The Incredible Hulk

For serious comic book and action film fans, a considerable amount is riding on this film. Considerable, not huge. Granted it’s not life and death but it is another opportunity for Hollywood to get it right or get it wrong. Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk was widely considered a disappointment, although his visual style (wipes, split screen, etc.) cannot be denied as appropriate and impressive. But the Hulk himself was the main attraction and, unfortunately, the main disappointment.

Here, directed by Louis Letterier (The Transporter 2), the Hulk is an improvement, certainly, feeling more in the action and more lifelike. Too bad his head appears to be two sizes too small for his body; or is it that his hands and feet are just wildly out of proportion? And in one “touching” scene with Liv Tyler, he veers a little too far into cuddly-King Kong a la Peter Jackson territory. We want a badass monster we can root for, and generally-speaking we do get that, particularly in the main fight scene that takes place in Harlem; one of the best good monster vs. bad monster fights I’ve seen since, well, War of the Gargantuas (1966; available through Netflix). I liked Spiderman and Superman but I’m talking about monster on monster or super-hero vs. super-hero smack-down where you’re not rolling your eyes at some point. Personally, I was rolling my eyes a lot during Spiderman and Superman.

Aside from that fight scene, and an intriguing start, Letterier relies much too heavily on loud audio effects to get his points across, his points being mainly about noise, violence and gnashing of teeth. And the casting of Ed Norton, at first a fascinating choice, proves deadly; Norton doesn’t have an ounce of humor or levity, and without that, it makes for a dour hero indeed; it’s hard to be sympathetic to a character you don’t like. So that the Hulk and Norton’s Bruce Banner seem to be completely different beings, not the dark side of the human that made the TV show such a huge success and must-see, at least in its time. This is why it’s so hard for comic books to translate to the screen; the imagination of the reader, the mind’s eye, is lost, and we are given, generally, a well-known actor we have to suspend disbelief for.

But, oh, that fight scene in Harlem, with the Hulk finally summoning up deep, deep strength and blood-curdling anger from within and letting rip a truly monstrous and chilling roar sending chills up the spine. Makes you want to believe. Too bad the bulk of the Hulk wasn’t that incredible.