Becoming The Overman

SO, I JUST got back from a midnight showing of The Incredible Hulk in Durham with my friend James and his children. I saw the first one, Ang Lee's version, and had not nearly the bad things to say about it as did some others I've spoken to.

The problem is that, in his essence, the Hulk is really just a smash and crash kind of character. He's not even really that much of a superhero, because his motivation is not usually to "protect" citizens from danger. He just wants to hit things, and he just usually has a pretty good reason to be doing so (in other words, he gets pissed at bad people). Ang Lee tried to take that and push it almost solely in the opposite direction, working more on the emotional development of the big guy than on all the things he likes to break. Ang Lee's Hulk was not what Hulk fans were looking for, but he gets major credit for effort.

This Hulk does a remarkably, and surprisingly, good job at managing both sides of the character fairly and effectively, making for an all-around highly entertaining movie. Mean Green Hulk ends up getting just about as much air time as Edward Norton, whose portrayal of the woeful Bruce Banner is without fault (yet another surprise to me, bearing in mind his more recent roles). This Hulk is definitely more of a crowd pleaser than its predecessor; it had my audience applauding twice during the final fight scene at signature "Hulk moves" and once again at the roll of the credits, a feat not often performed at many of my movie-going experiences. The big surprise that is usually held for after the credits is delivered just before them, but we all stayed afterwards anyway to a large, audible sigh of disappointment at the final "Marvel Studios" logo that meant the end of the reel.

So, in the end, this movie ended up trumping my negative viewing of Iron Man, despite my original bias against this movie and for the former, and has reinstated my excitement about the Avengers film coming in the late Summer of 2011 (after the awaiting Thor movie in 2010 and Captain America: The First Avenger just three months prior to Avengers).

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker on Monday, June 16, 2008 at 4:18 AM | Permalink