletal structure goes front and center, and he gets some bone spikes in his elbow that he can go stabby-stabby with.
Relationship to the Hero: Hulk has always been his own worst enemy, more than any foe or supervillain before him (e.g., Peter David’s The End). Bruce Banner spends most of the movie fighting his own “disease” than Blonsky, Ross, or the military. I don’t think Banner even knows Blonsky’s name. And he certainly wouldn’t know why there’s suddenly another green skeletal Hulk tearing up the city. They just look at him from the helicopter as if they’ve seen everything we’ve seen. Then Banner just decides he has to deal with it (despite him supposedly being cured) and becomes the Hulk again.
Goals/Motivation: Blonsky loses to the Hulk the first time (I don’t know what he expected–he’s a quarter size). He wants a rematch, like a defeated prizefighter. So he takes a second dose of super soldier serum, which gives him grotesque characteristics, like an abnormally jutting spine. When he sees a liter of Hulk blood sitting there for the taking, he receives a transfusion so that he can finally take on the Hulk proper. To that end, he starts wrecking the U.S. military to… draw him out? And what his intentions are after defeating Hulk, I don’t know. Job prospects have dwindled, that’s for sure.
Relatability: In the very beginning, Blonsky kills a dog. (I know it was a tranquilizer dart because “it’s a family picture” but that dart was made with the Hulk in mind, and contained dosage for him. That dog is dead.) He’s a psycho military murderer. His only goal in life is to fight, not to help. He has no intention of mending relations with anyone. He’s a mad dog and goes after whatever his master points him at. That’s not very human–lack of agency, negative passion, no unique personality traits.
Fun Factor: There’s got to be more fun supervillains to be than a TMNT action figure. Being Abomination seems like a pretty gruesome fate, not a fun jaunt. You can’t sit in the movie theater anymore, can’t get seated at a restaurant. He does appear to be a bit more “aware” than Hulk, though Hulk is more “conscious” (cognizant enough to use cars for boxing gloves).
Fatal Flaw: This is not a well-written movie. Blonsky is a “fighter”. He wants a “rematch”. That’s all the explanation we get. Not terribly nuanced. The most I can say is that Blonsky has a driving need to win, to be better at combat than others. But he doesn’t understand that Hulk is the strongest there is. The difference is that Abomination is fighting to fight. Hulk is fighting for something.
Method of Defeat: During the “duel of Harlem”, the hulks wreck the town. But at the end, Hulk protects Betty and her father with a “Hulk SMASH”. This fractures the ground and makes Abomination trip and drop his chains. The chains fly up, Hulk grabs them, then wraps them around Abomination’s neck. He chokes Abomination into unconscious, but Betty pleads for mercy, presumably so she can prove Hulk is not a killer, not a bad guy. What’s done with Abomination after that, no one knows (until She-Hulk: Attorney at Law).
Final Rating: ★
