Another Damned Blog

Monday, May 19, 2008 11:58 p.m. I am 27 min, 40 sec in and decide I am going to live-blog this stupid, stupid movie which I am giving another chance, as a courtesy to stevens, Nicka, and others at Gawker and io9. Six minutes ago, I looked at the time remaining on the DVD player and went, “Holy shit, there’s an hour and 56 minutes of this shit left?!?”

Thoughts so far: The comic-bookish cinematography still seems pretentious (the last time I saw Hulk was in the theater in 2003), mostly because it doesn’t evoke comic bookery—it evokes movie arty-ness, which is basically, from a common-sense and from a McLuhanesque perspective, the opposite of comic bookery. That said, the tone does feel right—very tense, very on edge; it reminds me of the Bill Bixby series. Eric Bana is a good actor, but he’s kinda buff; he definitely does not bring Bixby’s air of wussiness to the role, appearance-wise. (Note: As far as I am concerned, the best Hulk film to date has been The Incredible Hulk Returns, a 1989 TV movie that also featured Thor. Honestly, it was so fucking awesome.)

The dad stuff so far is just weird. Oh, hey, he’s just hanging out outside Bruce’s window with his three dogs in the middle of the night, and then he disappears seven seconds later!!! I guess that is supposed to make us feel SUSPENSE-IFIED, but it just seems stupid to me. Also: Bruce Krenzler? One of the things I’ve enjoyed about the Marvel movies so far is that most of them have done a pretty admirable job of not deviating from canon too terribly (I don’t expect perfection; some stuff is bound to get lost in the transformation to summer blockbuster). Did this Krenzler shit come from anywhere in particular? Stan Lee says the name first in his inevitable cameo—is that supposed to lend it some credibility? Stan, your creations are BIGGER THAN YOU—you have no credibility in this regard. Further, it has just occurred to me that WHERE THE FUCK IS RICK JONES? I don’t remember him showing up in this. Christ, Daredevil got Ben Urich in there, and even got Joe Pantoliano to play him!

OK, back to the film…

Tuesday, May 20, 12:25 a.m. I forgot to add that dreams sure have figured big into the story so far. One character having crazy narrative-propelling dreams? OK, fine. But Bruce and Betty? It works, because the dream content is, well, dreamy—I mean, a big green mushroom cloud would get stuck in my brain, too—but barely. It’s not a plus.

12:30 a.m. The trippy dream interludes—especially the one that just ended with the Hulk waiting in the closet—are not doing it for me.

12:33 a.m. “You must know. I can…see it…in your eyes. So much like your mother’s.” Note to self: If I ever alter myself genetically so that my son carries a latent mutation that will reveal itself if he’s ever exposed to gamma radiation and then he just happens to grow up to work with gamma radiation, I should be more forthcoming with him if I want something from him, and not creepy in a vapidly stereotypical “cryptic old man in a movie” sort of way.

12:42 a.m. “Betty, I’m your Army father. Now I’m going to ask you how much you know about this ‘Krenzler’ character. Then I’m going to tell you that I can’t tell you anything about him. This makes sense, because we’re somewhat estranged. Have you talked to your Aunt Margaret lately? No? I guess you haven’t heard the news, then. No, no, I can’t tell you about that either.”

12:45 a.m. Seriously, anyone, go watch the scene where Betty meets with her dad 38 minutes in and tell me you haven’t seen it before in a Lifetime movie. “I’m here. We’re not communicating, nor are we really even verbally jousting. Now I’m crying. Now I’m leaving.”

12:49 a.m. Bana’s Hulking out now, and this is pretty cool. The intensity is well executed.

12:52 a.m. The CGI is shittier than I remembered, though. A disappointment in a post-Yoda, post-Gollum era.

12:59 a.m. “Bruce, it’s weird that I found you passed out in your backyard just in ripped pants, and also the lab exploded, but I’m not going to freak out. I’ll get the door. Oh, it’s my dad and some men in dark suits. As protocol dictates, I’m going to not say anything and let them walk on in.”

1:03 a.m. You know why all of this is SO FUCKING BORING? Because we already know EVERYTHING. We know Nick Nolte is Bruce’s father. We know he’s responsible for Bruce’s mother dying and for Bruce becoming the Hulk. We know he has it out for General Ross. We know Talbot is going to push Bruce too far. There is no “What’s going to happen next?” here. There is only “Something is going to happen next.”

1:10 a.m. I’m sorry. The dialogue is so awful—Nick Nolte’s especially—that it seems deeply obvious that Ang Lee felt a condescension bordering on contempt for the source material. Over-the-top comic-book-speak works sometimes—it worked in Blade, for example. But that was because the over-the-top action balanced it out. Here, it has to carry all of these dramatic scenes in a row, and it just escalates into the ridiculous.

1:15 a.m. Are you kidding me? I’m sorry that I keep having to stop and write, but a scene after Betty goes to visit Bruce’s father, her dad is trying to find out from Bruce where Bruce’s father is. The scene doesn’t indicate that Bruce has kept the fact that his father working as the lab janitor from General Ross, but apparently the highly connected general can’t do what his daughter did and call fucking information. This is retarded.

