*** Official "THE HULK" Review Thread (1 Viewer)

[Jason Seaver]

Yes... Yes, I liked The Hulk.

I and enjoyed nearly every minute of it. I'd been afraid that Ang Lee would make a somewhat restrained picture - I loved Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it was sort of "Sense And Sensibility with martial arts", as he himself described it, a very proper kung fu film. Instead, though, this movie embraces its comic book roots, from the lettering of the credits and intertitles to the great cameo by Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno to the brilliant transitions and split-screens. Lee didn't invent this - you see a lot of the techniques used on 24, or in Star Wars, or in film much older. But he does use it to keep the screen in motion; even when there's nothing going on but two people talking to each other, this still feels like an action movie. And when he uses it to show the Hulk bounding across the desert by having three backdrops... But no, the visual defies easy description despite being so simple - see it yourself.

The Hulk is the film's main special effect, and he's a doozy. There were one or two scenes that didn't feel right, but for the most part the Green Goliath is solid and moves like I'd expect a ten-foot-tall mass of muscle and rage to move. The monsters he gets to fight aren't quite so good - some gamma-irradiated dogs look borderline cartoony, and a villain based upon frequent Hulk sparring partner The Absorbing Man looks very cool at times and very lame at others. You'll get no complaint from me, though, about the film's main showpiece, when the Hulk escapes from an underground bunker and General "Thunderbolt" Ross sends the military out after him. It's big and exciting, straddling the line between fantasy and realism almost perfectly. Really, I'm not sure why the filmmakers found a need to tack another set piece on afterward.

Performances are good enough. Everyone gives exactly what their character needs: Sam Elliot makes Thunderbolt Ross a heck of a lot more interesting than the comic ever did, and Nick Nolte knows when to be mysterious and when to be theatrical as David Banner, Bruce's father. Jennifer Connelly is a great choice as Betty, smart and playful and fully aware that her involvement with Bruce is because she never was able to connect with her emotionally unavailable father. She also singlehandedly makes the "Hulk Dogs" sequence work by being absolutely convincing as a woman whose life has just turned into a scene from Jurassic Park. Eric Bana kind of gets the short end of the stick by design - I completely buy him as a repressed Bruce Banner, but whenever his character has a strong emotion, out comes the CGI. I am glad they went with a relative unknown, though - like Hugh Jackman in X-Men, I see Bruce Banner, not a movie star.

The screenplay takes liberties with the details of The Hulk's story, as created by Lee and Kirby, but I don't mind that. They took the basic themes - repressed emotion, science gone amuck, et al - and built a story that works as a movie. That it's partially a new story is a bonus - even longtime Hulk fans will have a chance to be surprised and astounded. No, it's not Stan Lee's Hulk (or Peter David's, or Bruce Jones's, or Mark Millar's...), but it being James Schamus's and Ang Lee's is no small thing.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

BIG Disappointment! Wow Ang Lee really dropped the ball here.

Did anyone find one character to identify with in this movie? I sure didn't. Banner was a cypher. His dad was a loon. What the heck did Betty Ross see in him?

A unnecessarily convoluted tale of father/child relationships sent into a headon crash with an action movie. The two didn't mesh at all.

The SFX and the framing of the film worked fine for the most part. The dogfight was poor. The dogs looked plain fake and plain bad.

Closeups of the Hulk were pretty good though. Long shots are another story though.

Lack of sympathetic characters and little to no humour really cripples this film.

Gotta give a 2.75 out of 5 and all for technical merit.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I work at a movie theater and got to see The Hulk for free. Let's just say that I still felt like it was a ripoff.

This movie sucked, plain and simple. The action was very uninteresting and didn't stick around for too long, the best scenes were in the commercials, the animation of the Hulk was too cartoonish, the ending was horrible, the opening was too slow, and the whole movie jumped in every direction as it dragged it's legs. It wasn't deep enough to be about his internal conflict, it wasn't action-packed enough to be about cool effects, and it wasn't interesting enough to keep me from yawning several times.

I give it 1 star out of 5 because the scene with the dogs was cool.

 

[MickeS]

I liked the movie a lot.

It was more of a serious drama with action sequences than an action movie with serious undertones though, so I can understand if some people feel disappointed in it. The fact that it takes 40 minutes for the Hulk to show up probably doesn't help either.

I liked the action sequences by the way. I've always had a thing for fights that take place high up in the air, so the scene with Hulk on the fighter plane really resonated with me. I did not find any major faults in the CGI either, I thought Hulk looked better than most CG creations.

