Review: The Incredible Hulk

Let's open this review with a trivia question: In the course of the movie, there are two major Hulk characters and a character with his own comic book who are hinted at but not explicitly named as such. Who are they? (One of them is introduced in their pre-superhuman form, so you'll need to guess the Super-Sekrit codename to get the win.)

My experience of The Incredible Hulk, in under 100 words: It was a thoroughly enjoyable film, with Edward Norton and William Hurt's performances standing out among the somewhat tepid work from the others, but with the fight scenes and special effects standing heads and shoulders above any other good thing about the movie, except for how wonderfully geeky their scriptwriters are. Definitely moremore eye-candy than brain-candy, but still with the thoughtfulness that is the hallmark of good Incredible Hulk stories.

That said, if you want my spoilerific deeper thoughts, you'll have to delve into the next paragraph, which begins a document that is FULL OF SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

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My comic-book geekdom is more or less a side effect of my mother's boss's comic-book geekdom. I never had a series I followed religiously until I was older and too caught up in my twenty-something college elitism to read anything but Vertigo titles--all my comic books in high school were last month's issues, given to the family by my mother's boss so I could enjoy them, which meant I generally had a day or two of reading a dozen comics and then had to hope the generous giver of comics was still following that series the next month. And yet, somehow, I understand the Marvel Universe deeply and completely. Call it cultural osmosis. Or perhaps just call it Wikipedia. Whatever it is, I love Marvel's universe much more than DC's, and I'm so grateful to see it getting such great treatment on the silver screen.

And among the various Marvel characters, I've always found the Hulk has one of the most enthralling, because while he is superhuman he is only rarely a superhero. At root, the Hulk is just a creature, a force of nature, even, separate from any morality except that which is imposed on him by external forces--when he's heroic it's usually because Bruce Banner aimed himself at something evil before the transformation, or because whatever was evil that week coincidentally got in his way. I won't get into analyzing the psychological side of the Hulk, as plenty of paper has already been sacrificed to that subject; I will, though, say that the film did a fantastic job of portraying this side of the Hulk.

Really, the best thing about Marvel movies is that they know their audience. All of their movies have been full of comic-fan in-jokes, but the amount of Hulk trivia tossed into The Incredible Hulk is amazing. We have our now-standard and still-awesome Stan Lee cameo (though Iron Man still has the best one to date), we have references to two major Hulk antagonists and a very covert reference to another superhero who, I believe, will be getting his own movie sooner than later, all of which came out without ever feeling like they interrupted the narrative to do an apostrophe to the nerds. And we have a "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" joke, and Lou Ferrigno coming back to voice the Hulk (that's right, that "Hulk Smash!" was original, grade-A Smash) and even giving us a little pizza-loving cameo.

But even separate from my enormous nerdiness, there is plenty to love about The Incredible Hulk. I was at first put off by them deciding to skip the origin story in favor of beginning in media res, but as the movie continued, the quick flashes of the Hulk's origins they did during the credits grew on me more and more. I like that they focused on the fugitive angle, and brought the audience in to Bruce's angst after it had mellowed and matured.

I have to give major kudos to Edward Norton for his portrayal of Banner--I can give no higher compliment than to say that I sometimes forgot who was playing the character. I really felt for Bruce over the course of the movie, but never in that awful, too-clean way that seems to always infect superhero films. Scenes like the almost-sex between Bruce and Betty highlight the fear and stress and misery that is life as the Hulk, without dragging the film into bathos. I have to congratulate William Hurt, also, for his portrayal of Thunderbolt Ross, though I do have to jump in here and say that his character is where the script breaks down a little for me (more on that in a minute).

Of course, I have to talk about the fight scenes, which are excellent. The Hulk is, as he should be, a force of nature, but while he's brutish, he's got an animal cunning that belies the utterly brilliant scientist inside him. The final battle with the Abomination, in particular, was awesome, especially the outburst, necessary and spine-tingling, of a nice, old-school "HULK SMASH!"

Unfortunately, I now have to jump back to Thunderbolt Ross. He was far too dumbed down. I know, I know--why would I go to a superhero movie expecting an intelligent script? Because this wasn't just a superhero movie, this was a Hulk movie, damn it! Give me some brains in amongst the brawn. And they did--except that they transformed Ross into an out-and-out villain. In the comics, Ross headed the project that created the Hulk, but he considered the Hulk a monster and was doing his best to arrest or destroy Banner, not bring him in to create more Hulks; he was a bad guy only in the sense that he kept shooting the Hulk with missiles. I felt like the angle presented in the comics was far more interesting: it made Ross a more morally gray character, rather than a mustachioed metaphor for the military-industrial complex.

And while I am talking about characterization, I have to talk about the Abomination. I love Tim Roth, and I have found him to be an amazing part of any movie he's been in. Except this one. Maybe it's that Emil Blonsky's motivations are really just a huge, steaming cup of blind testosterone, but it seemed like Roth wasn't even trying. And while the shot of Blonsky standing about three inches tall next to the towering slabs of first the Hulk and then Thunderbolt Ross may have been meant to give us some insight into his thirst for strength, it really just came off as comically ham-fisted.

(I'm not even going to get into Liv Tyler--she did a great "the world hurts me" face, and her ability to plaintively say "Bruce?" was strong, but for the most part I'm not impressed by her as an actress.)

Ross and Blonsky (and Roth, though not Hurt) are really the weak points of the movie, and the fact that their motivations are the underpinnings of the plot makes the whole thing feel sort of overly simplistic, plot-wise. Fortunately, Norton's and Hurt's acting skills, some really inventive fight scenes, and the constant low-grade thrill of watching Banner try to evade Ross and his goons help to redeem the movie.

And then... [[WARNING! WARNING! DOUBLE-PLUS SPOILER AHEAD!]]

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And then...there's the end of the movie. There's Thunderbolt Ross, and he's drunk (and William Hurt is playing a hilariously gruff and miserable drunk in this scene, let me say), and he's sad, and then the door opens and there's a silhouette and the whole surface of my skin tingles because Tony Stark just walked into the bar! (I cannot give this the emphasis I want, lest I attract bypassing eyes to this spoiler.)

I love this last scene more than I reasonably should. It made the Marvel film universe feel interconnected in exactly the way the comic books were, and that was a level of cool I did not think it was possible for these movies to hit. And beyond that, it reminded me that pretty soon this is coming out, and while I don't love the Avengers that much I am going to be all over that movie like William Burroughs on a key of heroin.



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In short--this movie was excellent, and a comic book fan will love it on a whole different level. I felt like the Hulk was finally done cinematic justice. Now, don't forget your Hulk trivia--answers go up tomorrow.