1:24 a.m. Random phone call from Dad to say he’s sending mutant dogs after Betty, followed by random visit from angry Talbot. I swear, it is a testament to the inherent ability to suspend disbelief or to something, anyway, that I’m not laughing so hard tears stream out of my eyes. This is an insult to storytelling.

1:30 a.m. Lee made his Hulk big, I will give him that, and I like it when the Hulk is big.

1:35 a.m. Hulk ripping apart mutant dogs is kind of cool. I know some people make fun of the murder-poodle, but I kinda like it—poodles have always scared me. They are mean little bastards.

1:41 a.m. I wish I could do screen-grabs from DVDs on my iBook (I’m sure there’s a download, but the standard OS X prevents it), because I would like to show some examples of this: Much is made of the comic-book-style cinematography to which I refer above, and there is some; but there’s also a lot of shots where the screen is just divided into individual blocks. Just because comic book pages are also divided into blocks, that doesn’t mean the screen looks anything like an actual comic book.

1:57 a.m. This movie is too long. It’s picking up some now, but it’s too long.

2:02 a.m. This is definitely the high point of the film. Nick Nolte’s weird monologue to Betty where he explains about killing his wife didn’t sound totally stupid. And now the sleeping gas is decidedly not putting Hulk to sleep. Ha ha, Talbot. You’re stupid.

2:05 a.m. Yeah, that foam is not going to hold him. Didn’t you guys ever read Secret Wars? Dude held up a fucking mountain.

2:07 a.m. My interest has waned again, as it’s just occurred to me that the Hulk, as a character, particularly in his Bixby/Ferrigno incarnation, is more or less Rambo in First Blood. And First Blood is a seriously excellent movie. There’s no reason it should have been so hard to make this a good, simple, satisfying story.

2:10 a.m. Always good to see Hulk leaping. Weird how such a simple movement, the way he holds his body, can be so closely associated with a character.

2:13 a.m. Weird scene where Ross phones the president. Could have been handled with a single line of dialogue. Sloppy writing.

2:17 a.m. It’s fun watching Hulk fight helicopters. Also, Lee and Co. seem to be going out of their way to make sure soldiers don’t actually get killed. I admit, I like that in a superhero movie.

2:23 a.m. The fact that the Hulk’s one line of dialogue is “Puny human” is just weird to me. Did he ever say that in the comics? Ever? They couldn’t work “SMASH!” in there somewhere?

2:27 a.m. Betty is approaching Hulk…and now he’s Bruce again. They could end the movie on this note—it’s a nice one, and appropriate—but oh, no, there are 23 minutes left and a Crazy Metamorphic Dad to fight.

2:34 a.m. Wow. The two-hour mark is exactly where this shit runs off the rails again. “It’s all right, son. Go ahead and cry.” “Don’t touch me! You aren’t my father!” [Rolling of eyes]

2:36 a.m. Y’know, my roommates were watching 28 Weeks Later this evening, and there’s this scene where the military just goes ahead and lets this man hang out alone in a room with his zombie-virus-infected wife, and it made about as much goddamn sense as it does for Thunderbolt Ross and crew to let Bruce Banner’s insane father hang out alone with him. (I don’t care if they’re near the deadly electricity thing. It still makes no sense.)

2:40 a.m. They’re just watching as Crazy Dad goes off. Like, Oh, yeah, it was a pretty crazy day, but let the man talk.

2:46 a.m. Is the jellyfish some kind of Asian symbol I’m not appreciating?

2:51 a.m. That final scene in the rain forest almost made it feel like a real comic book movie.

OK, so, Hulk wasn’t as bad as I remembered it being. I enjoyed parts of it—more, I would say, than my commentary above would indicate. The dad stuff was still weird and extraneous and poorly executed, but the fight at the end was shorter than I recalled, and that definitely helped. Some plot holes gaped, but then, I was actively looking for them; I bet I could find some in, say, X2 or Spider-Man 2, too, if I was looking that hard.

Mostly, I guess the overall feeling was just a little off. I know the Hulk is a more serious character than, say, Iron Man or Spidey, but this didn’t feel like a superhero movie exactly—there’s a simplicity in most of the Marvel movie catalog that doesn’t obtain here. I think most of it is that there wasn’t a real supervillain for Hulk to square off against. (His father, yes, but again, the whole plot line was incredibly stupid.) And that’s OK, but I do understand better why the movie gets hated on—it just doesn’t feel of a piece with the rest of the current Marvel films. That said, if someday directors have a chance to take on superheroes as protagonists and aren’t as bound by canon as Raimi and Singer have been, that could lead to some interesting art, and Hulk could easily be seen as a forerunner of that movement.

In the meantime, while this wasn’t the steaming pile of gamma shit I recently referred to it as and was afraid it would be, it’s still not as entertaining or as generally good as Daredevil. I’d watch Hulk again someday, but if I was flipping past FX and it was on, I’d be able to tear myself away pretty easily. I can never do that with Daredevil.