User reviews

This movie made me miss the old tv-series with Lou Ferrigno as The Hulk, which had zero CGI but lots of good old charm. This movie has lots of CGI, but zero charm. No point going to see this flick. I gave it a 5, but I think I'll have to reconsider and give it a 4.

Possible conversation between producer and a screenwriter: Producer: Where's the story in this? All you have is an unpleasant character drama. Why, there's about 20 pages of stuff happening that's not only stupid. What's wrong with you? Screenwriter: It's artistic. It's about his inner-conflict and his going about life.

Producer: It's a *beep* action picutre. People went to the Hulk to see Hulk smashing stuff, and they want a reason for him to smash stuff. You make it like Hulk's the bad guy.

Screenwriter: There are no good or bad guys. It's morally gray.

Producer: Dammit, this film is not fun at all and it's a boring one at that. Maybe some fancy shmanzy critics will like it, but the audiences will despise it in droves. I just wanted you to make an action picture.

Screenwriters: It has action.

Producer: And the rest is emotional baggage! This has to be re-written.

Screenwriters: But it's already been made into a film.

Producer: Oh...

When coming out of this movie, I had a strange sense of impatiality as to what I'd just seen. For me it's a definate mixed bag. Plus points are:- 1) Ang Less direction - excellent as ever,and as covered in other posts, the inventive editing, multiple angle shots, fades, wipes etc capture the comic book essence of the movie perfectly. 2) The HULK - Most of the time the Hulk looks fantastic. Certain scenes really made the character look as lifelike as I could have hoped. 3) The Acting. Bana, Connely, Nolte and the supporting cast do a more than adequate job here.

Unfortunately, the Bad points ultimately let this film down badly for me. 1) The pacing - far too slow for the majority of the first half of the movie. Sure character development is important, but not at the expense of dargging down the pacing of the entire movie, surely? Far too often (at least for a big summer action\drama movie), you're feeling the movie d-r-a-g real bad, and are waiting for something to grab your attention. 2) The HULK - Bit of a contradiction to my comments above I know, but generally while the CGI HULK looks fantastic, this is let down by the odd scenes where he stinks - and stinks real bad. The "Foam Trap" scene in particular, had me scratching my head (after I had been initially very impressed with the look of the character). The Ending - Over ambitious and completely unneccesary - the last half hour of the film should have been cut, and some of the effects work here is especially far from good - the huge "bubble of energy" anyone? 3) Hulk Jumping huge distances looked as ridiculous as it possibly could, and the part where he "buries" underground from the river was just plain dumb - both of these points were unnessarry character abilities for me, and just didn't translate onto the big screen.

So a straight 5\10 for me - solely for the personal plus points raised above. Ultimately dissapointing though - I've just canceled my pre-ordered HULK DVD after viewing this at the cinema, which I guess says it all.

OK, so I'll start off saying that I like most everyone involved with this film, so it's not that I'm bashing any of them personally. Basically though this movie is as mundane as can be. It just seems that since there was no push to make him a superhero in the sense that he fights evil for the betterment of the world, there just isn't much going on. Dialogues seem disjointed and conflict seems constructed. Basically it all boils down to a predictable family drama which is more about the Bruce's father than about his Hulk-ishness. I would be fine with this except it was pretty lame. The climax which we waited over 2 hrs for lasts only like 5 minutes and it's hard to even tell what's going on. And, the edits from scene to scene and the frame splits are so annoying. I mean, I understand Lee wanted it to look like a comic but 1. comic panels do not just portray varying angles of the same scene and 2. leave that alone! it's what's great about comics and really can never be transferred to film anyway. I'm not saying it was terrible, that I hate that I wasted my life like that. It was fine, just something I don't care to see ever again. So that's it, I predict it will do well this weekend and then taper off. The onslaught of mediocre comic films needs to stop, or at least they should turn their sights to more complex comic narratives like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns, unless they're going to butcher them of course.

