The Hulk series: Of Purple Pants and Daddy Issues

Heh, over on Bad Ass Digest their stunt critic "Hulk" has an interesting essay on the two Hulk films. If you can wade through the ALL CAPS writing, filled with stupid "Hulk smash" references, it's actually pretty good.

 

Me I really like the Incredible Hulk. I like that he's played as a straight out super hero in this film (vs a tragic monster, or a Super Daddy Issues guy like in Ang Lee's version). I like that the real story arc is actually the Abomination, or, viewed at more broadly, the real villain of the film is the proliferation of the technology that creates Hulk, The Abomination and the Leader, plus Hulked out Stan Lee (who no doubt will be the big bad in the sequel!).

 

 

 

 

The ALL CAPS writing is simply unreadable. I understand what they're going for but they needed to figure out another way to convey shouting, because as it is my eyes hurt when I try to look at those sentences

Double post sorry

I tried to read his piece on MW3, and despite being interested by what he had to say and sort of agreeing with the few paragraphs I was able to get through, I had to close the page because the ALL CAPS was unreadable and giving me a headache. It's truly disastrous site design, letting that ALL CAPS nonsense continue. No one can read it, so no matter the content it's a wasted effort

No one can read it?

 

Excuse me?

 

I can read it!

 

You know, he also provides links to copy and paste his articles to make them lowercase if that helps you.

Yeah Nooj but that doesn't count, as clearly you're gifted with some sort of super vision denied to us mortals

 

Anyway, thanks for the heads up on the copy and paste link thing!
 

 

The thing about it is, the guy's plenty informed and insightful, so he doesn't need the gimmick, but that doesn't mean it can't be fun anyway.  But he needs to drop it or put in the work to do it for real.  It could be funny if he interspersed the high-minded bloviating he's basically doing now with periodic all caps HULK OUTS, or if he could find a way to express his complex theses in the Hulk's caveman grammar.  But that's more work than just putting a blog post in all caps and search/replacing "I" with "HULK".  I have no problem with schtick, but when you don't commit to it fully it becomes obnoxious.

 

On topic, I don't think Lee's Hulk is demonstrably better than Marvel's.  It has much higher highs, but also more frequent and lower lows.  And I think Norton is a better fit for Banner than Bana (who does well, mind), and Tim Roth is one of the best comic villains we've gotten thus far.

Actually, I just skim so hard that I end up just getting HULK's key points as my eye catches them.  And since the guy is so verbose, my skimming actually results in a reading experience about the length of an average piece!  I can blaze through paragraphs and still get the important points!!!!

 

Anyway, he actually does cover why he won't be changing his ways anytime soon.  Some interesting points he makes about it, actually.

 

I actually do think Lee's film is superior to Marvel's, and really, I cannot think of one scene in Lee's film that bummed me out more than the "final" scene in The Incredible Hulk. An obvious last minute add-on of a post-credit scene that takes all of the air out of what was obviously meant to be the real ending. This is all commercial product in one way or another, but it was jarring to see an entire film turned into a advertisement in the space of 60 seconds.

 

 

 

Edited for reading comprehension.

 

Edited by JacknifeJohnny - 12/28/11 at 4:28pm

The Stark cameo was definitely tacked on, but I didn't feel as offended by it as I you did.  I ultimately like Lee's better, but it's definitely a case of ambitious-but-flawed vs. solid-but-unremarkable.  I think most film fans eventually reach a point where they'll take the former every time, but I don't think there's really a slam dunk on either side.

I do recall, that was something like upcomingmovies.yahoo.com or something very similar. As I recall, the writer abandoned the site because of some family health issues, though I think he came back to do some freelancing at other sites. That site was freakin' great.

 

As for the Hulk debate, I feel like Letterier's film feels like a worthy, accurate adaptation of the comics, and I kinda love it, especially the excised material on the Blu-Ray. But the Ang Lee version takes the source material and actually goes somewhere different and interesting with it, transcending the character and its origins. I know it was company protocol to throw Lee's movie under the bus, though I was surprised someone like Ed Norton would do it so openly, that was very uncool.

I like both films, for 2 very different things. Action wise, I can take the recent film. There are times I'm not in the mood to use my brain when watching a movie, but when I do, I'll watch Ang's film. Just depends on the mood. Ang's can feel a little too debby downer some days, but Norton's seems too Liv Tyler being an idiot.

