Review #900 - This Green Giant is definitely NOT JOLLY!!
Written: Jun 19 '08 (Updated Jul 07 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: First 2/3 is great, lots of action and humour, some impressive CGI...
Cons: ... some CGI isn't so impressive, final 1/3 of the movie loses it...
The Bottom Line: The Incredible Hulk is worth seeing, but only comic book fans and action junkies are likely to actually love it.
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| captaind's Full Review: The Incredible Hulk |
The Incredible Hulk is one of the most instantly recognisable of Marvel Comics’ stable of weird and wonderful characters. Well he is rather large, rather green and rather angry most of the time, so I guess he stands out a bit. At any rate, in the second instalment of Marvel’s lead-up to their planned “Avengers” movies, the big green thing gets another outing. Like Ang Lee’s 2003 version, it charts the Hulk’s origin story. Unlike the 2003 movie it stays pretty faithful to the original comics (the former’s deviation from them was probably a big reason why many disliked it).
The intro shows a montage of clips showing the events leading to the creation of The Hulk as scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) experiments on himself and turns into a green killing machine, almost causing the death of the one he loves, Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) and thus earning the wrath of her father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross. There is a lot more to the General’s pursuit of Banner after he goes on the run than fatherly concern, however... in fact fatherly concern may be the last thing on his mind...
After the introduction which crams an amazing amount of back story into the opening couple of minutes (probably on the assumption that most people know at least the basic story anyway), we are taken via some breathtaking photography to Brazil, where Banner is hiding out. Driven to find a cure for his condition (he’s not a green monster all the time, or hiding might be a bit tough), he attempts to learn advanced anger suppression techniques while communicating with a mysterious person known only as “Mr Blue” via a secure computer link. He still loves Betty, but doesn’t think that it’s safe for her to be near him. General Ross doesn’t let up on the search though, and upon finding the likely whereabouts of Banner he enlists a small army and a specialist psychopath, born in Russia, raised in London – Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) – who among other characters in the movie has an unquenchable thirst for power.
Without revealing too much plot, there’s also a mad scientist and an abomination to deal with later on. All in a day’s work for a big green angry thing.
I have to say that I wasn’t expecting much of this film, despite enjoying the recent Iron Man immensely. The Incredible Hulk therefore surprised me by being much better entertaining than I was expecting - for the first two thirds of the film, anyway. The action sequences were well done, a tad overlong at times which tended to end up killing the suspense, but still there was a definite feeling of tension and suspense throughout the early stages of the movie. The CGI was very impressive in some sections, less so in others. The action portrayed from the Hulk’s own viewpoint was done very well; other scenes where there was little lighting or various objects blocking direct view of the hulk were fairly convincing too. More direct close-ups of the not-so-jolly green giant were surprisingly realistic (insofar as a fictional creature like Hulk can be), but the faster action scenes really didn’t look good at all. Mostly they looked like they were straight out of a video game rather than a movie.
The acting was variable. Edward Norton was pretty good as Bruce Banner / the Hulk, but I often felt that he rather lacked intensity. Liv Tyler gives us a Betty we can like and sympathise with – she mostly just has to look concerned, but with the limited role she’s given she is very convincing. There are some nice moments of humour between the two as well which lightened the mood between the intense action. I wasn’t too sure about William Hurt as the General; he has a character we can easily dislike, but there was just something about his performance that didn’t seem right to me. Tim Roth as the trained psycho Blonsky was well on the mark; he gave a very good performance but there seemed to me that there were some inconsistencies with his character, which slightly weakened his impact. Samuel Sterns is quite fun as a mad doc who is almost certainly going to be in a future film, given the fact that an event happened which would no doubt change him but was then completely ignored for the rest of the film. Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk in the TV series from the late seventies / early eighties and in numerous other screen tie-ins was the voice of the Hulk here (6 words I think – “Leave me alone”, “Betteeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! ” and of course “Hulk SMASH!! ”), and also played a pizza-loving security guard. Robert Downey Jr. Pops in at the end and Stan Lee was in there somewhere.
Towards the end it all goes downhill, unfortunately. The plot descends towards the absurd and the action feels extremely convoluted. The very end sequences disappointed me too – they felt like a nothing ending, and obviously had an eye on the future films. This isn’t a bad thing for the series of movies, but for it as an individual film it is a weak ending. Still, most of the film was enjoyable, and the excellent cinematography (Peter Menzes, Jr) and superb music score (Craig Armstrong) give it a certain epic feel. Though I’m only giving it 3 stars overall, the first two thirds are 4-star material... the finale really let it down though (to me, anyway). Director Louis Leterrier started off really well with this, but seemed to get too distracted by having a huge action set piece at the end to bother about how much sense it made.
People will naturally want to know which people preferred out of The Incredible Hulk [2008] and Hulk [2003]. For my own part I did prefer Ang Lee’s version because it took a different angle and was more intense. Action junkies and fans of the original comics will, almost without exception, prefer this 2008 version. If you liked Hulk, chances are that like me you won’t enjoy The Incredible Hulk as much.
Related Reviews
Hulk [2003]
Iron Man - I liked his film more than the green man's.
My Top Ten Superhero Movies
This review was an entry to ElvisDo’s Funny Pages Write Off
Recommended:
Yes
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