THE HULK review

The first time I saw THE HULK he was a Herb Trimpe poster that my parents put up in my room when I was 2 years old. Later that year I got the MEGO HULK that always seemed to break its left leg at the knee. Around this time those old 60’s MARVEL cartoons were barraging my infant brains and I was learning:

Yes, that was from memory. This isn’t to establish some sort of geek cred, rather it is to warn those of you that are unfamiliar with THE HULK, that I am a bit of a HULK super freak. As a small boy I once cried and was scared to death when I went to meet Lou Ferrigno in full HULK make-up at some sort of promotional event. I was around 5 at the time. I’ve since met Lou Ferrigno at numerous conventions and found that he would not go on an uncontrollable rampage and smash me. Though I wasn’t always sure.

Around age 6 – I began reading TALES TO ASTONISH and THE INCREDIBLE HULK – along with a great many other comics. In particular, I loved the TALES TO ASTONISH – Hulk stories. You see, at the same time I was reading this stuff, watching the TV show, my parents were also giving me a healthy dose of UNIVERSAL MONSTERS and Famous Monsters of Filmland.

As a result in my mind, I always saw The Hulk as the ultimate UNIVERSAL MONSTER. He had all the angst of a Larry Talbot – the lumbering dynamic ferocity of Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster – and when Hulk was calm… he had the potential to want to be one with his environment. To appreciate the flowers, the hopping rabbits. It was all there in those Kirby panels with the Stan Lee captions.

For the past 7 years, Ain’t It Cool News has been covering the living hell out of THE HULK. We heralded the drafts by John Turman and Michael France… declared a holy war on the unbelievably fucking awful draft by Jonathan Hensleigh that very nearly became a feature film several years ago. That had HULK vs really hot dude, hummingbird man and digger guy… my names for them, but that’s essentially what they could do. Then the film went into turnaround. David Hayter took a shot at the script and it was pretty bad. Then they attached Ang Lee and James Schamus. That’s when things got really quiet.

Ang Lee is a real filmmaker… an artist… some would say a genius, and here he was turning his craft upon THE HULK. A character that many have labeled as a “stupid character” that just tears stuff up and smashes. Ang has dealt with repressed characters in every film he’s made, and frankly you don’t get more repressed than “puny Banner” from the comics. However, Ang would say things through production that got me scared. Stuff where he would admit not really understanding the Hulk as a character. I’d hear rumors that he was making HULK Shakespearean, and I would get frustrated. HULK isn’t Shakespearean, he’s closer to a Greek Tragedy, but closest to Fredric March DR JEKYLL & MR HYDE, Karloff’s Monster and Chaney Jr’s Larry Talbot. Those three characters are very much the formula for THE HULK, as I saw the character… and admittedly that was my opinion.

Many see HULK as that Superhero that gets in gigantic fist fights with other insanely powerful characters and throw each other through major buildings. And while that’s fun for moments, that’s not the character. Then there are those that Peter David defined the character for. Personally, I never cared for the Peter David HULK. It just didn’t interest me.

I was obsessive about wanting to see a draft of the HULK before they got shooting, because I was terrified of a repeat of the horrible misdirection that Jonathan Hensleigh was taking the character. Once production started, I pretty much stopped searching for the script, then a couple of months ago… it arrived.

I was scared to read it because, at that late date, I just wanted a good HULK movie and I’d been hearing rumblings inside UNIVERSAL that the Hulk didn’t look good, that it was too self-important, that kids would be bored to death, that Ang Lee had turned it into an ART film. The script revealed a lot of the answers to those rumblings. THE HULK as Ang Lee was making it was indeed setting out to be a Tragedy. A film that isn’t so much about surviving the sins of one’s father, as much as fighting your internal demons and controlling your emotions. The film was about repression. Repressed memories, repressed actions, repressed emotions. Dysfunctional people. Sure the film is about a giant green monster, but that Monster is a metaphor given power by an unquenchable thirst for retribution for an unresolved past and an overall history of always giving in. Always deferring. THE HULK represents that Id that strikes out… Like Popeye on Spinach, “Its alls I can stands, I can’t stands no more!”