I'm not going into the plot for this one, everyone knows the basic idea, so i'll go right into my feelings of the movie. Perhaps Ang Lee wasn't the best choice for this film. When one goes to see a Hulk movie, they want high action and massive destruction, not a highly dramatic snooze-fest for most of the movie only to give some little fan service towards the end of the film. To say I was let down from the film is a bit of an understatement, the film is just NOT true to the characters in the least, especially the ending fight, which is so absurd, so confusing, and so utterly contemptible toward the comic that it's based on that I was itching to just get out of the theater (actually I did leave, only to watch the film in full on DVD to give it a second chance) Upon second viewing, did I like it more? NOPE, not at all. Yes technically speaking it is a beautiful film on the surface, but it's totally bereft of a heart or any soul whatsoever.

My Grade: C-

DVD Extras: Disc 1) commentary by Ang Lee; Hulk Cam: Inside The Rage (a series of 11 brief featurettes accessible via extended branching during the film); "Superhero Revealed: Anatomy of the Hulk" featurette; 6 deleted scenes with optional commentary by Ang Lee; 2 Sunny D ads (horrible); Universal Mastercard (TERRIBLE); cast and crew bios; and Trailers for "2 fast 2 furious", "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, he first Battlestar Galactica series, and "Bruce Almighty" (all non-stoppable GRR)

Disc 2) Storyboards; Artists bios and samples; 16 minute evolution of the Hulk; 14 minute piece on Ang Lee; 10 minutes on how they did the hulk dog fight; 5 minutes on editing; and a 24 minute Making of featurette

DVD-Rom: Wallpaper, Screensaver & Weblinks

X-Box Exclusive: Play 1 level of The Hulk game (the 2003 game, not the MUCH better Ultimate Destruction game that just came out)

The Hulk is like a bad dream that won't leave your mind. It's one of those dreams that makes you feel all yucky while you are in it, but then when you wake up you kind of like it. You keep coming back to it throughout the day saying, "Oh yeah, heh heh...that was weird!" You don't totally dislike it but you don't really know what to make of it either. It's like all this random stuff that seems meaningless together. Close ups of fungus on rocks....hmm....weird. I wonder what made me think of that? Monotonous dialogue and people that act like

mannequins...wherever did I come up with that? Oh, and what about those

weird dogs? Yeah, that was a weird dream. Huh.

Weird dreams are great, in and of themselves, but they don't really translate well to great storytelling. Go ahead, try to explain your weird dream to a friend and note their reaction. "Yeah man, there was this like, fungus, and then there were these poodles in the trees, and this weird music."

"Huh," notes friend, " so what are you up to this weekend [change of subject]?"

Weird dreams do not a film make. At least not this weird dream. This movie is like a dream you had of the film of the Hulk, not the actual film itself. Like you saw the trailer or heard that a new "Hulk" film was coming out and then had a dream about it. But it couldn't be the real film, could it? Unfortunately, it was. It is. And it is a bad one.

Even though the movie contains some good and famous actors, I didn't really expect any thing much from this movie. And it did turn out right. The movie starts out extremely slow for the comic movie making it very boring at first. And it took more or less quarter of a length of the movie before he turn into a HULK. Then, I meant then it start to be OK. But the way he turn into a HULK is way to simple and very unconvincing.

Anyway after he turns into a HULK the movie started to flow with some acting that are good and interesting. Especially the scene that he fights with 3 hulk dogs and is very intense and somewhat scary. Even though HULK here may look like a rubber doll, I still say it is a very satisfying CGI with all the muscle movement etc. The directing is comic like making it pretty unique comic style.

After all it is a watch able movie, but the truth - it should have been much better, especially the ending.

Rating: 5.5/10 (Grade: C)

I like Ang Lee. He's an intelligent director. So I was looking forward to "Hulk". But I was disappointed. Don't get me wrong, it's OK - and certainly better than most recent comic book adaptations (such as "Spiderman"). But he seems to have produced a film that is neither one thing or another.