I don't think I'd ever watch HULK all the way through again, unless I was really bored. I've not seen all of it since it left theaters. I just remember it being a really unpleasant experience; grim, confusing and slightly dull. However, I watched some of the action scenes recently, and they're legitimately exhilarating in a way virtually nothing is in movies these days. Hulk had an awe inspiring sense of freedom and power, and the mocap work felt palpably human and rage-y, where as the purely animated hulk in TIH was basically a cartoon. I like Norton and Tim Roth, but the highs of the Lee film, such as they are, at least come from a place of artistic brilliance and inspiration. 2009 HULK is just tired, cheap and by the numbers in comparison. It gets a few elements right, and it moves along agreeably enough, but it never makes me *feel*, or care much about cinema as an art form

What bugs me about Lee's film is how critics and Internet Geeks "oohed" and "aahed" over what was in fact some pretty standard stuff. The use of Comic book panel formatting in film was used by George Romero in Creepshow in the 80's, for God's sake, and much better than in Hulk IMO, yet that was highlighted as some masterful Artisic vision thing.

 

Was Lee's Hulk ambitious? Sure, but to me it just didn't work, and didn't resonate. And making Banner's Daddy Issues Text by having Daddy turn into a giant Blob? That's supposed to be Drama?! Finally, the CGI did not work for me, at all. When bullets bounce off Hulk it's like they are hitting a .....blob! Which isn't very threatening.

 

I do think Film Critic Hulk has a great point about Incredible Hulk: at no point do we "get" why Banner is tormented by being the Hulk. Sure he says he is, and he's desperate to find a cure. But, apart from waking up in a different country after a black out, we never actually see what's so bad about being the Hulk. When Betty asks him what it's like being the Hulk, he tells her it's like being on Acid. Which some people might find disturbing (maybe especially Banner, who is played by Ed Norton as being a consumate Rationalist). And in the opening credits it's stated that I Hulk killed at least two people, so there's that. But again, we never see I Hulk kill anyone, though he has plenty of opportunity and reason to do so. So we're left with I Hulk being a Super hero. Which I'm fine with actually.

 

It's also notable that the antagonist is not as personal as Lee's Hulk. It seems every Super hero movie has the hero fighting an immediate family member or friend, or friend's relative. It's a cheap device to create drama IMO. In Incredible Hulk Blonsky see's the Hulk as a professional challenge, and an incredible (see what I did there?) opportunity. It makes the real threat of the Hulk larger because it's not Banner fighting Daddy; it's Banner fighting the Army and the idea of the Super Solider program, as well as himself. And every wingnut who wants to become a Hulk, which in the movie's world they can now do, thanks to Banner.

What I like about 2009 Hulk, and Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, is that they replicate the experience of reading a Marvel Comicbook. I have no idea how they did it, or how that's possible, but I've sat through all those films with a big grin on my face because it's like being in my room when I was a kid, on Thursday afternoon (new issue day!) with the latest issue of Xmen etc. I think all these films are great entertainments. None of them have advanced the art of cinema, it's true. I have plenty of options for that kind of movie as well. But if I'm in a mood to relax and have some fun, or even perk myself up after a bad day, these are the (current) Go-To films for me.

To follow up on something I said of Nolte's character in the first film, there's this shot in the climax that gets to the tragedy of his character. When Banner Sr. is doing his "Colin Clive monologue", it's acting with a captial A, but there are some nice subtleties present. There are a few times during his ranting where he realizes that he needs to calm down and *act* like a father so that his son will submit to him w/ as little resistance as possible. It doesn't work of course because Banner Sr. is too obviously deranged and he doesn't have the skill or really even the will to pretend that he doesn't have a God complex. So he just says fuck it and decides to take what he came for by force.  The moment I speak of occurs right after Banner Sr. is vanquished. It's a quick flashback to Banner Sr. lovingly embracing his child and the look of peace and bliss on both of their faces is heartbreaking.

 

Bruce killing his father is not a moment of triumph, it's a terrible loss for both of them. I love that shot because it says that Banner Sr. didn't just lose his life, but lost the fight with his sanity, with whatever issues of self-loathing that brought him to put all of these foreign elements into his body and change himself beyond the point of no return. I say foreign elements, because what the mutation is a metaphor for is say something like alcoholism. He passed it on, and it fucked up his son's life, and now as a grown man, he has to live with this dangerous, nigh unwieldy thing that he's going to be managing for possibly the rest of his days.    