I loved the script. It was a monster film. The first classic monster film being attempted by UNIVERSAL since the golden era. The Stephen Sommers MUMMY films were not classic monster films, they were pure unfettered popcorn entertainments owing more to film serials than UNIVERSAL's monster films. Here… Ang Lee was very much making a classic monster movie…

I’m going to deal with The Hulk, himself, last – as I fear many will get carried away with talking about him and leave out the other work in this movie that is exemplary.

1st – THE WRITING

The work by Jon Turman, Michael France and the final cook that brought it all together… James Schamus contributed to realizing a gigantic budget monster movie based upon the original Marvel Comic property by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. For Comic fans it’s more than just the purple pants or green skin. More than just getting his name right. As written, this script lays out the classic era world of THE HULK. The period where a scientist suffers a horrible accident which turns him into a man that can become a monster without any real control. An Unstoppable monster. He has the entire U.S. Military trying to stop him. There are other monsters in this world he’s in. Dangers abound. He’s given his moments of solitude, we see the legendary DESERT BASE – as written we get a Hulk that has never been seen before. That mesa leaping Hulk. The device for giving HULK voice was so smart and I actually giggled as I read it. Very clever. The characters are drawn from the comic, yet fleshed out. Very good work here.

2nd – THE EDITING

Perhaps, for me, the greatest triumph of the film artistically speaking is the work that Ang Lee did with Tim Squyres here. It is amazing to me, to see folks talk of this as being a “Comic Book” device. Much of the editing here was done to a degree by folks like Tarantino who drew upon DePalma who drew upon Norman Jewison who drew upon the work found in musicals of the fifties and sixties, which drew upon work done by German Expressionists in terms of multiple shots being revealed in a single frame like Fritz Lang did. But that’s ok… Many folks will refer to it as being “24” editing. However, I often found myself surprised and blown away by relatively simple things like a helicopter’s blades revealing a new scene… or how one part of the frame would expand or push another away to give way to a new dramatic reveal. Does this style of editing call attention to itself? Yup, I would definitely say it is a stylistic flourish… One helluva John Hancock. The Yucca wipe was amazing. If you search through 60’s “Pop Art” styled films, you’ll see the direct forbearers of the editing here. In particular look at Norman Jewison’s THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR which was edited by Hal Asby, Ralph Winters and Byron Brandt. In particular work like this influenced Comic Panelist innovators like Jim Steranko – who completely influenced the way modern Comic Book lay-outs came to be via his work with Nick Fury. SO – in a way, Film influenced Comics which in turn have come to influence film again. And given Stan Lee gives full credit to Karloff’s Monster for the invention of the Hulk… well it all comes around.

3rd – THE CINEMATOGRAPHY

In combination with the Editing and Visual Effects work, the Cinematography of THE HULK is lush and very nearly and definitely psychedelic. The incredibly trippy looking cellular divisions and nanobot and gamma infusions. Then I found myself gasping at how beautiful the desert looked and was photographed. The gorgeous macro photography of the moss and lichen on rocks that Hulk momentarily ponders and I thought… Who’s the DP on this sucker? FRED ELMES. Who? Well – you probably best know him for his work with David Lynch on films like ERASER HEAD & BLUE VELVET. Or his work on HEAVEN and ARIA. Or NIGHT ON EARTH for Jarmusch or even Ang’s films like THE ICE STORM and RIDE WITH THE DEVIL. Here we see a traditional art house cinematographer, known for bizarre beauty being unleashed on a gigantic film whose star doesn’t exist. The results are truly trippy and cool.

4th – THE ACTING

The only weak link here for me is Josh Lucas, an actor that I’ve never really warmed to. And here, well he isn’t a character that I’m supposed to warm to. I had always imagined Timothy Dalton in this role for some weird reason, but he isn’t dreadful… He’s just the only character that I just thought wasn’t played particularly well.

However, the 4 leads. Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott and Nick Nolte are all exceptional.

