From Universal Pictures and the Oscar-winning director of Life of CGI- I mean Pi- comes the first film based on the comic book The Incredible Hulk. Oh boy, it's Ang Lee's...
Eric Bana plays Bruce, a brilliant but emotionally distant scientist who, along with fellow scientist and ex-girlfriend, Betty (Jennifer Connelly), blow up frogs with gamma radiation in an effort to cure... something. I don't know, I forgot. Anyways, Bruce gets caught in a blast of radiation and survives, but now, whenever he gets angry, he transforms into a giant, rampaging, badly computer-generated giant. A grizzly old fart named David Banner (Nick Nolte) appears, stalking Bruce, claiming to be his father. Speaking to his son in riddles, we can guess- really, we can only guess- Banner passed some kind of side effect of self-experimentation on to his boy that was then triggered by Bruce's accident. What? There's also Betty's general dad (Sam Elliot) who wants the Hulk for something (still not sure), and some douchebag (Josh Lucas) that also has an interest in Bruce, but also has an interest in getting into Betty's pants.
I was really let down by Hulk when I saw it in theaters the summer of 2003. I thought it was overly serious and lame. Looking at the film now, however, I can honestly saw- and I hate to quote an overused meme from the internet, but- WTF is this shit?! This is a joke, right? In hindsight, it might as well be. It was 2003, after all. I wouldn't be shocked if Ashton Kutcher jumped out at us coming out of the theater going, "You got Punk'd!"
This is not an adaptation of The Incredible Hulk. This is a trashing, because Universal and director Ang Lee didn't have faith in the comic book. They felt like the movie needed to transcend the source material. Don't let the comic book panel-style split-screens and editing fool you; Hulk is a film ashamed that it's based on a comic book. It's all so, so serious. Performance-wise, you've got mopey (Bana and Connelly) and crazy (Nolte, Elliot, and Lucas) and not much else. Nobody seems to be having any fun in this movie. There's no sense of entertainment value in the story, anyways. Lee is too concerned with trying to elevate the material. The Incredible Hulk is the Jeckyll and Hyde of the post-Atomic Age. He represents something base in us as human beings we all keep buried inside us, be it rage or anything else we don't want anyone to see. Ang Lee and co-writer James Schamus want to blame The Hulk on Daddy. Bullshit.
In addition, Lee succeeds in making the audience feel stupid for liking spectacle by making Industrial Light and Magic give us some of the worst visual effects ever for a tentpole movie. Hulk looks better in the poster than any time he's on screen in the movie! He looks like a 'roid-raging Shreck. Also, why is he almost as big as fucking King Kong halfway through the movie? The laugh-out-loud awfulness of the VFX next to the woe-as-me crap that make up the rest of the film is really jarring. I'm sure ILM were embarrassed by their work on Hulk. They were able to make Yoda fight just the year before! They should be embarrassed.
Not surprising the word "Incredible" was left out of the title of this movie, giving how bad it is, but Ang Lee should have left Hulk out of it, too. There's barely any resemblance to the characters of the comic in this movie. Instead, this picture is Ang Lee's criticism of us as American moviegoers. Congratulations, bub. You made us feel bad for watching a movie based on a comic book. I hope you're happy, you prick. I'm glad Crash won.
Hulk
1 out of 5 Cap Shields
No comments:
Post a Comment