"Hulk" is an odd mix of adult characterisation and childish action flick. I wish he had tried to produce a film for adults - and fully developed the "angry man" theme. But instead, he does a bit of characterisation, some action stuff and a little romance - which doesn't hit the spot on any count.

On the plus side, the comic-book effects are original and very effective. But this movie will be quickly forgotten.

A wasted opprtunity.

The Hulk: 5/10

A hyped up movie, and a very disappointing one. I wanted to like The Hulk, but found myself outright bored. As a self-admitted fan of seeing special FX movies once, I thought I'd dig this, but nope. The first hour was spent building up to the inevitable "Hulking Out" of Bruce Banner. The build-up might have been fine if it wasn't so dry and if a wooden, beyond boring Eric Bana wasn't in the lead role. The movie picked up with the action scenes, which is all it's really good for, but other than one particular sequence in the desert/mountains, even some of those were flat (especially when he fought a bunch of pumped up dogs). The best actor was Nick Nolte as Bruce Banner's dad, and he played a convincing role as the somewhat nutty ex-scientist. Everyone else bored me. One of the coolest parts of the movie was a guest cameo by Lou Ferrigno (who played a security guard, passed Banner and said "hey" in his only appearance of the flick), which was a nice "inside" touch. Special mention goes out to a hilariously bad and contrived ending, which may set up a sequel if this does well. The trailer looked great, but the movie was boring overall, and 137 minutes was waaay too long. I just wanted it to end.

'Hulk' is another film that tries to cash in on the influx of comic adaptations that are being/were made at the time of release. What's also rather interesting is that it was directed by Ang Lee, of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' fame. This is quite the opposite film though; visually, in terms of aesthetics and overall, in terms of quality.

When I watched this, it was on a Sunday afternoon and I thought I'd watch it fairly relaxed but the frustration I felt whilst watching this has lead me to say the things I'm going to say.

Although I liked the 'nod' to comic books themselves via the split screen and various other transitions contained throughout the beginning, too much of one thing can become rather annoying and this is the case. What's significant is the fact it's the same with the entire film, not just the opening, gimmicky segment of effects. They become distracting, annoying and what it is we're looking at becomes insignificant as the visuals pane away, playing second fiddle to the hypnotic music and the erratic transitions unfolding. Once the film starts, we're lead to believe that Banner (Bana) and Ross (Connelly) have shared some sort of history as the actual film and character relations get the ball rolling but I couldn't see anything between them and in terms of plot and past happenings, we're never really told anything about them until it's too late. In fact, we're about forty-five minutes into the film when we learn something coincidental that happened during their childhoods.

What was really frustrating with the film were the montages that occur far too frequently throughout. They consist of experiments and various other things involving chemistry equipment and we're 'treated' with loads of numbers and figures as all this is happening. I thought these felt insignificant and needlessly bulked up the run time. They were slow, went on for too long and really, I was just left asking myself: 'Why am I seeing this?' These little montages happen at various points before the initial incident. This actually brings me onto the occurrence where Banner in exposed to become the Hulk in the first place. It seems to take absolutely ages to arrive and when it does, it's rather disappointing as it just 'happens' and then relies on cheese and a bad script from Connelly's character to hit home a 'I thought I was going to watch you die(!)' quote. The reason this is bad is because we don't yet know if she even cares for him. We don't even know HOW they know one another.

When it comes to the detective work of the film, what really made me chuckle is that an age after the initial incident of exposure, the characters only start to suspect something's wrong with Banner (No, really? He was exposed to radiation after all) and begin to foil the problem. They work it out fine which is harmless enough but it's not suspenseful nor that interesting because for the characters, it's a revelation – for us; it's already known knowledge; we've known what the characters are working out and talking about for the last hour and is just pointless confirming. It's like tapping in 2+2 into a calculator; you know what the answer's going to be but you're double checking anyway.

