My "Hulking" Review — Spoilers

[Great Sage]

The “Hulk” is a blur â€" from the storyline to the CGI effects.  There’s an unclear history of the characters meshed with often weightless CGI effects creates a blur of sudden interest and then no interest.

Betty Ross has a recurring dream about being abandoned as a child in an ice cream parlor, but that’s all we get, a blurred explanation.  The central character, Bruce Banner also has a blurry past. There’s a very long and exhausted explanation of Bruce Banner’s beginnings â€" one that could have been more creatively explained rather than taken step-by-step.

The story behind the “Hulk” is the distant nature of authoritive men.  Men who care more about their ambitions than their own children.  On that note, the movie fails because the story didn’t retain my attention long enough to care.  Like many others in the theater, I was eagerly awaiting the Hulk sequences.

The Hulk sequences are blurry just long enough so that we cannot investigate the creature.  At times it seems to have real emotion and embodiment, but most of the time the creature looks weightless.  I didn’t get the feeling of mass a creature that size would have.  The Hulk seems to float like a cartoon rather than move like a massive mammoth.  Although these scenes are by the far, the most exciting to watch.

Then there’s the fluctuating strength of the Hulk.  Hulk officionados such as myself know the “angrier Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets,” but in this case he didn’t get much stronger, only bigger.  He had trouble ripping a tank about, it took him two tries to leap through a ceiling and he was exhausted after moving aside boulders.  That’s not the Hulk we expected or are accustomed to.

The most disturbing element is the climax.  Was there one?  The battle between Banner and his Father seem so out of place at the end.  That should have been the climatic battle surrounded by the military.  Like the old television series, there doesn’t seem to be enough Hulk to satisfy.

Bottomline: If you have time on your hands, go see the movie... Otherwise, wait for the rental or DVD. It’s not too bad a movie, but not really worth the ticket price either.  RATING = C+

[The Burgomaster]

Great Sage wrote:

"Hulk officionados such as myself know the “angrier Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets,” but in this case he didn’t get much stronger, only bigger. He had trouble ripping a tank about, it took him two tries to leap through a ceiling and he was exhausted after moving aside boulders. That’s not the Hulk we expected or are accustomed to."

I agree that the movie could have been better, but you are comparing the movie to the comic book and they are two different things. The movie is the vision of Ang Lee and the screenwriters, not necessarily a precise duplication of the Marvel comic.

Take a look at the TV series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. The Hulk in that series was FAR different from the one in the comics. He was strong, but he was certainly NOT capable of throwing tanks around or leaping across deserts. He was just a guy who was a lot stronger than other guys. He could break through doors, and tip over cars, but that was about it.

I try to avoid being disappointed by movies that are not the same as the books, comics, television shows, etc. that they are based upon. Movies are a completely different medium.

I cannot dispute your "C+" rating (although, I would probably give the movie a "B-"). I think it suffered more from Eric Bana's boring performance, a slow beginning, and a stupid ending than it did from not being what I was accustomed to.

[superdude]

yeah movie was too much of an overkill of explianing blurry stories that didn't hold interest

if it wanted to be a drama, it failed to grasp my emotions, they tried to make it a sci-fi soap opera but it sounded like mindless sci-fi babble, the kind you laugh at becase ridiculously unreal and the actors are keeping a straight face about it..I got the point and I wanted the movie to progress somewhere else

I'd give the movie a solid D

[Dunners]

I'm sick of everyone p**sing all over themselves this was a dame fine f**king movie and I curse the lout who says other wise just because it wasnt comic booky enough. bastard, go back to aintitcool.com where they urinate over eachother for showering purposes.

[Ash]

Dunners......

Please chill dude........

You're starting to sound like Johnny Blister.

We all know what happened to him....he was banned from this board.

I know you don't want that.

I'm just giving some friendly advice.

Take heed.



Post Edited (06-28-03 03:48)

[AndyC]

I thought the backstory and Betty's dream were pretty clear, especially after a few suspicions were confirmed. Ross took off from the ice cream parlour when he learned what Banner Sr. was doing, although that left very little time for everything to happen before the gamma bomb went off. What I found unclear was the whole gamma bomb incident. At one point, I almost thought it was purely metaphorical,  and didn't really happen, but I remember Banner Sr. activating it. So, what baffles me is why it was necessary, since it was the later gamma exposure that changed Bruce. Maybe it was just a good way to end the project and destroy the research, but why was it never mentioned by Ross? Everybody remembers Banner killing his wife, but that whole matter of nuking the base never comes up, except in flashbacks.

Overall, I liked it. Sam Elliott is perfect as General Ross, and Nick Nolte was great. The sequence with the tanks was outstanding. I do agree that the Hulk took far too long to show up, but I also think it was better than just cranking out a paper-thin character in a few minutes, like a villain in one of the sucky Batman movies. Perhaps something in between would have worked better.

