When Dr. Bruce Banner is accidentally exposed to an overdose of gamma radiation, something dark inside him is unleashed. He discovers that this hidden side is given form whenever he’s placed under stress and his body transforms, grows, becomes more powerful as his basest instincts are brought to the fore in the form of The Hulk, a huge green beast, 9 feet tall (although he can grow up to 15 feet) and weighing thousands of pounds, capable of lifting 100 tons and crossing up to 4 miles in one jump.

My first thought upon hearing there would be a live-action Incredible Hulk movie was, I’m sure, the same as most other peoples’: who’s going to play The Hulk? And when I first heard director Ang Lee (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) was going to use a CGI Hulk, every hope I had for this movie was lost. You use CGI to show stuff the actors can’t do, you don’t use it in place of the actors. But after seeing the final product, I see I was too quick to judge. Ang Lee wasn’t making a movie about a big green guy, he was making a movie about The Hulk, as true an adaptation as he could make and anyone who’s ever read The Hulk comics knows Ang Lee got it dead right. You hear people complain about how big the Hulk is or how ridiculous it is to see him crossing a distance of miles in one jump, but if they knew their stuff, they’d know that’s exactly what The Hulk does. The angrier he gets, the bigger he gets, and he’s been leaping from place to place almost as long as he’s been around, and that’s over 40 years. Don’t believe everything you see in TV shows from the 70s.

According to creator Stan Lee, The Hulk began life as a big grey monster, a cross between Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He wanted create a hero who looked nothing like a hero, a misunderstood beast who was really the good guy. As he says, you have to make the hero someone the readers can sympathize with, and by showing The Hulk as this huge creature who just wants to be able to exist in peace while all around him are people who would rather destroy him than understand him, Lee created one of the most interesting characters in the Marvel Universe. The Hulk has had many incarnations, not just his countless transformations in the comics (from grey to green and back to grey, then back to green again, from changing when the sun goes down, to changing when he gets angry, to changing when the sun goes down again, to being merged finally and living with the Hulk’s body and Banner’s brain to whatever new transformations he’s gone through since I last read his book), but also a number of cartoon interpretations, and there’s that TV show everyone remembers.

In this latest version, the truest in terms of the Hulk himself, maybe not so true in a lot of other aspects, Bruce Banner (Eric Bana, BLACK HAWK DOWN, TROY) is working on nanotechnology in hopes of discovering a way for people to be able to heal themselves. There’s a mishap in the lab and he’s exposed to the gamma rays they’ve been using to activate the nanomeds (microscopic machines whose programmed function is to repair damaged cells) which triggers his change into the Hulk. Turns out before Bruce was born, his father (played by Nick Nolte) is conducting similar experiments, using himself as a test subject. When his wife gives birth to Bruce, the senior Banner realizes he’s passed on his genetic alterations to his son. Years pass, Bruce’s mother dies, his father goes away to prison, and Bruce is adopted. His former life is all but forgotten.

Thirty years later, Bruce is unknowingly conducting research similar to his fathers, with Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), daughter of General Ross (Sam Elliott), the man who had shut down the original Banner’s research years earlier. It all seemed a bit coincidental to me, but only in so far as Bruce’s father was concerned. By the time I’d stopped reading The Incredible Hulk, I’d never heard a word about Bruce’s father. Originally Bruce was developing a gamma bomb for the army under General Ross and Betty was Bruce’s girl. I can only assume this father backstory was added for the sake of updating the story for the movie and adding drama.

In the end, the result is the same, Bruce becomes The Hulk. The army wants him stopped, his father wants his power. Nolte’s character has continued with his own research and by exposing himself to the same gamma rays, unleashes a power of his own; he’s able to absorb the properties of anything he touches (this was in reference to The Absorbing Man, a Hulk villain who’s been around for decades). He wants to get his hands on The Hulk and absorb THAT power. Bruce wants nothing to do with either of them, his father or the army. All he wants is to be left alone to figure out what’s happening to him.

As a longtime fan, I thought Ang Lee did an amazing job bringing the complexities of this story to life, showing the turmoil of the situation, not just Bruce’s inner struggles as he fights to maintain control for fear of unleashing such an unstoppable force, but also the conflict between Bruce and Betty, as they still care very much for each other, but Bruce can’t be sure The Hulk won’t harm her.

