I've said this many times here but I'll say it again. I liked Ang Lee's Hulk. Really liked. Ok, so the ending was a bit "out there" but I thought it was smart, great looking and remarkably faithful to its comic book origins. I also know that I'm in a minority and that most fans hated it and box officewise it wasn't considered a success. And so we have Hulk 2.0 or The Incredible Hulk which is anything but. More like The Okay Hulk. Or The Good For About Half Its Running Time Hulk. Norton I liked. Ditto the Brazilian opening, the Bourne-like chase through the favela and the first appearance of the big green guy which director Louis Letterier kept brief and under wraps. I liked it right up until Bruce turns up on Liv Tyler's college campus and he and the now super serum-charged Tim Roth go at it for a second time. But then something happened, the filmmakers seemed to give up the ghost on trying to have the script make sense and the plot just treads water until the time comes when, as is the way with these films, the hero and villain must duke it out, and so we have Hulk and Abomination going at it on a street that clearly wasn't New York.
The effects were an improvement on Lee's movie (given the advances in technology since they bloody well should be), I liked the Bixby and Lou F cameos, and I smiled at Tony Stark's walk on.
But is it any better than Lee's movie? Hell no. Don't believe me? Go watch it again. I dare you...
6 comments:
Thank God. Judging by all the online fan-frothing I was starting to think I was the only person who was really, really let down by this. I put a little bit up about it the other night, but this just felt so empty. It wasn't that what was there was bad, it was that it literally felt like someone had snatched twenty minutes out of a pretty decent film then released it as quickly as possible.
Fingers crossed we'll eventually see the Norton cut, cause there's even stuff in the trailer which would have served to make this feel more fleshed-out to me..
I'm with you on Ang Lee's HULK-I liked it a lot-the split screen 'panel' effect,the sequence of Hulk jumping through the desert & smashing tanks-even the 'dog fight'!
I caught IRON MAN last week & thoroughly enjoyed it-but the 'duke it out' third act between hero & villain IS getting tiresome!
It will interesting to see how Nolan handles the Joker/Batman finale in The Dark Knight. Unless it's a Batman/Joker/Two-Face finale...
I loved the panelling in Lee's film.
i just saw TIH last night... and i'm on board with you here. there was something missing. the fight scenes were cool, but i could feel parts of the film dropping to the cutting room floor as the movie raged on.
on comic book movies as of late: since when does a hero defeat evil-doer in one shot? take the spiderman movies, for instance! green goblin, dr. octopus, sandman, venom... all enemies that have fought spidey for YEARS, not just one go-round! x-men, daredevil, batman, and all the rest seem to be able to wrap up the bad guys very neatly. but if the studios want to keep these franchises alive, if sequels are already in the works as the first movies come out, then why NOT drag them on? wouldn't you rather have unfinished business at the end of a movie? i sure would like to see some villans live to fight another day. maybe that's just me. i'm sure it's not as simple as it sounds.
anyway, TIH was a good effort but what did they do with abomination (sp?) after the hulk bounded away?? everyone was just standing there and he wasn't unconcious or anything! and a note to the director... why would you have the police show up with their guns drawn? wouldn't the military have advised them that, hey, we've shot missles at these guys and they bounce off? that was dumb.
to be honest, i'm not really looking forward to any more comic movies if they keep going like this (save the dark knight. woot!). the talk of an avengers movie is a bad move. i mean, come on... it's just not going to work. why? because you've been killing off the bad guys in every movie and not developing the heroes' characters enough to make me care.
i'm done for now. thanks for the vent.
ps: i, too, am an ang lee hulk fan.
Nice vent. And spot on too.
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