That Incredible Hulk
Erin and I went to see The Incredible Hulk today. We’ve been seeing a lot of movies at the new AMC 24plex that opened in Toronto Life Square. It’s kind of ridiculously expensive at $13 a ticket and getting to the theatre involves navigating a maze of about six escalators, but you can’t beat the convenience of having a movie theatre located less than a five-minute walk from your house.
Anyway, the movie: I’m not one of those people that hated Ang Lee’s Hulk, but I appreciate their need to ‘reboot’ the franchise. Lee’s version was pretty damn well-crafted, especially from a technical standpoint (Comic book panel-style editing? Cool!) but the plot was kind of ridiculously overwrought and not the kind of thing you should put into your would-be summer blockbuster.
So they redid it. With Edward Norton. Who is kind of an odd choice if you want to go the pure-popcorn-blockbuster route with your franchise. And, maybe as a result of that, the movie is just okay. Not great, not terrible — just okay. There’s not a lot about it I’m bound to remember in a week.
There’s some good stuff — the effects are great. It’s CG done so well that internet nerds probably won’t even complain about it. Which is really the best yardstick for measuring quality CG work. Tim Roth is hilarious and awesome when he’s in human form as the bad guy. The fight scenes struck me as really well choreographed. The bits tying into Marvel’s big “movie superhero universe” were as awesome as they were in Iron Man.
And the bad stuff? There’s a fair bit of that too. Liv Tyler is fundamentally untalented, and seems to be regressing as an actress instead of getting better. Edward Norton looks bored most of the time, and doesn’t really land a single funny line in the whole movie, except for maybe his “oh shit” at 20,000 feet. In one scene it just starts raining out of nowhere, purely for emotional resonance, which is kind of a douchebag move on the creative end. The final fight scene kind of just ends, as if the screenwriter wrote himself into a corner and then realized he was writing about two giant green monsters fighting on a roof so he just gave up.
But, regardless of all of that, I just left kind of feeling like maybe The Hulk is a really difficult character to base a film franchise around. He’s neither a hero nor a villain — he’s just a scientist in a shitty situation. And I find it difficult, for whatever reason, to relate to scientists in shitty situations. I think the character works better as a shades-of-grey character when he’s coupled with other heroes. Which means he’ll probably work a lot better in the future Avengers movie. Boy, that sounds nerdy.
In any case, it’s maybe a 2-star movie. Definitely worth seeing if you know the City of Toronto, because there’s so many “Hey, that’s that!” shots your head will spin. (Sam the Record Man! UofT! The Gardiner Expressway!) Otherwise? Catch it if you’re looking to go to the movies, but don’t break your neck for it.