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.

No Fun

One of the great things (perhaps the only one) about the The Happening SPOILER WARNING is the number of hilarious reviews its spawned. Chris Orr’s, which isn’t even techincally a review, is one of the best. Well, his TNR colleague James Kirchick decided to spoil the fun by getting all huffy and puffy at M. Nigh Shyamalan for harboring misanthropic views. It seems like Jamie is taking the conceit a bit too seriously, it’s much more likely that the plot device is a vehicle for Shyamalan to include all sorts of bizarre deaths and to have a faux-deep meaning to the entire project. But really, is Shyamalan the first director to include a message that human’s are ultimatley responsible for what they do to the Earth? Ever see the Japanese Godzilla? And comparing Shyamalan to Al Gore is just over-the-top. But really, you to got to read it to believe it:

After 90 minutes of this, the culling of humanity ends. We catch a brief television news segment in which a scientist warns us that what the Northeast just experienced was akin to a terrestrial occurrence of oceanic “red tides.” The earth warned us, but thankfully we get another chance to amend the errors of our ways. Like the end of An Inconvenient Truth, we’re left with some hope that environmental catastrophe is not a foregone conclusion. Buy a plug-in car. Use public transportation when available. Turn off the light when you leave a room. An unoffensive, and indeed positive message. The second to last scene depicts the female lead waiting nervously in her bathroom to read the results of a home pregnancy test. To her delight, she is with child. Her husband comes home, they embrace. Humanity soldiers on. What a warm feeling after so many scenes of horrific death.

But Shyamalan is obsessed with conceits at the expense of every other aspect — the script, character development, and most importantly, good taste. He lives by the conceit, and, in this case, dies by it. After the pregnancy scene, the screen goes dark and we find ourselves in Paris, the Jardin des Tuileries to be exact. It’s eerily reminiscent of the film’s opening, with two men walking, engaged in pleasant conversation about their plans for the evening. A gust of wind! One of the men starts to stutter. People freeze. Screams. Mon Dieu!. Roll credits.

This isn’t just radical environemntalist fare; it’s perverse and anti-human. Shyamalan cuts immediately from the natural joy of pregnancy to its consequence: mass, nature-inflicted murder. It’s not carbon output, styrofoam cups or the clearing of the rain forests that so angers Mother Earth and, thus, her self-appointed human spokesman. It’s us.

Because When Angelina Jolie Is Dubbed Over In Russian, All Becomes Awesome

When I first saw the trailer for Wanted - the ridiculous looking comic book adaptation staring James McAvoy as an office drone turned certified badass – I just thought it was dumb. First of all, you can’t shoot bullets and have them follow a curveball-like trajectory. In a world where Barry Zito has one win, I don’t see how it’s even within the realm of comic-book movie possibility that James “Faun” McAvoy could ever be a gun-toting, breakingball bullet slinging badass ( I mean, shit, the fool dies of some lame ass infection in his only military movie). Oh yeah, and McAvoy + Jolie as a romantic pair? I don’t even have to explain how silly that is.

But, in all fairness, the trailer had some genuine action awesomeness. Who among us isn’t excited about Angelina Jolie reverting to badass-chick roles? And the movie seems to have exceptional, CSI/Matrix CGI which I’m a sucker for. And you know what else? It’s rated R, so it also includes James McAvoy pimp slapping a coworker with a keyboard. Do you like seeing keys stained with chump blood? Or Angelina Jolie speaking Russian? Well then please watch the Russian trailer for Wanted.

I should have known, Wanted is directed by Timor Bekmamtevov, the auteur behind the Russian classic Night Watch. So I’m officially revising my opinion of Wanted. As far as summer movies I’m excited for, the list now goes:

Pineapple Express

Kung Fu Panda

Wanted

Hellboy II