BAH! PUNY HUMANS!
Yes, I caught a showing of Hulk this afternoon. As a movie, it was ok. It was definitely Crouching Tiger-style filmmaking. What I mean is that once again Ang Lee tries to take characters and drama with some degree of depth and disguise it as something else, be it a kung fu movie or a comic book film. I think the problem was that it worked almost too well. I think that's why a lot of people have been slamming the movie. I could see why people would be disappointed if they were just expecting a "comic book flick." It was meant to be more than that. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was certainly no Enter the Dragon, but it wasn't meant to do that, either.
I don't feel like restraining myself like I did when I posted on Matrix: Reloaded, so I'm gonna try a trick I picked up on some anime website. This means I'm about to post some SPOILER INFORMATION. If you still wish to read, just drag your mouse in between the horizontal lines.
Hulk's biggest strength, along with all the Marvel Comics movies to come out in the past couple of years (yes, even Daredevil) is the high degree of faithfulness to history. As far as Hulk, we saw some tweaking as expected. But, we also saw the following:
David Banner (played by Nick Nolte), doing some classic TV things including masquerading as a janitor AND subjecting himself to gamma rays.
Some say Jack Nicholson was the perfect choice as The Joker in Batman, and Patrick Stewart was born to be Professor X. Well, Sam Elliot was perfect as General "Thunderbolt" Ross (even though I don't recall him being called Thunderbolt in the movie). I will say that this didn't make itself evident until the last 1/3 of the movie. Only then did you see the classic mix of fear, hate, respect and pity that the character had for the Hulk in the comics.
Ripped purple pants! Who the hell wears purple pants in this day and age that isn't a raver or a pimp? But, the comic book Hulk did, and so did the movie one. Heck, they even had stretchable purple briefs just like Hulk had for awhile in the mid-80s.
Going back to "David Banner" for a second. In a key scene, he subjected himself to the same conditions that created the Hulk to take advantage of the genetic modifications he passed on to his son. I'm not going to explain it further -- see the flick yourself. Suffice it to say that I knew he wasn't going to be another Hulk. But the way his skin changed, I was sure they were going to make him "The Abomination" (one of Hulk's arch-enemies in the comic). I was fooled -- he ended up being "The Absorbing Man."
There might have been no gamma bomb, but there were big, green mushroom clouds.
There was no Rick Jones, per se, but the one fact about Hulk's origin stayed the same: Banner gets nuked while trying to save someone.
It was the ultimate thrill to see the same basic template of all of Hulk's confrontations with the military in the comic books on the big screen, right down to the bending of tank turrets!
Finally, two words from the script: "Puny human!" said by guess who :).
Thus endeth the ranting.
Yes, I caught a showing of Hulk this afternoon. As a movie, it was ok. It was definitely Crouching Tiger-style filmmaking. What I mean is that once again Ang Lee tries to take characters and drama with some degree of depth and disguise it as something else, be it a kung fu movie or a comic book film. I think the problem was that it worked almost too well. I think that's why a lot of people have been slamming the movie. I could see why people would be disappointed if they were just expecting a "comic book flick." It was meant to be more than that. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was certainly no Enter the Dragon, but it wasn't meant to do that, either.
I don't feel like restraining myself like I did when I posted on Matrix: Reloaded, so I'm gonna try a trick I picked up on some anime website. This means I'm about to post some SPOILER INFORMATION. If you still wish to read, just drag your mouse in between the horizontal lines.
Hulk's biggest strength, along with all the Marvel Comics movies to come out in the past couple of years (yes, even Daredevil) is the high degree of faithfulness to history. As far as Hulk, we saw some tweaking as expected. But, we also saw the following:
David Banner (played by Nick Nolte), doing some classic TV things including masquerading as a janitor AND subjecting himself to gamma rays.
Some say Jack Nicholson was the perfect choice as The Joker in Batman, and Patrick Stewart was born to be Professor X. Well, Sam Elliot was perfect as General "Thunderbolt" Ross (even though I don't recall him being called Thunderbolt in the movie). I will say that this didn't make itself evident until the last 1/3 of the movie. Only then did you see the classic mix of fear, hate, respect and pity that the character had for the Hulk in the comics.
Ripped purple pants! Who the hell wears purple pants in this day and age that isn't a raver or a pimp? But, the comic book Hulk did, and so did the movie one. Heck, they even had stretchable purple briefs just like Hulk had for awhile in the mid-80s.
Going back to "David Banner" for a second. In a key scene, he subjected himself to the same conditions that created the Hulk to take advantage of the genetic modifications he passed on to his son. I'm not going to explain it further -- see the flick yourself. Suffice it to say that I knew he wasn't going to be another Hulk. But the way his skin changed, I was sure they were going to make him "The Abomination" (one of Hulk's arch-enemies in the comic). I was fooled -- he ended up being "The Absorbing Man."
There might have been no gamma bomb, but there were big, green mushroom clouds.
There was no Rick Jones, per se, but the one fact about Hulk's origin stayed the same: Banner gets nuked while trying to save someone.
It was the ultimate thrill to see the same basic template of all of Hulk's confrontations with the military in the comic books on the big screen, right down to the bending of tank turrets!
Finally, two words from the script: "Puny human!" said by guess who :).
Thus endeth the ranting.
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