The Incredible Hulk, 5/5

One of the issues I have found that makes for a bad superhero movie is excessive backstory.  In order to create a fully fleshed out, nuanced character, a number of directors and writers decide that they need a long period of “origin story.”  Ghost Rider had a long backstory.  The Ang Lee Hulk was essentially nothing but origin story.  Iron Man had a lot of backstory, but it was okay because it was action packed and didn’t feel like backstory (though I think it did keep the final battle from being a real full-feeling battle).  

Generally comic book heroes can have their origins broken up into one or two lines.  Spider-Man:  Bitten by a radioactive spider which gave him spider powers, while adolescence gave him teenage angst powers.  He lost a father figure, so he is out looking for justice and rationality in the world.  Batman:  Lost his parents, wants justice.  Has a childhood fear of bats that he had to reconcile.  X-Men:  Outcasts looking for friends, led by a man who saw the atrocities of genocide and wants to stop it.  Captain America:  G.I. who was given a big break by the government, so he feels he owes his country a debt.  Superman:  Alien powers, guided by his naive country bumpkin adoptive parents who still have faith in justice.  Punisher:  Already a little nuts, mob killed his family.  Catwoman:  Already a little nuts, thrill-junkie, likes pretty things.  Jughead:  Already a little nuts, metabolic mutation combined with the funny hat allows him to convert hamburgers into pure radioactive energy.  The Incredible Hulk:  Radioactive experiment gone haywire (bomb, serum, it doesn’t matter).  Loses control when made angry, but he loves Betty Ross, however her father, his creator, wants to harness his power.

The Hulk is a hard character to get interested in, despite the fact that he is really interesting.  He is not so much a hero in his early incarnations.  He is just an angry beast who fights other gamma-irradiated angry beasts.  He doesn’t have the quality of villains as Spider-Man, X-Men, or the Fantastic Four.  Hell, he doesn’t even have the number of villains as Aquaman.  But as Marvel started to see that this character could fall into a rut, they started making him interesting.  In the early 90’s the Hulk was split into the angry, dumb, green Hulk, and the angry, smart, grey Hulk.  They were both parts of Banner and there were battles that raged in his head between the two.  After that they were synergized into one person and the Hulk remained powerful only as long as he was calm, when he got angry, he morphed into Banner.  One doesn’t expect to see this in the early movies, one just wants to see Hulk bust some stuff up and say “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,” and “Hulk Smash!”  But the possibilities for interesting psychological future movies remains.

The Ang Lee movie has some brilliant moments.  Moments where you can see that there was a clear vision behind this and it was supposed to be a movie that would bring nerds out of the baseboards like roaches.  Unfortunately, that vision got lost somewhere and we ended up with Hulk (review pending).

The Incredible Hulk takes what was in the Hulk and improves upon it enormously.  Instead of an hour and a half of backstory that shows what a brooding, troubled person Bruce is, with Betty being the only bright spot in his life, we have a montage that shows, with no words, exactly the same thing in about seven minutes.  From there we see that Banner is living on his own and seems to have been doing that for a while.  There is a brief story point where we see he is a cautious, meticulous man, but enjoys his anonymity.  We also see that he cares for others and doesn’t want to see harm happen.  We see all of this in the first twenty to thirty minutes.  Then the action starts.  General Ross finds out where he is and sends in the troops, so we see the Banner on the run in an all day chase that ends with our first glimpse of the Hulk.

This movie had a number of things the first movie did not.  First and foremost, a villain.  I’m sorry, but General Thunderbolt Ross does not count as a villain, he counts as an irritation.  The army doesn’t work either, sorry.  The only reason Stane counted as a villain in Iron Man is because he got off his duff and did something about his aspirations.  He created something that allowed him to go toe to toe with the hero.  In the first movie, Ross just whines and sends in the troops.  The new movie has Abomination in it and Tim Roth plays the man who becomes Abomination very well.  He has a ruthlessness and a drive that is needed for someone who will undergo the process to get power.  The people I saw it with had a problem with his look, saying he was too short.  I grew up with Wolverine being really short, but tough as nails so I had no trouble with that, and I thought Roth’s face was fantastic.  It was hard and set, with teeth like little daggers.  I think he could play a werewolf very well.

Bruce Banner is a weedy man.  He needs to be thin and unassuming, but still have an iron in his eyes that shows the beast within.  Edward Norton was perfect.  He does soft-spoken, but he can still kick-ass when he needs to.  He and Liv Tyler showed real emotion and feeling for each other.  I believed that they were separated lovers, without question.

The Hulk character was, obviously, a CG character.  I am not a fan of the increasing amount of CG in movies, but there are times where it is necessary.  The Hulk was relatively believable, his interactions with others were realistic and his skin and musculature did not have me groaning.  The Hulk kept all of the scars on the face that Banner had (particularly the scar under his eye) and I thought that was a great touch.  The eyes however were the most unreal to me.  I don’t know that I have ever seen a realistic CG eye, and I think the reason is that the animators are trying to hard.  They are putting in too much light reflection in an effort to make them emote.  Usually a human eye will have one or two points of light, but Hulk and Abomination seemed to light themselves and then additionally it looked like they were looking at the explosion of the Death Star (in the remade ones, where Lucas thought that every explosion needed a damned ring around it).  Also, there is a point where the Hulk is walking through a creek and his feet make no splashes and no water clings to them.  It was like he was a ghost.  Other than these two points, though, the CG was pretty good, believable, even.  And at least he stayed a consistent size (about eight feet) the entire movie.

This movie had the standard cameos by Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno, but also had the theme from the original Hulk TV series, which was really good to hear again, and it also had a cameo from Tony Stark, furthering the story of the Avengers movie.  We were also set up to see the origin of the Leader, but in a nice low-key way.  A foreshadowing that was unobtrusive, but fans would notice.

But what about the final battle, you ask?  It was good.  It did not feel rushed and it had some interesting combat.  Even the physics of the fight were not completely off the wall.  This movie was two hours but it had enough meat in it to keep me interested.  It felt like one hour.

Overall:  5/5, I loved it.  In fact, I think I liked this one better than Iron Man, however it is like comparing apples and oranges (and I bet I’ll be in the minority for liking this one better).