Hulk

B-

There's a novel idea behind Ang Lee's Hulk: a movie about a superhero that puts characters and situations first, and fighting bad guys second. Peter Parker became Spiderman to fulfill the dying wish of his Uncle Ben, whose death he was partly to blame; this is engaging material which no Spiderman movie has put in the forefront, which Ang Lee attempts to do with his very own superhero/monster, the mean green killing machine, Hulk. The result might have been engaging and edgy (certainly vastly different from on superhero flicks out there), but bogged down by unrealizable ambitions and a clunky script, what-could-have-been never really happened.

Ang Lee gives us the best-realized telling of the birth of a superhero (maybe other than Christopher Nolan's Batman, which came later). Socially inept, ultra-nerd Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) suffers from respressed tendencies. He had been bottled up since he was a kid, and at the age of four, he witnessed a tragic incident that led to the death of his parents and was left with lingering traumas and nightmares. The only person who he could confide in is his ex-girlfriend and fellow scientist Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), even then, not very much since they broke up because he was "emotionally distant". One day, an accident in the lab caused Bruce to be exposed to a fatal dose of gamma radiation. Instead of being pulverised, Bruce became even fitter; but now when he gets angry, his body morphs into a rampagious green monster. And when he received a visit from a man claiming to be his father, old wounds are opened, and unleashing the green hulk becomes Bruce's greatest fear and at the same time his only way to face suppressed emotional scars.

If Ang Lee had kept the movie simple and sweet like that, it would have been great. For at the core of the story is the release of Bruce's emotional angst, the love-story between him and Betty, the only person who calms him (and the hulk) down. However, the movie's plot meanders, giving, or rather wasting, time fleshing out secondary characters like Bruce's father, David Banner (Nick Nolte), and Betty's high-ranking military general father (Sam Elliott). The movie also took some time explaining how these two paternal figures happen to be archenemies; talk about kismet. Then there's Bruce's love-rival Leutenant Talbot (Josh Lucas), who wants to harness the power of the hulk for the military.

The failure for the Hulk to perform in the box-office never surprised me of course, but it did surprise Ang Lee. He claimed that the movie was unaccurately marketted: he made it as a horror movie, not an action-adventure. As I said, sure, there's a underlying theme of tragedy in Hulk, and we can see that Ang Lee wanted to bring that out, but ultimately he didn't succeed. Bruce's emotional baggage was never properly fleshed out - the dialogue doesn't dig deep, but rather goes over the issues. There's vague references to Jungian-complex or when Betty claims, out of nowhere, "physical pain is finite, but emotional pain goes on and on." It's like we are being told what to think rather than actually experiencing it. Also, Lee's use of comic book panel-like "screen play" is creative, but this obviously isn't fitting in a horror movie.

So there's the best and the worst of Hulk. I love the vibrance brought to the screen. It does feel like the pictures of the Incredible Hulk comic books are coming to life. The use of colours to bring almost a childish quality to the screen is noteworthy, whatever happens on screen is nice to look at. After watching King Kong, the animation that goes to Hulk (though it was groundbreaking at the time) is obviously inferior, but still fun to see. The scenes where Hulk goes against tanks, aircrafts, helicopters in the desert is awesome, though not very thrilling.

Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte, Sam Elliott and Josh Lucas are all fine actors, but their characters here are, well, crappy. I guess the script is to blame for that. But hey, just because I have alot of bad things to say about Hulk, that doesn't mean that it's that bad a movie. It's still got its moments, and it still gives us a vision, never fully materialized, of a unique telling of a superhero story, but that's all that it leaves us with.
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