The only thing I disliked was the final confrontation between Bruce and his father. Too over the top and didn't fit in with the general mood of the movie, IMO.

It didn't feel to me like a real "summer movie", not goofy or mindless enough for that... I think it might have been better as a fall/winter release actually.

Grade: 4/5.

 

[derek]

:star: :star: 1/2 out of :star: :star: :star: :star: :star:
I saw the movie Ang Lee made but IMHO didn't desire. My impression from the film and from what I've read is that he had to make some compromises with the studio (very apparent in the final segment.) The film suffers from the 'be all things to all people' vibe. The elements of drama, action, storytelling and effects don't mesh very well. But most apparent is the poor character development even with so much time given to it (xcept suprisingly for the Hulk himself in a King Kong/Frankenstein kind of way and Sam Elliot but is he just a stereotyped macho military commander?) Bana is a repressed egghead; Connely is melancholic having little passion; and Nolte is simply crazed. Who's there to relate to besides the big green guy? The father/son/family tension is skeletal being weak and ungrounded. The romantic element is boresville. Where's the love baby?!?!?! I thought the CGI and effects were pretty good. Some of the physics were laughable (helicopters and jets flying like alien spacecraft!) A few very good action sequences. But overall the movie seems to be missing a few key ingredients. I applaud Lee for trying to tackle many potent issues and make the film smart sci-fi (genetics, family, rage) but he misses the mark too many times.

 

[ChuckSolo]

I think the only problem I had with the "Hulk" was the CGI rendition of the Hulk himself. To me, any type of animation is inferior to actual acting, done by a real actor. With a good special effects, like those done by Rick Baker, Tom Savini, etc., I thik the movie would have been better. I had the same problem, albeit a different type, with "Spiderman" where the Green Goblin was a man in an armored suit. Those of us who grew up (I'm 48 now) with Marvel Comics, these types of things really dissappoint. X-Men has been the only Marvel Comics adaption that I thought really came across well.

 

[Duane Robinson]

Loved the CGI and some of the Hulk scenes, pretty much hated everything else. This so called drama and thinking man's movie was just not evident to me at all. Yes, there are a lot of slow scenes that discuss things about the characters but it has little effect, is poorly executed, is highly uninvolving and mindnumbingly boring. I love thinking man movies as much as the next film elitist who thumbs his nose at the MTV-fed unwashed masses but there was nothing of substance to the substance in this film.

A film like Minority Report is a perfect example of a thinking man's action film. You are presented with scenes of dramatic importance that draw you into the film and have you anxious to learn more about what is going on while at the same time identifying with the characters and enjoying the action. The Hulk does not do this. The "mystery" surrounding Banner is brought up but nothing is really done with it and what little they do use for something is repeated ad nauseum or is so poorly depicted that you wonder why they brought it up in the first place.

So the guy can't open up in relationships, how about showing us that instead of talking about it in a scene or two. I'm still trying to figure out what the hell Betsy Ross saw in him or why she is still so enamored with this cold fish of a guy besides her poor explanation of her fetish for emotionally distant men like her father. Why is Bruce repressed? They mention that he was repressed as a child in what could be a throwaway scene of him getting hit by another child and not crying but give us no explanation for this behavior.

Little things like this just make me question the validity of the claims of this movie being some kind of "deep and thoughtful fim" instead of your average dumb action movie in reference to the other comic films. I'm sorry but those other films were fun, dramatic, and action packed without being dull and boring in the pretense of being arthouse. X1 and 2 had me caring about the characters while at the same time enjoying the action scenes. Spiderman had a lighter tone but still had scenes of dramatic importance such as the relationship between his aunt and uncle or his secret identity and its effects on those around him.

The Hulk had none of this. The characters were all dull, uninteresting people, crazy loons, or smug assholes who I just wanted to get offscreen so that I could see the Hulk out-act them all and smash stuff up. In the other comicbook movies I liked all the scenes between the action as much as I liked the action scenes themselves. In the X films the scenes between Cyclops and Wolverine are just as entertaining as the scenes where Wolverine is carving up some poor bastard or Scott is blowing a hole in something. The non-Hulk scenes of this movie were sleep inducing in most cases and slightly interesting at best.

