Comic

The Incredible Hulk

Ok, I know a lot didn’t like Ang Lee’s The Hulk, but I thought it was one of the bravest and best comic adaptations so far. It just needed more mindless action. Well, we get that here in spades. Especially the mindless part.

It was a shame they seemed to quietly disregard the first film, as it was an excellent basis to start from. While the action with The Hulk is suitably relentless and rage-filled, the action with Bruce Banner on the run is too over the top, both thanks to Transporter director Letterier. For instance, the first act was a nice plot with Banner trying to keep his cool while falling for the local girl and fighting the local thugs. It made perfect sense for that to be reason enough to Hulk-out and cause a depressed Banner to go back on the run, after demolishing the town, but no; We have to have the stupid drop-of-blood coincidence bullshit, leading to all out fucking war. Nice cameo from Stan Lee, otherwise, too noisy and muddled. Good idea, screwed up.

In the cast, they had great actors capable of pulling off the balance between drama and action, but instead they drowned them in noise. Norton was especially good at showing Banner as scared by his own memories.

The effects were very good (again, nothing wrong with the “don’t make me Ang Lee” version) and the middle action sequence particularly Incredible (nice documentary style camera work) and the final battle are great fun, with cute Hulk-isms (police car boxing gloves! Thunderclap! It speaks!), but this story deserves better. It is at heart, such a sad character and is capable of Frankenstein style empathy, but a brief musical interlude and funny cameo from Lou Ferrigno is the closest I think we will ever get to the charm of the TV series, or comic for that matter. Bruce Banner may soon be lost to a complicated multi-film arc and the chance to make a really good stand-alone version has passed.

It needed bigger, greener balls, but The Hulk was a far better film.