With comic book films there's bound to be computer generated images involved and although the CGI isn't too distracting; as it's slick and there's enough of it to keep a consistency going, there are no other good things going for Hulk which keeps it down to a mediocre rating.

Ang Lee knows what he's doing. Can we all just agree on this much, at least? He defies genre. He comes with a strong vision, and he gets results. He's done it with every project, and "Hulk" is no different.

This movie is not perfect. Far from it. On the whole, as a matter of fact, I'd have to call it average. The second act is overwhelmingly slow and riddled with flaws. The CGI is laughable (even for CGI, which let's face it, is usually pretty laughable).

But Lee does a better job than any director before or since at capturing the visual "feel" of a comic book. There are bold choices - double POV shots, insets, moving frames. He makes a real effort to make the movie LOOK like a comic book, and I don't think that he gets enough credit for what he did visually.

Also, the acting corps puts across some very good performances. They're a somewhat weak group, working with lackluster material, but they rise to the challenge, and the performances across the boards are better than the material warrants. Ang Lee steps it up here, fighting against overwhelming odds to put across a good final product.

Hulk is yet another Marvel hero translated to the big screen and where it is not a failure altogether it is not an undisputed success either. In short there were things I liked and there were things that I didn't like.

I like Ang Lee's approach to the film by letting the characters have the main focus. A lot of time is taken in building up the characters so they become believable and important to the viewers. This is partly because the actors are very good. Eric Bana who has since gone on to star in Troy does a good job in portraying the vulnerable and scarred scientist, Bruce Banner. He comes across pretty nerdy but unlike Peter Parker in Spider-Man, he doesn't overdo it. He also portrays the changes the character goes through in a satisfactory manner. Jennifer Connely is good as well but I think the character resembles her previous character from A Beautiful Mind a bit too much. Sam Elliot plays General Ross and does so with a lot of authority and it works to an extent because sometimes the character is reduced to simple anger and that is in my opinion not the best way of portraying the character which could have done with some poise. The best performance out of the bunch is undoubtedly Nick Nolte who is not only extremely menacing but also multi layered as Bruce Banner's father. He has a few explosions of incredible acting that left me gasping for air but he also knew when to be subtle and let someone else take control of the scene. A very fine performance.

The effects are good. Not the best I've seen but good. Ang Lee tried to make the film seem as real as possible instead of trying to create a comic book atmosphere like Sam Raimi did in Spider-Man. The Hulk itself is well done. Not superb like Gollum from LotR but still very impressive. A thing which I thought was very distracting was the film's way of letting people know it was in fact a superhero movie. It does so by sometimes letting the screen be divided into several boxes like on a comic book page. I felt this was very disturbing and took away focus from the characters in the scenes where it occurred.

I have to comment on Danny Elfman's music as well. I have to say that this is not the best he has done. The score resembles the score from Red Dragon a lot. It was still good but in my opinion not quite up to the usual high standard of Elfman's work. He was probably hired because he did the music for both Batman (1989) and Spider-Man which are both excellent musical scores and Hulk does have a few good points but it is much more forgettable than in the other films.

Where the film truly suffers is in the fact that it is just too slow. Even though I like the fact that time is taken to build up the characters and make them believable 20 minutes could have easily been left out on the editing board. Not just character driven scenes but also effects scenes which seemed to drag on forever. The film was just too slow at times and that made the film suffer a lot. I'm not addicted to action but I do think that it is possible for pacing to be too slow which is probably why I don't like too many old films and the pacing is too slow in this film which in my opinion almost ruins the film. I couldn't help but yawn several times in spite of the good acting. Also the climax of the film wasn't all too great either. It felt kind of rushed and was over in 3 minutes. With all the action in the film I would have liked a more action packed ending.