 

I love Ang Lee's Hulk, but for some reason I could never get past David Banner's release from prison. This is a man that set off a nuclear bomb and has been in a mental institute for thirty years, and yet he doesn't have a parole officer? The government doesn't keep tabs on him?

A serious question: wouldn't those themes be much more effective in a drama about drug abuse? What is gained by putting them into a Comicbook movie?

nice analysis.

 

I think Hulk is one of the most beautiful movies I've seen.  I love the little moments of introspection, like Hulk looking at the lichen when he's in the desert and the weird alienness that the editing sometimes brings in.

 

I also love how it actually gave a fairly realistic reason as to why he would hulk out.  The whole genetic mutation thing making his cells flexible enough to deal with the nanites that are activated by the gamma radiation and the "rage" response of the sea cucumber (or whatever) making him greener, actually made sense rather than just "oh well, he got bombarded by gamma rays and that's enough". 

 

I really struggled with the Incredible Hulk.  I liked the first time the team goes up against him in Brazil, where it's shot almost like a horror movie, but after that.. well, it just lost me for some reason.

 

I first read this as "there are some nice subtitles present," which immediately made me think of a potential latter-day Nolte performance so gnarled and ranty it actually does need subtitles. Something like his Thin Red Line character crossed with Frank McRae in Last Action Hero.

 

This would be awesome and needs to happen.

 

On topic, isn't the whole daddy-issue thing more or less an artifact from the Bill Mantlo years on the comic book?

 

If so, he pretty much laid the groundwork for the character for the last 25 years or so.

 

EDIT: Yep.

And something Peter David picked up and ran with for years.

 

I'm actually not a fan of the "destiny" aspects of Hulk. I like the movie a lot, and prefer it to The Incredible Hulk, but where it falters for me is with everything having to do with David Banner:

 

First of all, the movie takes about twenty minutes to introduce Bana as Bruce Banner. This is a mistake, focusing far too long on him as a child only to treat the very scenes we just saw as mysterious repressed memories. Yes he blocks out his mother actually being stabbed, but the build up to that reveal is so perfunctory as to be unnecessary. Imagine if after the credits sequence with the lab experiments, the movie began with Banner on bicycle. Much smoother. 

 

Second, the idea of Banner as "damned" is a problem in modern fiction. Like J. Michael Straczynski writing Peter Parker as being a spider-totem, or the new The Amazing Spider-Man movie hinting that Peter's parents play a part in him getting the powers. The beauty of the Marvel superheroes of the '60s is how they came about by happenstance, and have to face the consequences of their actions. Banner, for instance, is bombarded by gamma rays after an act of heroism, pushing Rick Jones into the ditch; generally viewed as a weak man, the one time he acts with strength he is forever punished for it. That's elegant poetic justice. 

 

Cut Nick Nolte's David Banner out of the movie and the plot, amazingly, still functions. Bruce still gets bombarded by gamma rays, runs wild, gets captured by the military, and has a showdown with them in San Francisco. Ever notice how the David Banner stuff feels like the conclusion of a completely different script, grafted onto the movie? 

Cut out all of the David Banner stuff and you have a main character with no real arc or resolution, i.e., The Incredible Hulk. The trek to San Francisco feels like the end of the second act, which is exactly what it is. Also, the movie does not say that Bruce Banner is damed, Ross says it. I always took Banner working in the same field as his father as less to do with damnation and more an intimation that Banner Sr's experiments resulted in Bruce being the recipient of an enhanced genetic memory. The fact that the movie repeatedly shows that whatever the Hulk is is derived from a variety of "lower lifeforms" on an intimately linked evolutionary chain supports this.

 

 

It could be about a near sociopath learning to deal with emotion. As is, the movie borders on that (the first shot of Bana shaving hesitantly, the callback during Hulk's fall from the sky), but shifts gears into a daddy issues plot that feels half-baked. Why couldn't the daddy issues have been relegated to the repressed memories, and foiled by Betty's relationship with her father in the present? David Banner in the present day is superfluous and in fact hurts the movie. 

