Hulk was actually pretty Incredible
I’ll admit I wasn’t going in with the highest of expectations, but I thoroughly enjoyed the Incredible Hulk. The 2003 angsty Ang Lee debacle officially NEVER happened. Iron Man seems to have heralded a new and welcome trend as comic Book Movies seem to be stepping up their casting to the A-List level. Ed Norton is great as the slender gamma-challenged molecular research scientist with big anger management issues. William Hurt is General Thunderbolt Ross and Liv Tyler is beautiful Betty Ross to Norton’s beastly Hulk. Scroll down for thoughts on the first movie and why this was so much better.
The problems i had with the 2003 movie were apparent from the trailer which looked so bad that even i a die-hard comic book fan OPTED TO SKIP IT. I didn’t like the look of the hulk or how he moved or sounded, he had no rage weight or fury. Well THAT was more than taken care of in this version. First and foremost, this Hulk has POWER. I want to jump out of the way as he throws forklifts and can feel the wind created by his roar. Excellently rendered realistic CG and inspired fight choreography make the action sequences a treat to watch, and the acting from the main 3 does a good job of carrying us through the slower parts.
Also a hand to hand combat sequence between an enhanced but not yet abominable Emil Blonsky shows that the moves necessary for a Captain America movie are VERY possible.
Now I DO have to admit that Iron Man was still the superior film (Tony Stark has a cameo), but Incredible Hulk is a great popcorn movie and another step towards a quality Avengers movie.
There were some spots that felt like holes where scenes had been cut out. The fact that Betty’s boyfriend was psychiatrist Dr. Sampson (first name Leonard?), led me to believe he had more screen time originally - plus there was that psychoanalysis bit from the first trailer that I didn’t see in the movie.
I did have an issue with one of their best fanboy moments. I think they dropped the ball on the Stan Lee cameo. Stan is seen as an old man who drinks a beverage that has been tainted with Bruce Banner’s gamma charged blood and (we assume) hulks out. I say we assume, because they don’t show it. How cool would a CG hulked out Stan Lee have been???? I suppose they couldn’t justify the creating, rigging and animating another 3D model for 5-10 seconds of cameo - but it would have rocked.
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