#1 With A Bullet: The Incredible Hulk

June 19, 2008 by Lord Jason  Send to a Friend

Like American History X: Ed Norton really bulked up for this role.

Did you ever wake up somewhere and not remember how you got there? There has been many times when I’ve woken up someplace and couldn’t recall how or why in god’s green glory I chose to sleep there. Most of the time, it’s been on the couch in the living room, the floor of my bedroom, or the band van. One time it was in front of the oven on the kitchen floor; I evidently thought it would be a good idea to cook a pizza at 5 in the morning, but didn’t feel it necessary to eat the pizza, take it out of the oven, turn OFF the oven, or go back to bed before I went to sleep.

But no matter. There has been many a groped friend, many a completely inappropriate word said, many a strange text sent, many a car beaten up. I was told recently that I’m a lovely person except when I get really drunk, so I suppose Bruce Banner and I have a lot in common, what with the raging Id being released every once in a while. So I can totally identify with him.

The Hulk, to me, has always been the strangest of superheroes, because he is not particularly a superhero. In my experience, which, admittedly, is a few hazily remembered snippets of the TV show and the 2 recent films, being the Hulk seems more like a curse than a boon. And not the Spiderman “With great power comes great responsibility” curse where you can’t go out with Mary Jane, more of the “Holy crap if I turn into the Hulk I’m going to destroy everything around me and kill a bunch of people because I can’t control myself” curse, where you actually injure your girlfriend kind of way. This is a little more disconcerting than having the power to communicate with fish, ala Aquaman. More useful, yes. But I don’t remember a time when talking with a grouper ever hurt Aquaman’s relationships.

The new film, The Incredible Hulk, all but ignores Ang Lee’s atrocity The Hulk, which only came out a few years ago. In something akin to the recent Superman Returns, it almost completely ignores the Hulk’s origin story. If you don’t know that Bruce Banner got shot up with gamma rays and becomes a huge green monster when he gets angry, you better be able to glean those facts from the opening flashback credits, cause that’s all you’re going to get out of this installment. And this opening gloss over actually performs a wonderful task: we get to the action a lot fucking sooner. Thank Stan Lee.

And that’s what The Incredible Hulk is: A LOT of action, Bruce Banner getting chased by the government, and shots of Banner hitchhiking alone on the side of the road, combined with the sound of that lone piano tinkling from the TV show, i.e. the saddest music ever. This is everything you want from a Hulk movie: a lot of HULK SMASH, and not a lot of HULK SAD.

So why wasn’t this movie more hotly anticipated? I mean, the Hulk is one of the most popular comic book characters in the Marvel universe. It has to be chalked up to the memories of the first Hulk movie. Which is a shame, because Marvel should have done the same thing with that film that they did with the original Roger Corman produced Fantastic Four: bought it and burned it. Then The Incredible Hulk could have been something really special. Instead it feels like the Hulk that should have been, but ultimately wasn’t. Which is a bit sad, because this new Hulk kind of rules.

My Reaction: pretty good (3.5 out of 5)

Next week: Carrell vs. Myers: Get Smart vs. the Love Guru. I can’t decide which movie I want to see less. I guess the good summer movie roll I’ve been on is going to come to an end. Til then, I’ll be making sure to eat a lot of bread before I go out drinking. Stay angry, kids.

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