Wednesday, February 17, 2016

The Grand Marvel Rewatch: The Incredible Hulk

Face front, true believers! Welcome to the next astonishing addition to “The Grand Marvel Rewatch,” designed to get us all sufficiently amped up for Captain America: Civil War, which comes out May 6, 2016. Each Wednesday, The Cinema King casts his eye back upon the twelve films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and offers five salient observations about the caliber of the films and the way they might play into Marvel’s latest installment in America’s favorite franchise.

Today’s fantastic feature film keeps us in the realm of 2008 for The Incredible Hulk, the only sole film starring our not-so-jolly green giant.
  1. Sorry, this one’s a little boring. I’ve seen Iron Man more times than I can count, but The Incredible Hulk is undoubtedly the Marvel movie I’ve seen the fewest number of times, and that’s entirely due to the fact that this one is just a little bit dull – especially in comparison to Iron Man. It’s not that The Incredible Hulk is poorly made, but nearly everyone in the film proceeds with this lackadaisical attitude of monster malaise, such that any other emotional valence comes off as either insincere or cartoonishly out of place. 
  2. Apologies to Edward Norton, but... It’s impossible to watch this film without looking ahead to Mark Ruffalo’s turn as Bruce Banner in The Avengers, and Ed Norton just doesn’t measure up to what Ruffalo does with the character. Again, Norton’s Banner is somewhat one-note, desperate to rid himself of the Hulk, but for a moviegoer that’s a somewhat unappealing narrative hook. Ruffalo, meanwhile, struggles to manage the Hulk more as a disorder than a disease, which makes for a more engaging character arc than just running away from problems. It’s apparent that Norton is an immense fan of the character, but this just isn’t a cinematic Hulk.  
  3. The perils of world-building. Aside from the RDJ cameo in the last scene of the film, The Incredible Hulk feels too much like a stand-alone film. With William Hurt returning as General Ross in Civil War, this effect might be mitigated somewhat, but there is a sense that The Incredible Hulk is the jigsaw piece that doesn’t fit in the MCU. The train leaves the station without a crystal-clear origin story, there are rough allusions to a super-soldier serum that doesn’t gel with Captain America: The First Avenger, and supporting characters like Doc Samson and The Leader are winked at but then abandoned. With their respective actors elsewhere – Ty Burrell on Modern Family and Tim Blake Nelson in that Marvel movie which shall not be named – it’s unlikely we’ll see these incarnations again. 
  4. That Hulk, however... For as much as I couldn’t get behind Norton as Bruce Banner, The Hulk himself is actually pretty well-done. There are three big Hulk sequences, and each does something sufficiently different to justify its existence. You have a horror-inspired opener, a broad-daylight centerpiece, and then the big climactic battle between two titans. These are really good setpieces that show off what the Hulk can do, and if you can set aside the visual inconsistency between this and The Avengers, these Hulk action scenes are a good forerunner to what’s to come in the MCU. As an added bonus, we get to hear Hulk say “HULK SMASH” rather than Captain America, which ought to appeal to purists like myself. 
  5. Must there be a Hulk movie? I’ve been wondering this a lot lately. To date, The Incredible Hulk is the only one-off in the MCU, and honestly it’s difficult for me to envision a Hulk standalone film that doesn’t involve at least one other Avenger. Look, Marvel has tried The Hulk twice, and it didn’t stick either time because there’s something inherently un-cinematic about a character who doesn’t want to Hulk out. It might work in a serialized format like the television show to which this film clearly pays homage (but which I confess I’ve never seen), but I think Hulk works better as part of an ensemble. I’m eager to be proven wrong, but I can’t at this juncture imagine a standalone superhero film starring The Hulk (and no, Planet Hulk doesn’t count).
There’s so much more to be said about The Incredible Hulk, so be sure to check out my original review. Join me in the Grand Marvel Rewatch over the coming weeks, and hit the comments to share your thoughts about the MCU. And don’t forget to tune in next Wednesday for the next installment, in which we take a closer look at 2010’s Iron Man 2. Excelsior!

1 comment:

Bill Koester said...

I remember having a blast at this movie in the theater. I might've just been in a good mood that day for some other reason, but still, I think this one's good, even if it's if not up there among the best. The narrative is admittedly a little weak. It's like they knew people still remembered the Ang Lee Hulk and therefore mostly skipped the origin instead of telling it again (I remember at the time some people said it kind of worked as a quasi-sequel to Lee's movie as well as a standalone reboot). But the Hulk fights were great. And I like Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner, but I thought Edward Norton was also good. It's interesting to think how his portrayal would have differed from Ruffalo's had they kept him for the rest of the series; if his other roles are any indication, I think Norton would have been a more intense Banner than Ruffalo's mostly mild-mannered contrast to the Hulk. Also, for some reason, I absolutely LOVE the moment where they ask Tim Roth how he's feeling, and he replies, "Like a monster."

As for points four and five, there's not much less world-building than the first Iron Man. It's just that a lot of the world-building in this was abandoned. For that reason, you notice much more in hindsight when rewatching Iron Man, but both films feel pretty standalone. But with Hulk supposedly being a big part of Thor: Ragnarok, it sounds like you and Marvel are on the same page about another Hulk movie.