Quick Thoughts on The Hulk

For about the first third of the Hulk, there is little no dialog, and just about zero expository writing. And since the Hulk’s backstory is exceptionally uninteresting (Bruce Banner is pretty boring and his story doesn’t really speak to anything greater than itself, unlike say, Peter Parker and Bruce Wayne), they got through it with during the credits and advanced pretty quickly to the Hulk smashing shit up.

It was also nice how all the non-action scenes were merely set up for more action scenes. Since the Hulk doesn’t exist in a larger, more interesting world (which Ironman and Batman do), any movie must survive on being lots of HULK SMASH, and very little of EDWARD NORTON TALK! Which is weird, because Norton is a very charming, talented actor. Him trying to explain in Portuguese that “you won’t like me when I’m…hungry” was a comedic high point, as were all the refrences to purple pants and Lou Ferringo.

The big downside of the movie was, ironically, its special effects. The Hulk still looks rather clumsy and animated, despite the high level of detail in its musculature and vasculature. It was also particularly annoying how much of the military equipment, be it helicopters or tanks, were also animated. Other comic book movies can avoid this trap by having the animated hero be relatively small and mostly interact with real objects (like Spiderman or Batman). With The Hulk, however, you are focused on the animation all the time.

Also, it doesn’t speak well for a movie when the part that elicits the most cheers during an opening night showing is a hero from another, better regarded superhero movie waltzing in to set-up the forthcoming Avengers film.