In conclusion I have to say that Hulk had potential. Hulk had vast potential. It could have been one of the best superhero movies as both acting and effects were good but the pacing was just too unbearable. Ang Lee told a good story but because of the poor pacing it didn't quite catch me and that really is a shame. If a sequel does come along I hope they hire another editor.

5/10

The Hulk is like 2 separate movies. The first hour and a half is one movie and the last half hour is a mini movie. The first hour and a half is a total snooze fest while the last half hour is incredible. I've never seen a movie thats this bad for that long and then gets phenomenal near the end. When the Hulk is on the screen its just amazing and despite what a lot of people think, I actually liked the CGI in this move. People say he looked fake but even if you actually saw a 15 foot green monster he probably wouldn't look real anyway. I've seen some real life zoo animals that don't look real. The hulk looked fine and they really captured the strength and power of the character unlike any other superhero movie I've seen. You could just tell he would whoop up on the movie superman. But outside of the 25 minutes hes on screen this is just a boring movie. Its really a shame because the acting was really good especially Sam Elliot, though Glen Talbot was a little over the top. My buddy fasts forward through the first hour and a half and so do I. No matter how good the last half hour is you just cant give a movie like that a good review. Oh, and by the way, without giving anything away I thought the ending was stupid too. All in all I would say wait for it to come on t.v. and if you miss it don't sweat it too much.

Well, it had to happen. Ang Lee has finally made a bad film. The genius of The Wedding Banquet, Eat,Drink,Man,Woman and Crouching Tiger,Hidden Dragon has found a genre he just doesn't get.

I've never been a fan of the (Incredible) Hulk, but since Ang Lee directed the film, and Aussie boy making good Eric Bana was playing the lead (well, the part of the lead played by a human), I went along.

Oh, dear.

It started well. The credits sequence was quite dazzling in the way it conveyed so much information, in such a clever way, without a word of dialogue.

As the film proper got underway, I liked all the clever split-screen, comic book edits. Reminded me of those pop art films of the 60s.

But after a while, I realised why they were there. They were to disguise how BORING the film actually was. If it weren't for the flashy cuts, dissolves, split screens, there would be NOTHING to hold your attention.

The big mistake was to treat the Pulpy Hulk like he was Greek tragedy, rather than Marvel Comic. Such a silly super hero premise does not stand up to Serious Acting and Portentous Writing. Leave that for The Ice Storm. A comic book adaptation should be fun.

So we wait for about an hour before the Hulk finally appears, and then he's not too convincingly animated. More like a video game character than a big screen (anti) hero.

Eric Bana struggles in the role of Bruce Banner. Jennifer Connelly fares better as the heroine. Nick Nolte is .... well, more like a Marvel villain at least.

I don't know who the film is aimed at .... it's much too violent and scary for kids, too boring for teens and twenties, and too juvenile for older adults.

But I'll still look forward to Ang Lee's next film with anticipation.

Five out of ten.

i only have one word to describe The Hulk; BORING. This film just drags on and on and on. Ang Lee probably could have chopped 45 mins out of it. It builds up and up and up and then never delivers. Not as bad as spiderman, but a close contender. However I thought the CGI was sweet and he looked a bit cartoony but that was sweet because he is a 20ft green monster after all.

I admire much of Ang Lee's previous work, so I was curious to see how this project would pan out. I decided to see it despite some of the scathing reviews because God knows there have been many great films that were misunderstood at first. Unfortunately, this film succeeds more as a bizarre curiosity than as a popular film or as a work of art. I'll try to cover the salient points:

STORY & CHARACTER: Like something I blew out of my nose. The characters are all one-dimensional Freudian stereotypes, and that's during their better moments. So many baffling questions remain: what the heck was David Banner fighting with his wife about when he `accidentally' killed her? More to point, why would a lovely woman like her even marry a psycho bully with a cheesy moustache like him in the first place? Why is General Ross such a turgid pr-ck? Did his daddy beat him too? How on earth did a monster like him sire such a calm, composed (if weepy), loving, intelligent, down-to-earth woman like Betsy? Who were the people who raised young Bruce? His adoptive mother (whom we see exactly once) seems like a good woman: why is he so emotionally cold and repressed when he was raised in such a loving family? Are the filmmakers trying to imply that genes are everything? I realize that these are silly questions to be asking about the characters in a summer blockbuster, but hey, the filmmakers are the ones who insisted on bringing family psychodrama into the picture, not I. Making a psychological drama with one-dimensional characters is about as interesting as making a porn film with mannequins.

