Hulk C/D? (spoilers)

the hulk gets mad, smashes things.
Sorry.

It's an amazingly well-shot and well-edited Ang Lee film with the Hulk seemingly grafted in; after the CGI of LOTR, the Hulk is a letdown, although not as bad as the commercials would have you believe. However, I don't believe anyone could have seen the concept to fruition -- save Peter Jackson -- so the slings and arrows in Lee's direction aren't warranted, IMHO. In fact, it looked like a Hollywood flick with an art-film soul screaming to get out, so I guess the duality thread inherent in "Hulk" is apt after all.

What are the odds that a sequel will be planned but they'll get Bruckheimer or someone to do it and they'll scrap all the touchy feely?

AND (to disuade Anthony's Bruckheimer fears), from what I've heard, interest in a Hulk sequel has been expressed by none other than Ang Lee - here's hoping for some nice box office.

the origins stuff seemed mishandled (lots of empty-feeling exposition) from the perspective of plot, but it DID seem to establish the comic book style visually, which after seeing the rest of the movie I am much more impressed by. it actually took me a while - like an hour? - to even realize that that's what he was doing with the boxes and stuff, even though I of course saw it at the beginning and, duh, it's a comic book movie. but nearer to the beginning I guess I just sort of took anything I saw and thought 'oh yeah lame devices to make it seem like a comic'. later on once I remembered more about how it feels to look at a page in a comic book, the way even if you don't want to your eye picks up more than just the one frame, makes the action sort of come simultaneously, something clicked. the frame-in-frame stuff started hitting me a lot harder then, like an extra kick to many of the spots it was used just from the fact that there were multiple things going on at once, even when they were boring things or reaction shots of otherwise not terribly intense reactions. the way the frames moved around a lot probably had something to do with it. I certainly never had that kind of reaction from anything else I've seen to use devices related to this (not that I have seen much, I'm sure it's been used extensively somewhere or another).

the cgi was obviously 'unrealistic' but I don't think that mattered much. the scenes of bruce's second change, the one where he ended up fighting the dogs, was really astonishing. I don't think I've found a fight scene in a movie that visceral in forever. I was really, literally, astonished. things like violence, anger, evil, that kind of thing, are like, you know, bad and stuff, but usually I think I don't get the full effect of them in movies. I don't mean that quite in a 'desensitized to violence' etc way, though I probably am. it's just that in many movies I'm happy to let violence, evil, etc., often be semi-neutral elements of movies that have a big part in plot-oriented tension. here this stuff seemed to make the movie more MORALLY tense, besides the plot stuff, in a much stronger way than I'm used to.

the later fight scenes, with the military, retained a suitably epic feel - I never started feeling too accustomed to the scale of the violence, which I think could have been a danger. even though they had him jumping miles and miles, catching missiles and stuff, everything still had the sense of being extreme violence on an individual level, kind of like stubbing your toe or something, only with tanks and stuff.

I wish they hadn't had hulk talk that one time during the fall from the plane. I had already happily assumed that they wouldn't ever have him talk (even if I did kind of want to hear him say 'hulk mad' or something, but I might have gotten that from phil hartman sketches or something).

I'm not really sure where my sympathies were, at many points. in lots of places at once, maybe.

the stuff where his father brought out his own powers, and the fight with him at the end, felt rushed, but I don't know what would have been a better alternative. certainly not a longer movie. or a substantially shorter one. (?) but nolte rocking the unabomber schtick was really surprisingly good by the end. until right before the nuke (the part with the weird bubble) I was ready to go along with anything anyone said about greek tragedy. I really wasn't feeling the bubble, though.

Are you being ironic again? You little scamp.

http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/images/I12796-2003Jun19L

ebert mentioned something that I noticed and liked a lot, too - the multiple angles for close dialogue (and lots and lots of the dialogue or dialogueless interaction was close up). especially as an alternative to fucking point of view shots.

The "puny human" bit was definitely a nod to the fanboys/girls in the audience, but I think it worked in terms of giving a nod to the Banner / Hulk psychodramatic battle (an angle that's gotten lots of comic book love - it's the foundation of Peter David's 100+ issue run, & has gotten some superficial play via other comic folks) which mirrors the child / parent :: abuser / abusee stuff that permeates the flick.

BTW, Josh, you are dead-on re: the comic book framing & what it implies / denotes. I also took all the cutting mid-dialogue to different angles as another nod to comic panels, too. Such chicanery also helped make the bits of the flick that would've been laughable in a straight up seriously presented film (cf. Banner's dad chewing on wires to turn into ZZZZZAX, the "mutant french poodle", the psychodramatic ending w/ Dad trying to subsume Son, the outlined death of Talbot) more palatable. Not to say the film didn't take things seriously, but there was definitely a sense of perspective informing the material.

& let me also 2nd Josh's assessment of the "dog fight" - what seemed to be a very, very, very, very wrong move for the film to make turned out to be a fantastic action sequence where the violence perpetrated could actually be FELT instead of being passively experienced.

While all of the action sequences were fantastic, the scene that, in retrospect, impressed me the most was the 1st transformation, just because it came about so gradually. It mirrored that well-known sequence of shots from the TV show - shoes rip here, pants rip here, here's the eye bugging out & changing - but there was a smoothness, almost a comfortable inevitability, to the sequence that made it unnervingly mundane to watch. & then, of course, Hulk smash lab to bits. It's as if (and I'm stretching here) Lee knew the audience was expecting The Transformation Scene eventually, so instead of playing it up as the climax of the film, he simply presented it as "just another sequence". The 2nd transformation (after Tablot slaps Banner around) is much more jarring.

I'm definitely going to go to the theatre next week in the afternoon to see the film sans horseshit audience members (did I mention the kid sitting a row in front of me laughing at just about EVERY dramatic moment in the film? he spent the pre-movie time tossing kernels of popcorn onto the floor like Robert Parrish freethrows) (wooodog).

