Movie Review: The Incredible Hulk
Yesterday Summer officially arrived, although “Summer Season” has been in full swing for the past few months, and we’ve already seen an array of blockbuster summer films including the return of Indiana Jones (unfortunately not as fun as the other three), and Marvel’s continued insistence of dominating summer box offices by offering up the highly entertaining “Iron Man”, and now bringing us “The Incredible Hulk”.
Though not as fluffy and charismatic as “Iron Man”, the Hulk has its charms, and is a welcome addition in the Marvel Movie Family, as it looks like its ugly stepchild, the first “Hulk” movie back in 2003, has been forgotten about VC Andrews style. This Hulk has a better cast, a better script, and a far far better attempt at putting the big guy on the screen.
But let’s go even before that, to when Stan Lee first invented the Hulk back in the early 60′s. You can pretty much place almost all Marvel Super heroes in one category: emo. Every single one of these guys are suffering, every- day people who happen to have been given a great gift and a great curse. It’s true with Spiderman, it’s true with the X-Men, and it’s true with the Incredible Hulk. It all had to do with gamma rays and nuclear explosions and radiation…such was the times. Everyone was in fear of greatness, everyone was in fear of horribleness. Everyone should have been afraid of the 80′s.
I am surprised that they green lit (green eh?) another “Hulk” picture. But this wouldn’t be a sequel. And they did the right thing. With all the origin stuff pretty much being thrown at you during the opening credits, we glide through the back story with crackles and pops and cool green effects, and are ready for a new, fresh story…beginning in…Brazil. Great start!
Bruce finds himself ostracized, but not just because he is a lonely guy. He’s also hiding from the military. And he wants to get back home, but he needs to find the cure to his “Hulk” issues. He starts speaking to a “Mr. Blue”, someone he probably found through craigslist while looking for a friend, and is of course, “Mr. Green”. Mr. Blue wants to help Bruce but he needs data captured from the original experiment that turned Banner into the Hulk to begin with…but Banner doesn’t have it, and thus needs to get back “home”, to the university where it was created.
There is a problem, however; in a small mishap at work, Banner accidentally bleeds into a bottle of some kind of Brazillian juice at the manufacturing plant he is working at–and the bottle is shipped to the USA…and an unknowing purchaser of this elixir finds there’s more punch to the juice than the name claims. The pay off of WHOM this affects is pretty amusing.
That alerts the military, and then chaos erupts in Brazil (not caused by a soccer riot however) and Banner becomes the Hulk, and for the next few months, disappears and actually gets himself to America, and back into the arms of his old sweet heart, of whom we know nothing about, Betty Ross.
And that’s problem number one. While it’s nice to think that everybody by now knows the story of the Hulk and trust me, the theaters will be packed with fanboys who will know more about the Hulk than medical doctors know about the human anatomy; it still doesn’t mean the screenwriter gets off the hook for not setting up a relationship story better.
There are some nice inside jokes here that I think most people will get, especially if you grew up on the show (watch for a nice little cameo of someone you’ll remember from the old “Incredible Hulk” series, happy to receive a free pizza while on duty as a security guard). But aside from that, this film suffers from just about every other super hero movie and that is…it degrades into a bombastic, emotionless CGI saturated fight scene between Mr. Super Hero and Mr. Nemesis…and Mr. Nemesis is MUCH bigger and scarier. Plus in this case, we JUST saw this with “Iron Man”.
And while there’s a bit more heart and humanity in this film than “Hulk”, there is so much more to Bruce Banner and the tortuous story he has that is left out of this film. But trust me, Ed Norton does about as good a job as you can expect.
And as for the Hulk itself? As I said, he looks pretty good. When he’s standing there, not pulverizing things, he does look like a living, breathing CREATURE. However, when he SPEAKS…eye rolls galore. Not necessary and takes away from the mystique. Do we really need to hear him say “Hulk smash!”?
Overall, this is a movie kids will LOVE, so Dads–take your boys to see this immediately. They will absolutely love it. You may enjoy it as well. Your daughters, however–probably not so much.
The last scene is probably my favorite of the whole film. It links two super hero movies together that I hope does come to fruition in the future because it features my new favorite super hero right now…which I’ve probably given away already. But it’s a real treat the way this film ends.
I’d still recommend “Iron Man” over this, but if you’re gonna see one comic book movie you may as well see them all because there are more to come this summer. This one is watchable, and entertaining enough. But I was hoping for more. Maybe “Dark Knight” will save us all.
My rating: 
Family value: Moms and daughters probably won’t find much to rave about.
My rating system:
= Bad.
= OK.
= Good.
= Excellent.