CINEMATOGRAPHY & EDITING: There was some interesting experimentation going on here but it was inert: it did nothing to contribute to the story or add up to a coherent aesthetic experience. Sometimes there were multiple panels and sometimes there weren't, but it all seemed rather haphazard. The jelly fish and cellular patterns and lichens and so on were pretty, but overused.

The editing was inept and self-indulgent, with huge stretches of dead time. Lots of totally unnecessary transition scenes, people just sitting around, stuff that even Tarkovsky might have left on the cutting room floor.

DIALOGUE: It absolutely defies belief that James Schamus, the man who gave us the zippy repartee of The Ice Storm, had anything to do with this script at all. I'd like to blame the other two screenwriters for this botch, but I don't see why he didn't just rewrite their migraine-inducing contributions if that were the case. I think there was maybe one (intentionally) funny line in the whole movie.

ACTING: Eric Bana: Tried to look repressed, wound up looking constipated. Maybe that's what caused his transformations: `HULK STUCK!' Too bad they didn't do a product tie-in with Metamucil. Jennifer Connelly: She's starting to get good at her one and only character. Nick Nolte: Not as bad as he was made out to be. He went over the top, sure, but there was something almost King Lear-like about his performance. Sam Elliot: Silly stuff, but he did what he could with a bad script.

There were a few interesting ideas in this film, the best of them probably being the conception that fathers want to suck the lifeblood out of their sons. This kind of pushes it too far of course but I'd guess even the most devoted fathers sometimes envy their sons' youth, vitality, energy, sex appeal, what have you. So this turns into a nice inversion of the Oedipal complex, played out when father and son confront each other and Bruce says, `I should have killed you,' to which David Banner says, `No, I should have killed you.' A lot of people laughed at that line, but I think it sums up the most interesting conceit in the whole film. There was also a kind of Faustian subtext to the whole thing, but the Faust legend has been done endless times before and much better than here. The only truly believable Faustian bargain here was the one that Lee/Schamus made when they accepted this project.

Despite everything, though, the film does grow on you in a `boy I wouldn't want to sit through that whole thing again but maybe I'll rent the DVD to fast-forward to the interesting bits' kind of way. For example, I'm still haunted by that look of melancholy ecstasy on the Hulk's face as he's flying through the sky. Was it worth sitting through hours of dreadful dialogue, creaky plot mechanics, and static editing? Probably not. It's not worth a bar of Schubert, that's for sure. But who knows, maybe this mad, mad movie will keep growing on me to the point that I almost, just barely like it.

All in all, this movie was a noble failure. Ang Lee and his team tried to breathe new life into a tired genre and create an ambitious film that would appeal both to mindless teenage boys and to thoughtful grown-ups who read Freud and Faust. Well, `I've got a news flash for you' (to borrow one of the clichés that litter the script): it can't be done. It puts the work at catastrophic cross-purposes with itself. There's something frankly hysteric and schizoid about this film: stretched in all directions, it is animated primarily by an infantile acting out, an undisciplined excrescence of repressed material on the part of the filmmakers. This is sort of fitting when you consider the subject matter, but it seems to me in the end to be a fatal confusion of means and ends, content and technique.

Please Ang Lee, please, no Hulk II. I and others admire your desire to stretch yourself; nobody expects you to go back to the lovely low-budget days of Wedding Banquet or the lively cynicism of The Ice Storm. But there's just got to be a better way.