Also - Tablot's colostomy bag was a nice touch.

Ooh, I have the trailer on a CD-ROM here somewhere. Hang on...

Didn't tell me much, in fact. Still, as an old comic fan with lots of old comic fan friends, and supported by good words from someone like Josh, I expect a lot of us will get together for this.

So do you think Hulk 2 will be all socially/globally conscious as Banner roams the world with DoctorsWithoutBorders being compassionate and from time to time letting the Hulk out to smash?
And then Jean Grey will be resurrected?

They're doing The Punisher next summer.

I knew there was a dolph lundgren punisher, but i don't think i saw it. before my time.

The movie was 92 minutes long. That probably includes the credits, ha!

That was the best part! (I'm not sure if that pun is intended or not.)

also noted:

1. the fact that Lee takes time to point out that nobody other than Talbot is killed in the movie is a nod to comic books themselves, I thought. Remember the Comics Code Authority?

2. I can't figure out for the life of me why the exposition had to take so goddamned long, making everybody wait that long to see him hulk out for the first time was a bit of a mistake (and then he spends nearly the entire second half of the film as the Hulk!)

3. what the fuck was up with that 'puny human' dream sequence on the way down from space? that shit was completely wack!

4. I barely understood anything Nick Nolte said during the entire film. His character felt completely out-of-place and the big to-do by/in the lake made no sense to me at all.

5. I can't remember any of the lines from this movie besides "puny human"

6. Sam Elliott makes a brilliant army officer but I kept expecting him to say "the Hulk abides"

7. LXG looks like it's going to be TERRIBLE

Considering I thought it was going to be absolutely duff this is pretty good for me. Even the thirty kids in there seemed to rather enjoy it. It is too long, and we're not going to get a sequel but I think it stands up pretty well.

it wz terribly confused abt what it thought of itself — i actually liked all the lichen/polyp/desert from space cut-ins as visuals but i think they meant as much as the elfman "passion-sources" rip s/t

i think the bit i actually enjoyed most was when hulk started bouncing through the mesas

how canonic is the story as told: it was politically a-logical in itself but DUH!! i guess (i am the guy who gave PI a bad S&S review on the strength of its poor grasp of number theory)

exposition section punishing for newbies, if any, and the ending is if anything worse

i kind of liked it mainly bcz i didn't really "get" it, messagewise: it had a REALLY mixed/confused message in re govt interference/military insanity etc, which is in itself quite telling

ts: ang lee vs stang lee

Story isn't all that canonical (original is all about the one accident - there is child abuse issues but not Dad meddling with my bits).

The bouncing around bits are the best certainly, and the ending is pointless. I think the lack of message vis a vis science is very interesting. We constantly see flashbacks to the green explosion, but no idea what actually happened there.

I like a base in the desert being calkled DESERT BASE.

there is a subtextual war between micro/macroscopic scientific camerawork and CGI (TS: WHO WILL WIN?) but i don't get the feeling that anyone involved noticed this...

I loved the opening sequence science nonsense - especially the lab notes "Adding chloroform - might make green".

i thought the visual conceits overlapping the microscopic world with some kind of dali-esque dream world were just puzzling, too fancy. i could see the function they served--bridging the awkward transitions b/t banner and the hulk so as to avoid the "grrrr hulk mad!" scenes from the tv show--but they didn't have much resonance in themselves.

The Nolte ending was straight phooey superhero bobbins, which was odd as the film I though could have happily finished in San Francisco with Betty calming down Bruce and then helping him escape....

(I did love the subtitled ending though).

and the end title sequence music was so melancholic, every week.

saw bill bixby in 'clambake' with elvis presley just the other day.

andy

also i liked that they sorta kinda addressed the "exactly how stretchy ARE those pants?" dealio

then he obv got a new pair and even though he swelled much bigger they retained their elasticity, and shrank w.him in san fran BUT when he got back down to brucebanner size they were the NAFFEST PANTS MAN HAS EVER WORN, as a result presumably of having to be all stretch and no style

I like the way the word Hulk was only used once in the film (so I could cheer) - what Banner wakes up post dogs , "when I become that thin, that hulk, that monster... I like it."

"Er, it's like bat, but a man."

"That man is dressed as a bat!"

"Hello Man-Bat!"

"Get out of that batsuit, man!"

Though come to think of it I think Michael Keaton utters the words "I'm Batman" about 15 minutes into the picture, so nevermind.

It was way WAY fucking better than I expected. The CGI was a gazillion times better than in The Matrix, the story, though somewhat stagnant in the expo, was very nice, of all the comic-books-cum-movies it maintained the most comic-booky vibe, I loved it. Lukas didn't like it as much as me..."where's the Hulk?" he asked most of the way through.

I liked the "puny human" dream-part up in the outer stratosphere too, although without the "you weren't that hard to find" (ha ha)/"yes I was" (oh, right!) exchange between Bruce & Betty, it would've probably seemed more non-sequitorial.

http://incrediblehulk.blogspot.com/

and this is kinda related and doing the rounds:

http://www.x-entertainment.com/articles/0913/

my youngest has taken a pronounced interest in the handful of Silver Age appearances I have of the Hulk (fighting the Silver Surfer, etc.) Can anyone recommend decent Bronze or Silver Age collections of Hulk stuff? I don't even know where to begin with reprints/TPBs

Marvel Masterworks series is always a good bet

https://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Masterworks-Incredible-Hulk-Printing/dp/0785191305/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1530819049&sr=8-2&keywords=marvel+masterworks

also search the Marvel Essentials series.

yeah I have a couple of those Essentials editions, pretty happy with 'em (and cheaper than the Masterworks)