I’ve recently watched the two most recent Hulk movies, Hulk from 2003 directed by Taiwan's Ang Lee, and Incredible Hulk from earlier this year directed by Frenchman Lous Leterrier. While both are flawed in their own ways, if they could somehow be intertwined together at certain junctions we might actually have a really good movie on our hands.

Lee’s unique take on the not-so jolly green giant, starring Eric Bana, has come under some heavy criticism - when it first hit the big screen, and then took another battering after Leterrier’s more conventional approach to adapting the Marvel superhero for cinema, starring Edward Norton, was released.

While box office returns are never a true gauge for how successful a movie is in the eyes of the general public (maybe for the studios), in this case it is a good one.

Both made roughly $130,000,000 each at the US box-office.
And as pure entertainment they were on a par with one another.


You’ve got Lee, perhaps ahead of his time, or with the wrong studio, not really concerning himself too much with the crash and bash reputation Hulk has built up through decades of comics and a corny TV series, but instead using him as a vehicle to explore the human psyche.

Viewers were meant to sympathize with this simple ‘man’, Bruce Banner, who, after a scientific experiment goes wrong, gets trapped, mind, body and soul inside a ‘hulking’ figure designed for destruction.

He has no control of what he becomes. He is a victim of circumstance.

It’s more from the Christopher Nolan-Dark Knight line of thinking, but without the overwhelming intensity, sense of dread, full-blown action and probably a lot more.

And that was the problem with the first Hulk – as a superhero movie. We had quite a slow build-up (like this review) – we only get to see the snot-coloured one for the first time at the 80-minute mark – and then the action sequences, while a couple were quite thrilling, were too few and far between.

I actually enjoyed watching Hulk’s battle in the woods with the giant pooches (even the poodle) to save his lady friend, Betty Ross (then Jennifer Connolly), as well as him escaping from General Ross (then Sam Elliott) and his secluded army compound and bounding through the desert, trying to avoid being bombed and smashing the odd tank.



I even liked the concept of having Banner’s dear old dad (played by Nick Nolte) be at the centre of his son’s transformation and Mr Banner’s own transformation into the insane villain.

But the climax, the showdown between the two was a massive let-down. Dad gets this great power of being able to fuse himself with any material or object, such as a desk, which he can pick up with ease and bring down on the nearest military police officer with force.

But, what does he become at the end? Water? What? Yes, water, which doesn’t make for a great spectacle.

On the other hand, the conclusion to Incredible Hulk was how a conclusion to a Hulk movie should be – a titanic struggle against a foe with as much strength as himself, namely the grotesque Abomination, through the city streets, under lights, with hordes of people looking on – dare I say it, Superman II-style.

It’s like a big blockbuster sporting event. Not out in the middle of some lake, in the middle or nowhere where Hulk and his old man ended up in Lee’s take.


The fight was pretty spectacular and a clear highlight of the movie. The fact it did not involve Edward Norton was a bonus. As a Hulk fan himself, Norton was said to have reworked Zak Penn’s script for the movie, but without knowing what changes he made, I don’t think he did a lot to enhance its standing – whether behind or in front of the camera.
His whiney voice is starting to wear thin on me, but enough about Norton.

Obviously, Marvel Studios felt a need to reboot the Hulk franchise by wiping away Lee’s offering and linking the character with their other stars, Ironman and Thor and Captain America, who are both set to get their own movies in the near future, in readiness for the much-hyped Avengers flick further down the track.

And, in doing, so actually make Hulk a superhero (albeit a conflicted one) - which Lee failed to - by having him go head-to-head with a well-known Hulk adversary and actually save lives of the innocent.



But, I still think a sequel would’ve been a better approach.

We may not have had to sit through another tedious lead-up to really what was only a 30 or so-minute period at the end that was needed to tick all of Marvel’s boxes.

We got the introduction of the super soldier serum that turns Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) into Abomination; the hinting of more evilness to come via Dr. Samuel Stern's The Leader (Tim Blake Nelson), the big fight scene in which Hulk becomes a fully-fledged hero for the people and finally Robert Downey’s Jnr’s Tony Stark aka Ironman popping in at the end to talk team-up ie. Avengers.

But, before the gripping finale, we had more of Banner running around trying to find a cure for his ‘condition’, only this time in Brazil, more of General Ross (now William Hurt) flailing about trying to catch him, and more of Betty Ross (now Liv Tyler) and her heartbreak over what her former love has become.

That’s all we needed really.

With that said I might just edit my own Hulk movie - take a little bit from this and a little bit from that.

Perfect.

RATING: 10/20
5 for Hulk and 5 for Incredible Hulk ... what else?