Seconds into the film, all doubts regarding The Incredible Hulk’s status in relation to Ang Lee’s Hulk is vaporized; as the opening credits retell a darker, condensed origin in which Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) experiments under General Thunderbolt Ross’ (William Hurt) sanction to recreate a lost WWII Super-Soldier formula. During his transformation into the Hulk, he severely injures his lover and the General\'s daughter Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) into a coma. As a result, Banner suffers General Ross’ wrath and has to flee the country. The film begins as a sequel, not to Lee’s film, but a phantom first movie. One where Betty has never seen Banner in Hulk form and he never went on a rampage in San Francisco. The reason for this weird turn is that it’s spiritually distant from the first movie in tone and characterization, but it doesn’t want to be an origin movie again. This time, it’s not a visionary director interpreting a character to tell a symbolic story, but part of a larger franchise. Aside from the Captain America reference and the Robert Downey Jr. cameo, SHIELD plays a part in the plot, Nick Fury is mentioned, and the Stark Industries logo from Iron Man can be seen plastered on techs all over the movie. Next stop: Avengers.
Molding itself very precisely on the template provided by the old Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno TV show, The Incredible Hulk fashions itself as a chase movie. Bruce Banner is hiding in South America, trying to find a cure while working in a bottling factory, when an accident sends a whiff of his scent to the Pentagon. General Ross immediately puts together a team to apprehend him, headed by top dog soldier Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), whose own aging body lusts for Hulk’s physique, positioning him on the path to become the monster Abomination.
The Incredible Hulk plays it safe. Really safe. It has no surprises, no memorable turns or dialogue, or really anything inventive to play around with. It’s the straight-forward “Hulk Smash” picture that you can already see in your mind upon entering the theater. In their attempt to play up the action angle, they forgot to embed the frustration and angst that Banner has to live with—save for a funny scene where Hulk cockblocks Banner from going past second base with Betty (“I can’t get too excited.”)—turning him into a generic action lead. When we first see him, Banner has learned meditation and martial arts as a way of self-defense and self-control, gifting him with his own Hulk-less action scenes. Sure, it’s an effective way to keep the movie going going going at a fast pace, but at the same time, the transformation becomes less drastic. What was prevalent in Ang Lee’s Hulk was the sense of the Hulk being born out of Banner’s own subconscious; a man who couldn’t outwardly express himself manifesting his feelings into this monster that’s a part of him. Here we’re essentially seeing a capable hero become a bigger, greener hero.
Marvel characters have always been interesting because of their flaws, be it Spider-man’s naivety and poverty, Iron Man’s selfish ego, or the Hulk as a reflection of Banner’s anger towards society. When Stan Lee created the character in the 60’s, Hulk caught on with college readers because of that outcast, anti-authority personification that appealed to the student counter-culture movement. There’s a bit of that left over here by demonizing the military (it was amusing to hear the audience cheer at US soldiers being hurt/killed for doing their job), but of course, in the end the main attraction is still a wrestling bout between two CGI characters. In other words, it follows the exact same path as Lee’s film, except here the final fight is not an extension of Banner’s quarrel with his daddy but motivated by superheroism instead: Abomination is trashing New York, and Hulk has to go save it.
If it had been Marvel’s first try at the character, The Incredible Hulk would be just another dumb comic book movie with cool action scenes, cheesy dialogue and uneven acting (Norton and Tyler play it as a serious tragic romance, while Hurt and Roth ham it up several notches). Coming off so close to the first film, however, it feels like the junk food version that’s too afraid to change its recipe in fear of becoming the acquired taste that Lee’s Hulk was. I guess no one told them that having a lifeless character running constantly with lapses of thing-smashing can be just as tiresome.
Kinda sad when a director doesn't ...