Not trying to be a smart ass, but I'm really not understanding what you're talking about. The movie never shifts gears, instead it steadily reveals more and more about Bruce and the people that orbit him. Argue up and down about tone, but in terms of the story it's trying to tell, it's eye is never not on the ball. The relationship between Bruce and his father is the mainline that pulls everything along. Example: Betty loves Bruce, who is an emotionally distant and hard-to-know man, just like her father. She wants to be there for him, but is afraid of what that means for her well-being (hence her her dream in which she's a child and an adult Bruce appears ready to suffocate her). Bruce can't really do anything to assuage her fears because he doesn't really know a lot about himself. Bruce learns what he needs to know, allowing Betty to "find him" (to paraphrase a line from the film), and thus end her fear of him (as an added bonus, her relationship with her father is repaired along the way). Absolutely none of that happens w/out Bruce being exposed to who David Banner is.

 

I don't think your argument is about David Banner being "superfluous" (which again, based on the story this film wants to tell is absolutely not true) so much as it is about you not wanting the film to be so invested in the Hulk's relationship with his father, which is a different thing.

Edited by JacknifeJohnny - 1/9/12 at 6:43pm

Yes, but those revelations stem from flashbacks, flashbacks that involve a different actor playing David Banner. I'm arguing that none of the Nick Nolte as David in the present day scenes have any real consequence:

 

Bruce still becomes Hulk

Bruce, upon hulking out, still goes to the cabin in the woods to see Betty

Betty still calls her father and the military

Hulk still fights the military

Betty talks Hulk down into being Bruce in San Francisco

 

I'm not saying cut the character David Banner out; cut out Nick Nolte the Absorbing Janitor and his gamma powered poodle. 

Bruce's final confrontation with his father on the base, even before he goes all supervillain, is a scene absolutely key to the resultion of Bruce's arc. What is it they say? An alcoholic or drug addict will never not be that thing, but it's confronting and understanding it's origins so you go along your way? Bruce's memories never would have come back to him if David Banner hadn't shown up. Present day David Banner is essential. Also, why cut out the supervillain stuff? It's a damn comic book movie, and it serves the film well that the elder Banner has mad scientist motivations grafted onto his realistic familial issues. That's basically a perfect microcosm of what the movie is.

 

I thought this thread would be about the new INCREDIBLE HULK show. It wasn't. Bullshit.

You're making a great argument, and I've been loving this conversation, but something has never sat well with me about David in the present. Maybe it's Bruce being adopted and not knowing he's a Banner, which adds nothing to the plot, or David being simultaneously on Ross' shitlist and going completely unnoticed by the authorities as he gets a job at Bruce's lab and steals equipment. Add onto that the coincidence of Bruce dating the daughter of a man that hated his father, and this all feels like second draft stuff. I love the idea of gamma powered dogs (otherwise there wouldn't be a 2nd act action setpiece) and a superpowered villain, but it all feels so after-the-fact. Ross is the real antagonist; Bruce isn't shown to feel much of anything toward David.

Bruce doesn't (consciously) feel anything towards his father because he doesn't know his father. Of course, Bruce gets experience first hand the kind of man his father is (or has become) when Banner Sr. sends mutant dogs to kill his girlfriend, so I would say that changes things quite a bit. Ross is a pseudo-antagonist. The film ultimately reveals that he and Bruce really shouldn't be at odds with one another. Ross isn't a bad guy at all really, he's just surly because his relationship with his daughter is shit and because of the beauracracy of his job. He goes fucking ballistic when these two things intersect in such an intimate way. And yes, this has been fun.

 

 

Great comment! I really hate the trend, not just in comics but also in movies, to make the hero a "child of DESTINY!". It takes the drama out of the story. Marvel heroes are for the most part accidents, which means that in theory they don't know there F'ing destinies any better than we do. They just do the best they can.

 

I'd nit pick on one point though: Banner is responsible for the Gamma Bomb (in the comics), so when he saves Rick he's taking personal responsibility to make sure that an innocent is not killed due to his actions. Which in one sense is futile, since Banner has no way to control how/when Gamma Bombs may be used in the future.

 

I think we've reached an impasse.

 

I love Hulk, warts and all, and need to give it a re-watch. The reason I referred to Ross as the antagonist is because I agree that he is not a villain. His character and Bruce, along with Talbot, have a much more fascinating tension than Bruce does with David, namely the question of what it is to be a man. Both Ross and Talbot obviously believe Bruce to be some wimp unworthy of Betty's affection, and Bruce does ultimately win Betty's affection through aggression (he even chokes her for real). All of that allows those four characters so much depth and shading, David's plot isn't as compelling. 