Also, the tone of the film just did not jive with the comic style editing. At first I thought it was cool during the opening and the initial parts of the film but seeing it used throughout the entirety of such a dry, "serious" film just felt confusing. Especially, the scene where Talbot gets his comeuppance (which ranks right up there with the most corniest scenes ever seen in a comic book movie or any other). This style of editing would fit more with a film with the tone present in Spiderman or Blade 2 instead of this movie which aspired to be so deep and dramatic. I would even hesitate to use it on X2 since that film strives for a more realistic tone just like the Hulk did.

Despite loving the Hulk scenes or maybe because I loved them I have to admit there just wasn't enough. A film with a running time of 2:18 hours featuring a giant green spectacle and marketed as such should feature more than 20 minutes of the big green guy. And I know this is possible without turning the film into a dumbed down action-fest as some people seem to think. It just requires some creativity on the filmmakers' parts to give us valid, entertaining scenarios for the Hulk to be onscreen.

Finally, what was up with that ending, I'm sorry but that was just retarded. The idea of the conclusion felt dumb enough but the execution made it even more ridiculous. This movie tried its hardest to be grounded in realistic science to silly extents (starfish having something to do with the cause of the Hulk my ass) but to defy all that in the end with the whole Absorbing Man mutation causing him to be able to meld with things was just stupid.

Why was his change so different from Bruce's if his genes are what resulted in Bruce's changing into the Hulk. Shouldn't he have changed into some variation of the Hulk? Things like that amongst other numerous flaws just ruined this film for me and I have to place it at the bottom of the pile for all the recent Marvel adaptations, which is a damn shame considering the budget and the talented people involved.

Oh yeah, the Absorbing Dad rant at the end was so friggin stupid the whole theater burst out laughing for a split second until they realized it was supposed to be serious. At least the little temper tantrum mimicry got a decent laugh out of the crowd.

Another oh yeah, how the hell did David Banner bite through that thick ass electric wire in like two bites. Guess he absorbed a Great White before he came to the little meeting. Also, why wasn't he more closely monitored during that little meeting anyways? Wouldn't it be a good idea to not allow the guy who turns into the giant green thing to get pissed off even if you have him sitting in an electric chair. I mean the bastard bit of a missile warhead and spit it at a helicopter. I wouldn't take any chances with something like that but people say I'm overly cautious sometimes so that's probably just my outlook on the situation. Ok, I'm done ragging on this movie for now.


It's Just That I'm Sooooo Disappointed.
:star: :star: :frowning:


(Admin note - spoiler text added)

 

[Adam_S]

I finally saw this:

:star::star:½ out of four.

Is this a great movie? not really, but it is an awesome summer movie. The buildup to the eventual transformation was fantastic, I loved the opening credits, and the editing was spectacular, IMO. The editing is a tricky thing though, there were times it unecessarily drew attention to itself. The split screen and editing effects in the opening sequence, flashbacks/dreams and action sequences was perfect. Where the editing faltered and drew to much attention to itself instead of serving the story was the moments like when the badguy/old boyfriend was introduced and split screen was really obtrusive for those sorts of character bits. I think the more showy/comic book style of editing should have receeded for the character interaction and been left for scene transitions in the slower, more focused parts of the movie.

The Hulk was great, but the action was a bit cartoonish, biting the warhead off for one, the dogs for another, and the final, idiotically concieved battle. The military firing on the golden gate bridge without thought was a major script error, as were many of the action sequences. It seems there was little thought given to the rival company villian, as he as cartoonish as they come (but gets the best death of them all), all his scenes had serious script problems, especially how and why the heck he attacked Banner under house arrest, that made no sense.
Likewise having a super villian to fight was pointless for this movie, especially when the entire film was such an intimate character drama surrounding Bruce and Betsy. The film should have ended on the David Banner's black and white eyes at the top of the screen, and slowly fade to black credits. save their entire conflict and story for the second movie, but that's a lost oppurtunity.

Another thing missing from the script was a reason to have the audience care about Hulk, sure he stops the plane from hitting the bridge, but that's it. He does nothing at all that could compare to the heroics of Spiderman, the XMen, Batman, or Superman. Throw the audience a bone for once, sure we know that he's basically good, but show us that he can be good as well, give us a reason to root for Hulk, and be upset that the military misunderstands him, because my thoughts were the military's response was perfectly reasonable.

In all there is some awesome stuff here, but the film is pretty darn uneven, and could have been better, ESPECIALLY had they gotten as solid a script as Spider-man got with realistic characters you're given an oppurtunity to care about.

Adam