Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk
A Review of the New Movie, Starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler.
Jun 14, 2008
Five years after the critical and box office failure of Ang Lee's Hulk, Marvel's not-so-jolly green giant is back on the big screen and shaking off the stigma of the old movie with a clever, likable reboot. After the impressive success of another Marvel hero based move, Iron Man, many skeptics have concluded that nothing else that comes out this summer will be as well received by audiences.
The Incredible Hulk just might surprise them.
About the Movie, Where it Fails, Where it Succeeds
A brilliant example of just how good a reboot of a 'failed' franchise can be, Incredible Hulk has more good points than bad--a rare thing with many comic book adaptations. With a painfully good emotional portrayal of the quintessential sympathetic hero and a believable love story, this movie promises to be a success. Though it's doubtful it will smash any of Iron Man's box office records, if audiences give it a chance, Incredible Hulk will do very well.
After the events that turned him into the Hulk, Bruce Banner (played by Edward Norton) is on the run, trying to find a cure for the changes that gamma ray exposure has caused in his biology, so that he may return home to the woman he loves and the life he left behind without fear of 'hulking out' and hurting anyone. Edward Norton, in the role originated by Eric Bana, does an admirable job of bringing out the sort of gentleness and reluctance to fight that a character like Bruce Banner needs. Liv Tyler, as his love interest Betty Ross, makes their onscreen relationship work beautifully and believably, making Incredible Hulk not only a great action flick, but a great date movie as well.
Though it starts off relatively slowly, the tension soon starts to mount with the first of several heart stopping and exciting action sequences, bringing in Tim Roth as the eventual villain of the piece. The one thing that Incredible Hulk seems to have real trouble with is in fleshing out his character as well as the writers fleshed out Bruce and Betty. We, as the audience, have no real reason to hate him other than the fact he's 'supposed' to be the bad guy. He's just not despicable enough to make us really love to loathe him. Though this is only one of the film's failings, it's definitely the biggest and will probably draw the most attention from critics.
The only other issue that might turn some audiences off is that Incredible Hulk's action scenes are spaced rather far apart. Each sequence of scenes works like a gradual, tense build to the big action payoff and though every payoff is bigger and better than the last, for certain inevitably impatient members of the audience, it may seem like the movie is taking too long to get to the good stuff.
Final Verdict
The Incredible Hulk does more right than wrong and makes you want to cheer for the hero at its center. Though it will no doubt draw comparisons with its predecessor as well as Marvel's other big movie of the summer, The Incredible Hulk is a great movie in its own right and if you don't go in looking for another Iron Man, you will not be disappointed.
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