After Ang Lee’s disappointing 2003 film ‘Hulk’ I went about giving out about why they focussed so much on the origin and why they didn’t delve into the inner battle of Banner and why they didn’t learn from what the TV series did so well and I generally bored the pants off anyone who would listen to me about the Hulk.

You see, I loved the TV series. I still do. Ok, the quality wildly oscillates, but the GOOD stuff… the GOOD stuff was just EXCELLENT. Especially to an impressionable young mind of six or so!

I think The Hulk was the first good television I was exposed to. Sure it had a big green scary monster who was dangerous and smashed things up, but it also seemed so so real. The main character was so tortured by his affliction and struggled to keep his anger under control so as not to unleash the beast lurking within, a beast whose nature went against all the man’s non violent beliefs.

And of course that wonderfully haunting theme tune, also known as ‘The Lonely Man Theme’.

So when I saw the trailer for the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk I got quite excited – it was clear they were using the TV show as some kind of basis to begin from. Some of the imagery was taken directly from the show, Marvel even obtained the rights to the original theme tune for the movie, and Lou Ferrigno (The Hulk from the TV series) had a cameo and also did the voice of The Hulk.

But of course, my excitement has been dashed so many times at the cinema, I had to be realistic. I said on Twitter:

i’m predicting a good start with loads of promise of inner battles a la good tv episodes, with descent into brainless cgi brawl

Echoing my thoughts from my Hulk post on seeing the trailer, and also my comment on Eoin’s post about the Hulk.

I settled in at the cinema, with my Sprite and Popcorn, bracing myself for disappointment. It opened well as predicted… except, it opened really well. Better than I had expected, with loads of hat tips to the TV series.

And it continued well. And continued and before long I realised I was really enjoying this film. Not in a vaguely-absent-left-my-brain-at-the-door Iron Man way, but really enjoying it. Edward Norton was the perfect Bruce Banner. Tim Roth was great as the power hungry fighter, and Liv Tyler and William Hurt fleshed out the strong cast well.

Now, before you all go rushing out to see the best film ever, here’s the thing – my predictions were somewhat right, and the CGI brawl began and the film lost the plot.

It was weird, it just reached a point where it was almost as if the director, Louis Leterrier, said ‘ok, we’ve made most of the film we wanted to make now let’s step out and let the Hollywood machine step in and make shit of our movie‘.

It wasn’t just that there was another pointless CGI bash em up like in Iron Man, it was that the performances, the character work, the logic, EVERYTHING went out the window at the same time.

Luckily though, proportionately it was a very small percentage of the overall film, so while it was very strange and stupid, it didn’t entirely ruin the experience for me.

But come on Hollywood, wake up! Stop underestimating us. We LIKE story. We LIKE rounded fleshed out characters. We LIKE the suspense of not seeing the Hulk for a while. We LIKE being made wonder if the beast is going be unleashed, and not being exposed to a constant barrage of computer generated violence. We DO have brains.

It struck me that they could have had a much more interesting film if Tim Roth had not become a huge monster… use the same plot more or less, just have Tim Roth retain most of his human form and dimensions while gaining all that strength and power. Then at least it’s not just a CGI brawl between two beasts you could’t care less about.

At least you would have a more human element at play.

Edward Norton allegedly had some issues about the cut that was released, I wonder if his proposed cut would have made more sense out of some of the penultimate scenes. One scene which should have been massively climactic was glossed over and used as a device to get the two monsters fighting.

I’ve given this film three stars. More psychological drama and less CGI and it was headed for a 5.

How can we get the message to Hollywood to make better films??
maybe FirstShowing.net could do what they did for I am Legend and get a discussion going about which aspect of the Hulk audiences prefer, the taught psychology of the inner battles and the fugitive Banner, or the CGI brawls between monsters?