General Thunderbolt Ross – Sam Elliot. Exactly correct. The character is actually first portrayed in his youthful period by Todd Tesen – who I swear shares genetic data with Sam Elliott. However, the character is owned by Sam. First off, he isn’t played in the broad cartoonish qualities as written in the comic. This isn’t the “military” version of J. Jonah Jameson here. Instead, as portrayed, he is a character that reveals as much about himself as he provides a greater understanding of the attraction between his daughter Betty Ross and Banner. Ross is a repressed career military man that has dealt with Top Secret projects for at least 30 – 35 years. He’s that military man that can’t come home and talk about his day, because loose lips sink ships. You get the idea that a typical evening dinner at the Ross household for young Betty was Dad coming in, sitting at the dining room table and going straight into the Lord’s Prayer, before digging in and dismissing himself to his office for more work. You can read on Sam’s face a certain degree of regret, he just doesn’t know what to do with a daughter, how to act – which gave way to…

Betty Ross – Jennifer Connelly. It would be easy to write her character off as a “helpless female” except that isn’t what is going on here. She’s in the midst of a pretty bad situation. She was attracted to Bruce because through understanding him, she was working to resolve a certain amount of understanding for her own father. She recognizes the same repression, but wants to get Bruce to come out of his shell… To be a full and sharing partner, just as she has always wanted a complete emotional father. Then the whole HULK thing happens – and she’s forced to deal with a Father that understands orders and duty and action, but nothing about compassion, love and understanding. And then there’s Bruce he’s living in tormented fear and repression and denial. She’s afraid of losing them both, but also afraid of what she’ll find in getting closer. Jennifer does good strong work here.

Bruce Banner – Eric Bana. He’s essentially a repressed man that has never just let go. He doesn’t have a memory prior to about age 7, was an adopted child and has never sought to understand his feelings. He’s been a scientist and been driven to science his whole life. It’s all he knows. He has problems with intimacy and emotional attachments, he loves Betty, but has always kept her at arms’ distance without ever fully understanding why. Bana plays Banner as a geek that is excited and thrilled about the science he’s doing. After the accident and he sees no adverse reactions, like Goldblum’s Brundle, he feels like a million bucks… his bad knee is good again. Due to the large amount of baggage that Bana is having to take Bruce through here… his character isn’t as free as I would like to just be Bruce Banner, but then… this point that we’ve found him in his life… he’s just beginning to find himself. If, and hopefully, this becomes a series, I’ll be interested to see what this internal crisis comes to represent in his day to day character. We don’t get much time with Bruce after the HULK issues begin manifesting – which is a shame, as the greatest work of drama for this character is his struggle to understand why he won’t just kill himself. Why he won’t just turn himself over. Hopefully we’ll see those areas explored further in future features. So was I disappointed with Banner… yes, to the degree that I wanted to see the Banner with the independent lab trying to fix himself and failing again and again… having to see reports about what his ‘other self’ had done and the guilt that brings him. Unfortunately – we never really get that.

David Banner – Nick Nolte. Avi Arad sees Nolte’s performance as Oscar Caliber, but personally… I love Nolte’s character, but there is something just not quite there for me. I think it all comes down to the scene between Nolte and Connelly in his house that first time. When I originally read that scene, I imagined it with the delicious malevolence of a Hannibal Lecter type delivery. However, Nolte played it more… well, real. Not nearly as menacing as I had hoped. He’s a definite bastard and I love his tirades and really look forward to hopefully one day seeing Ang’s original cut that went the way of the do-do long before the Work Print that got online, cuz the most work missing here, I believe fell between Bruce and David Banner. And both characters needed more for me. What’s there is good, and I agree that had there been much more of that – kids like my nephew and the 5 other fifteen year olds and younger would have been driven stir crazy, instead of going HULK crazy when the film ended. However, I wanted more of this character and more of Bruce dealing with what has happened.