The nature of the Hulk's updated origins are almost too complicated, although improved. Radiation obviously won't cut it these days, but was it necessary to throw in every popular sci-fi explanation possible? Genetic engineering is very good. Splice in healing and immune factors from various creatures, add lots of repressed rage, and toss in radiation exposure to trigger the change later on. Throwing nanotechnology on top of that just seemed excessive.

The nature of David Banner's powers was also a little unclear, since it seemed, in places, to go beyond just fusing with materials and taking on their characteristics. I'm aware that in the comics, gamma mutation was supposed to be related to the person's inner mental state (repressed childhood rage+split personality+gamma=Hulk), but all of the genetic tinkering seemed to be geared toward the Hulk's abilities.

I also found the final battle to be puzzling, too quickly resolved, and very anti-climactic. Banner Sr.'s whole plan (if it can be called that) left a lot of unanswered questions about just how he would "harvest" the strength from Bruce, and how he would use it. I was also scratching my head when he was defeated. Was it because he had underestimated the sheer hatred of him that Bruce was holding inside, finding the power to be more than he could absorb? It was over so fast, I couldn't really tell. I would have preferred a more traditional fight, with perhaps two Hulks. Even better, Banner Sr. could have become the Abomination. Hey, they've already changed the story quite a bit. What harm would one more tweak have done? There was a brief moment when his skin changed that I almost thought this would happen.

The movie succeeded in drawing deep characters, and providing lots of tension and emotion, but in doing so, I think the smashing took too much of a back seat.  Face it, Hulk fans want to see destruction. In trying to make this not just another superhero action movie, I think there was more than a little overcompensation.

An entertaining movie, but lots that could have been done better.



Post Edited (06-28-03 09:31)

[Dunners]

But I'm really sick of people ripping into this movie, the movie was great. It had plenty of action, great acting and a great story. Why do people hate it so much?

It had everything, and yet people are p**sing on it.what were they expecting? Mindless violence? lou ferrigno in his 70's green garb? porn? I mean come on this movie had some good character development, great action, great CGI( not perfect but great) intense direction and a great story.

whay are people so devoid of noticing this?

[wickednick]

This movie sucked.It was boring as hell.Over a hour of the movie was them talking about there past or getting philisophiocal and making stupid points about them selves or humanity.The dialoge was horrible, it was flat, dry,and uninteresting.If they had just shortened what they were saying and made what they were saying interesting the movie would have kicked ass.
As for the charectors,they were flat and although they tried giveing them a lenghthy complex past,they never seemed to really fit into it.The acting wasn't great.Most of the actors just gave there lines dryly and with little emotion.
And as for the action sequences,they were not bad but not great either.They were almost as boring as the speeches that were given doring the movie.And also the cg sucked.The Hulk is this big huge hulking thing,but he looked so flat and weightless in the movie.When he was leaping around towards the end it looked more like he was floating.When he hit the ground you never got a sense of this guys weight, he just kicked up some dust.A couple ton creature falling from 200 or more feet in the air after leaping 3 miles,is going to leave a big ass depression in the ground.
Im not all for just mindless violence,I like talking in a movie and getting philisophical,but when those thing bog down a story id rather see the hulk smashing through things.

[superdude]

I liked the NY Times review, I read it after I saw the movie and it was the exact same things I was thinking:

"The problem is that [Ang Lee and his team] seem to be pushing it in about 10 different directions at once, and in the process they lose sight of the basic requirements of visual clarity, narrative momentum and emotional impact, without which this kind of thing quickly lapses into cultishness or mythomaniacal pretension. Like the raging Hulk himself, a computer-generated Gumby on steroids who comes into full daylight view only after what feels like a whole mini-series' worth of earnest exposition, the movie is bulky and inarticulate, leaving behind a trail of wreckage and incoherence. ... They seem at once to be taking the material too seriously and condescending to it, and they are too busy marveling at their own technique to make us care about the sufferings of their hero."

I'm all for talking and depth in characters too but the characters in the Hulk did have weak dialouge, it was all just talking about something I could care less about becuase relevance and feeling wasn't tied in it.

[Great Sage]

Dunners... Dude, man

Why are ripping on my review?  Everyone has their own opinion and if you don't like mine, simply state your reasons (getting p**sed off is not a reason)...  I'd like a good debate and I respect sound arguments presented in a tasteful manner.  

This is a good forum, let's keep things clean shall we.

[Neville]

I loved the movie. In the first view, I'll be the first one to admit it, I felt quite bored and restless during the first hour, but after Hulk is sent to the underground military base there is enough action to keep everybody satisfied. True, the enphasis on character's relations (and not in character development, I agree that was quite limited) slows things down in the first part, but it makes us care more for the characters in the end, not to mention that it made the whole thing more credible.

I've hated Ang Lee for years because of "Hidden tiger, crouching Dragon", but I like his approach to the Hulk. I mean, how many film directors have tried a different approach to superheroes and succeeded? If you wanted a two-hour time waster with lots of action, you can still watch 99% of superheroes movies released this year.