General Ross tries his best to protect everyone involved--in his own misunderstood way--but there’s also Glen Talbot (Josh Lucas, SWEET HOME ALABAMA, SESSION 9) another career military officer who only wants to use The Hulk to benefit the military.

And finally there’s Bruce’s realization that his own father, who should love and protect him, is only after his own gain, too, and would gladly kill his son in order to achieve his goals. So in the end, Banner truly has no one, and as long as he’s got this beast inside him, ready to come out at the first sign of anxiety or stress, he’ll have to remain alone.

Among the many complaints you hear about this movie, there’s the way Lee shot it, the comic book transitions he uses, or his reliance on split screens. They say you shouldn’t get an art-film director to make a movie about a comic book. But I can’t think of anyone else. Few people truly understood the Batman character like Tim Burton. And Ang Lee used every resource he had, and even experimented with a few new ones, to tell the story the best way he knew how. As he explains in the DVD commentary, the split screens were wonderful for being able to show so many different points of interest in any given scene all at once instead of relying on cut after cut.

The Hulk was created by Industrial Light & Magic and I’ve seen a lot of CGI in movies, but I’ve never seen any as realistic as this. Looking at The Hulk, you know he’s not real, you know he’s a computer program, but ILM has earned the Magic in their title because this creature is amazing. And by using Ang Lee as the Motion Capture Suit model for most of the movie, they were able to get the precise performance Lee wanted from The Hulk.

Danny Elfman--he of just about every movie made anymore--did the score, but he says Lee challenged him to come up with something completely unlike his own work and if I hadn’t seen his name in the credits, I would never have known Elfman was involved as he’s succeeded very well in doing as Lee asked and not sounding like himself. There’s a lot more drums in this movie than anything else I’ve heard from Elfman (who, to this point, sounds to me like he’s always just recycling the same old music from movie to movie).

Overall, I thought Lee and company made one hell of a Hulk movie.

Except for the end. And the beginning.

The problem Lee ran into with the opening of the movie was that it just took too long. He’s got a 10-minute prelude before we even get to the story. And if it were shot as a 10-minute scene, sure, but he’s cramming the first 5 years of Bruce’s life into these 10 minutes and after a while it just gets to be a bit much.

The end . . . now THAT was a let-down. With all the amazing things we’ve seen so far--The Hulk battling 3 vicious “hulk” dogs, practically flying over the desert as he jumps from place to place, his escape from the underground bunker, The Hulk’s pounding of the tanks the army sends after him, or his ride to “the top of the world” on the back of a jet fighter, the movie’s climax was not only just too dark to see, but also pretty incomprehensible. I’ve seen this movie 3 or 4 times now and it’s only been in bits and pieces that I’ve come to understand what’s going on just these last few times I’ve seen it. But the first time, in the theater, I didn’t get the climax at all. It’s too much cliche swirling lights and smoke and “mystical”-looking crap for me, especially considering the amazing visual stuff that’s come before. I just think we deserved better.

The DVD is yet another 2-disc set and, of course, it’s another case of “this could have fit on one disc but we can charge a little more if we make it two”. The DVD includes (and don’t ask me what’s with all the caps here, I’m just quoting from the box) :

“Never-before-seen DELETED SCENE

An inside look at creation of the spectacular DOG FIGHT

An INTERACTIVE EXPLORATION of the HULK’s physical capabilities.

Follow the EVOLUTION of Marvel’s strongest Super Hero from the comic book pages to the technology that brought the HULK to the big screen--including interviews with STAN LEE!

See the MOTION CAPTURE SUIT define the HULK’s reactions at Industrial Light & Magic

Insert this DVD into an Xbox console and PLAY AN ENTIRE LEVEL OF THE HULK GAME

RENOWNED ARTISTS from around the world RECREATE a scene from the film in their own ANIMATION styles

Feature-length AUDIO COMMENTARY by director Ang Lee”


It all looks like a lot of stuff, but when you get down to it, some of this stuff could have been lost, like the “INTERACTIVE EXPLORATION of the Hulk’s physical capabilities.” A lot of it’s just so much filler. But sometimes you buy a DVD for the movie and not the extras. Right?

While the plot is a little . . . hard to believe . . . I think Ang Lee made a great movie, a welcome addition to my Super Hero DVD collection, and I’d gladly see a sequel, if one were ever made.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children up Ages 8