5th THE HULK & Other Aspects of the Fantastic

Dennis Muren & Michael Lantieri – Special Effects Supervisors on THE HULK

Nobody has ever seen action like what happens in this movie when the Hulk lets go. For all the lampooning and terror-filled moments worrying about the utter ludicrous concept of “Hulk Dogs” they work for one implicit purpose… to be utterly destroyed by the HULK in such a dramatically destructive way as to just be glorious. Hearing their bones pop, the ferocity that they are thrown into redwood trees… The scene up high in the Redwood where they are hunting Hulk – WONDERFUL. Absolutely beautiful.

HULK versus the Army and Hulk in the Desert. For a TALES TO ASTONISH loving fanboy geek like me, this was a religious experience. You’ve seen him toss, hammer fashion, that one Tank, but when you see what he does after that… I just can’t imagine not going absolutely bonkers. I’d never seen that sort of unleashed furor… In a way, I kinda half imagined Jack Nicholson and that Golf Club a few years back in Los Angeles, but there was just something so perfect about it. His leaps in the desert, going from mesa to mesa… his fight with the helicopters, the ice forming on his face, the foam weapon, the transformation in the water tank. In all – just so impressive. Oh, before folks start talking about how unrealistic Hulk’s leaps were in terms of animation… you must remember… Hulk isn’t flying, he’s leaping and falling. So he’s wobbling because he doesn’t really have a lot of control once he leaves the ground.

How believable is HULK? Well, just right off the bat you’re dealing with a 15ft tall Green Angry Monster – that we all know is done by ILM, so we all automatically know that he will be brought to life via CG – because there’s no other way for it to look anywhere near this good. However, truthfully… I never thought about it in the movie because I was too busy watching to see what the Hulk would do, not whether his pores were there or not. The Hulk is amazingly interactive with his environment, at no point more beautifully than in that slide down the sand dune… wow. But, is he at Gollum level? Well the characters are doing radically different things. Gollum is primarily a dramatic character. Hulk is primarily a character of action. That being said, Gollum was pretty terrific fighting with Sam and Frodo. And Hulk was pretty great as he’s contemplating the lichen and moss upon the rocks in the desert… or the beauty of his Betty. But you won’t get an internal Hulk monologue where Hulk contemplates destroying all humanity, so as a result – the nod goes to Gollum for me, but then… I feel Gollum is the finest work of live action animation in the history of film. Hulk not being the greater character doesn’t mean he isn’t really great, only that I prefer a dramatic character to a character of action.

6th THE DIRECTOR

Ang Lee has done a tremendous job here. He’s constructed a wonderful film that dares to be very smart, artistic, thrilling and exhilarating. How does it compare to his last film? Well, I love both, but there’s no character in HULK nearly as charming as Chow Yun Fat or as soulful as Michelle Yeoh. How does it compare to SPIDER-MAN? Personally, I feel this is superior. How about X2? I’ll go with X2 there, it ultimately comes down to the sheer success of economic development of the characters, though HULK is the more ambitious and artistic achievement, I prefer X2, though I prefer much of HULK to that film. Actually, they’re very different films, but I think ultimately… given time, I’ll see X2 more. However, I haven’t had the opportunity to see HULK more than once at this stage, so that may change.

So there ya go, as someone that loved the comics to death, this movie is fantastic. I took my 3 year old nephew to it, who nearly went crazy during a couple of the dialogue scenes, but stuck with it. During the Hulk Dog fight he was bouncing in his seat excitedly – then stopped, stood up in his chair and whispered to me… “Poo Poo” I asked him if he wanted Grandpa to change him and he said, “No. Hulk” and went back to being held in rapt attention by Hulk beating the hell out of those dogs. So be warned… the Hulk Dogs can scare the shit out of a 3 year old. Literally.

P.S. - Regarding my nephew - and the audience. Since I wouldn't be able to make it to the press screening the week of release - due to my presence required at a friend's wedding, this screening was set up so I could do an advance review prior to release. The only other attendees were people on my invite - that understood my nephew would be there. Why take my nephew? His favorite two things in the world right now are SPIDER-MAN and the HULK. And technically he sat mainly with his grandfather during the movie, and barely made a peep the whole screening. He was, no distraction. In fact, I'd wager he's better behaved than many of you insulting types in Talk Back - given your exhibition of manners displayed here.