 

It's not a dealbreaker, however, and there's an especially fascinating oedipal (and Electra) element to Bruce and Betty's relationships with their parents. One effective scene of Nolte's David is when Betty comes to visit him. There's an uncomfortable sexual energy to that scene, very understated. 

 

No.*

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Transferred to keep from derailing Avengers thread any further.

Yes: You had Auteur's tackling works of popular culture, getting certain aspects of the look and feel of each work correctly (In the case of Dune, the set and costume design are spot on: in the case of Hulk, the use of split panels, while controversial, is true to the spirit of the comic), but missing the essence of what makes each work great.

I love both Hulk movies equally but in different ways.

 

Ang Lee's movie is a visionary near-masterpiece that is soo self-assured while it took Singer, Raimi, Del Toro and Nolan until their sequels (X2, Spider-man 2, Hellboy 2, The Dark Knight) to reach those heights while it was also the best "comic book" movie since Creepshow. Its only problem is that it's too cerebral and esoteric for most people and tries too hard to give weight to what is essentially a riff on Jekyll & Hyde with a man who turns into a giant green monster when he gets angry and smashes shit. The main problem with HULK is the lack of internal antagonism between two characters trying to control the same body. Banner is always trying to suppress his emotions but Hulk is never given a voice where he could represent the dark side of the ID.  Regardless, I love Hulk 2003.

 

The Incredible Hulk is a very solid action movie, no more, no less. It's got a near perfect three act structure with Banner hulking out and the end of each act while the movie offers a clear cut antagonist in the form of Blonsky who becomes The Abomination, another monster for the Hulk to fight at the climax. TIH works both as a sequel to HULK and as a stand alone while I love the fact that it mimics the structure of the TV show with Banner on the run from the Army. The movie doesn't have the ambition of Lee's movie but it's very, very well made and, to be honest, I find myself watching it a bit more than the first movie just because of the added action quotient.

 

So, for me, both Hulk movies compliment each other and give me things that the other doesn't and I like both more than the first Blade, X-Men, Spider-man, Iron Man or Batman Begins/Superman Returns. The only recent comic book movies that I like as much as the Hulk flicks are Thor, Captain America and X-Men First Class. I don't count The Avengers as Hulk 3 but I hope that the character is done justice as he's the only comic book character that has, so far, not been in a shitty movie.     

Bartleby has a very good point, what with the number of coincidences that are going on in Hulk. On a purely objective level, its bothersome from a narrative structure standpoint, but in terms of it being a comic book movie, I give it a pass, because comic books are chock-full of these kinds of close-knit, hugely coincidental relationships. 

Hulk breaking out of the military base is the best Marvel action sequence, in my opinion, by far.

I think Incredible is hugely forgettable, but I see why people would enjoy it.

 

 

Which is exactly why I included it in my Marvel "Movieverse" Marathon that I've been spreading out over the weeks before Avengers is released.  Not everything lines up well, but most of it surprisingly does.

 

I loved The Incredible Hulk the first time I saw it and still do.  Of the Marvel Studios slate of films, I'd say the first Iron Man is still my favorite.  Right behind it are Captain America and TIH tied for second place.  Thor is third.  IM2 is fourth.  I won't go into what I enjoy about TIH right now because most of you have covered it already.  Overall the performances are pretty great (particularly Roth), as is the action.  It's nothing revolutionary or classic in the superhero genre, but a damn solid affair nonetheless.

 

I hated Ang Lee's Hulk when I saw it in theaters.  I still hated it when I rented it once it hit DVD.  After those two tries, I didn't watch it for years.  Last year, it was on TV late one night and I found myself watching the start of it because nothing else was on.  I immediately turned it off after about 10 minutes.  I did this not because I still hated it, but because it was sucking me in and I didn't want my reassessment to occur while watching it in Pan & Scan on late night cable.  I went out the next day and bought the Blu-ray.  It's been a love-fest ever since.  Everything I had previously hated about the film (Nolte, the climactic battle, etc.) finally clicked with me and I loved.  Once again, I'm not going to go into detail right now.  It's been a long day and I'm much too tired to coherently describe my thoughts on the subject.

 

Basically, I love both films.  They each click for me, but in completely different ways.  What excites me most about Avengers is the fact that it sounds like I might be getting a third interpretation of the character that I will likely love just as much.

 

I'll do my best to pop back in here soon to better describe what I like and dislike about each film, but wanted to at least leave a decent view of my opinions on both.