The Incredible Hulk

Ang Lee's Hulk was a real diappointment for most comic book fans; it strayed from the original plot of the comic and the TV series, it spent most of its time in psychoanalysis, and ended with one of the strangest final battles in superhero history as the Hulk fought...lightning. So Marvel made sure that they would have creative control over the next attempt to bring everyone's favorite green giant back to the silver screen. But getting the rights was only the first bump in what would turn out to be an increasingly uphill battle. Many fans and viewers in general have written the Hulk off after the last film, some are disappointed that the filmmakers have again chosen to render the Hulk in CG, and the film's release date sandwiches it between the highest grossing film so far this year (Iron Man) and perhaps the most anticipated film of the year, the Dark Knight, not to mention the fact that it premieres the same day that box office darling M. Night Shyamalan releases The Happening. So against these odds, does Marvel pull off their reintroduction of the Hulk?

The short answer is yes. It will not be praised with the same fervor or remembered with the same nostalgia as Iron Man, but if you are looking for a fun summer blockbuster to sink your teeth into and wash down with a six dollar drink, then this is a far better choice than the previous Hulk. It shoots for comic book fun and largely hits its mark, with some campy cameos from the original TV hulk Lou Ferrigno and, of course, Stan Lee. And while the first film bogged down in Freudian musings to explain Banner's transformation, this film shows the transformation succinctly with a tightly edited three minute intro that brings us up to speed.

The film begins with Bruce Banner hiding away in a Brazilian slum, working at a bottling factory, and doing all he can to find a cure for his condition. One day, while working on a broken machine, Banner cuts himself, and a droplet of his gamma-radiated blood falls into one of the bottles. This sets off a chain of events that alerts the military to his location. Headed by Thaddeus Ross (the General responsible for the Hulk's creation) the military outfit has been searching for Banner, because to them he is a perfect weapon. Banner wants nothing to do with the power he has, and is committed to ridding the world of his latent Hulk blood just waiting for a fight as it courses through his veins. A fight is what it soon gets, and a fighter, special agent Emil Blonsky who has joined General Ross' team, gets to see Banner in full Hulk form, and liking what he sees, commits to gain the same power.

Thefilm has its share of problems. In an attempt to distance themselves from Ang Lee and his melancholy Hulk, the filmmakers opt for a more fast-paced introductory action scene in which the military chases Banner across rooftops in a Brazilian favela. Visually this would probably draw a few comparisons with last year's Bourne Ultimatum, but it would not be that big of a deal, if the music accompanying Banner's escape did not sound like a chord-for-chord retread of those famous driving string lines that are synonymous with Jason Bourne's hypercharged escapes. So to the filmmakers-we get it, this isn't Ang Lee, but do you have to copy Greengrass to prove the point?

One of my complaints with Ang Lee's Hulk was that he repeatedly went out of his way to show that even though the Hulk just threw a tank a mile across the desert, the people inside are still okay. Lee was trying to show that the Hulk has a conscience, and that he does not kill people indiscriminately. In depicting a compassionate Hulk, Lee was trying to have it both ways: he wanted the spectacle of destruction, without the effects. In this incarnation we have the opposite problem: total disregard for collateral damage. It looks as though people are dying left and right, and even though Banner is doing all he can to undo his Hulk-ness, he never seems too bothered by the human lives he affects or in some cases takes. It does not quite add up because they did a great job of making Norton's Banner very conscientious, so it takes away from his character development when he is not concerned with the loss of human life to which he is a party.

This brings up another minor complaint that contains a bit of a spoiler, so if you do not want to know, skip on to the next paragraph. As stated above, Banner wants to be rid of this power, but at the film's end he is faced with a situation that forces him to use it and when we see him for the last time, it is apparent he has learned to control his transformations. This change in his outlook could have been aided if the filmmakers had given us a moment when as the Hulk in the last battle he stops the villain from indiscriminately killing someone, and it registers on his face that perhaps in his hands, in the right hands, this incredible power could be used for good.

I must make some mention of the CG issue. I suppose it is inevitable that from here on out filmmakers will use computer graphics in these superhero movies, but it is still distracting when the main character develops that unmistakeable digital sheen upon transformation. Even so, the work is an improvement over the flabby Hulk of 2003; today's computer generated Hulk is a cut and sinewy beast, a green Kimbo Slice without the cool beard.

One last complaint deals with the way the filmmakers depict the events that cause Banner's transformation. For all its foibles, Ang Lee's Hulk, with all its brooding emotion and psychoanalysis, set the stage for the audience to get behind Banner's transformation into the Hulk. His temper loss made sense. Of course, once his transormation was complete, the film went precisely nowhere. This films seems to have the opposite fault. It's going somewhere, but the setups for his loss of temper feel like they were written by people unfamiliar with the slow fuse that leads to the loss of temper. Take the first time we get to see the Hulk appear in this film as an example. They stack the deck with not only the military happening upon Banner, but also having him run into a group of bullies from work with whom he has already made enemies. So when he finally loses his temper, I yawn at the predictability. They write it this way, because they are trying to generate sympathy for the Hulk, but it feels contrived.

Though the film plods along in some places, and while it is sometimes hard to pick a side in the battles, being that for half of the movie he fights people who really are not all bad, the climax comes together strongly, both in the overall character arcs, and in the strength of the final battle sequence. The film's climax saved the movie for me; it was much more interesting and visceral than Iron Man's final fight, and is better than any fight scene in its predecessor, both in its style and substance.

So while it is not as fun as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk does end on a high note with a satisfying conclusion, and I recommend it as a fun summer blockbuster.

Rated PG-13 for sequences of intense action violence, some frightening sci-fi images, and brief suggestive content.

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3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."