The Incredible Hulk (2008)

Directed by Louis Leterrier (Transporter, Now You See Me)

Written by Zak Penn (X2: X-Men United, Ready Player One)

A forgotten and abandoned early child of the Marvel experiment, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk gives us a Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) already on the run after his disastrous experiment. The entire origin story is knocked out in the opening credits sequence, which was probably wise since Ang Lee’s Hulk had just come out five years ago. This movie leans much more into the onetime popular TV show’s angle, with Banner always on the run from forces larger and more powerful than himself. In this film those forces are led by General Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt), himself the grandfather of Banner’s love interest Betty (Liv Tyler). In the General’s pursuit of Banner, he decides to employ a brutal special forces agent named Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), who seems a little too eager to enhance himself in the pursuit of his prey. And with that, you have all the ingredients necessary for a story of human drama that captures the thrills and poignancy of a beloved TV property with a modern budget. If only they had actually made that movie.

That’s a little harsh, I suppose, but there’s a reason that no one really talks about this movie anymore, and it’s not just because they recast the title role immediately afterwards. It’s really kind of a mess. There are only two ways the Hulk can work as a character. The first is as a side character, where he can act as a foil to other heroes. We saw this done well in the Avengers movies and the recent Thor: Ragnarok. If he’s going to be the focus of the story, though, you really have to nail the human drama of the piece. Hulk himself is not actually that interesting as a hero (at least in any of his film incarnations). He is really strong, pretty dumb, and basically unstoppable. There’s not much there to work with. He doesn’t even really have a Kryptonite-like weakness you can utilize to generate some drama. So the human element has to really work like gangbusters if he’s going to anchor his own film. And here, it just doesn’t. I think the main problem is the casting of Liv Tyler as Betty Ross. While I love her in movies where she serves as some kind of supernatural, ethereal presence (Arwen in Lord of the Rings or even Sarah in Super), here she just seems weird. She breathy-voices and sad-faces her way through the entire production, which I guess is what you hire her for, but it just doesn’t work for me. On top of that, General Ross often seems stupid, but not in any kind of interesting way. We are led to believe that he is fully aware of the Hulk’s capabilities, but he just keeps trying to stop him with normal stuff that poses absolutely no threat to the big green guy. A list would take a paragraph, but it is astonishing how many idiotic mistakes a supposed tactician makes in this film.

The characters aren’t the only problem, though. There are an array of other issues that plague the film. Setting the entire first half hour of the movie in a Brazilian favela does absolutely nothing for the movie other than set up some unfortunate white savior tropes and a really extended and not very interesting parkour chase scene. And speaking of the chases, there are far too many of them for basically no reason. An inordinate amount of this movie is spent watching teams of highly trained soldiers being apparently unable to outrun a regular scientist for scenes that last up to five straight minutes. There’s no tension there, nothing exciting. We know Banner won’t ultimately get away (because everyone paid for a ticket to see him hulk out), and we know that none of the soldiers will kill Banner because it’s his movie. So you just watch Edward Norton bounce around a favela or a college campus, and wait for the actual action to start.

There are a lot of little annoying things as well. I like the idea of the heart monitor (and it reflects Leterrier’s obvious action movie chops), but it makes the Hulk transformation seem way too mechanical, which deprives it of much of its weight as an emotional character beat. Like, if Banner just goes for too intense of a run, watch out! There’s also a lot of coincidence in the plot, like Banner missing a bottle smeared with a huge amount of his blood, or living a floor above a woman he happened to save previously. A lot of the plot beats are very convenient, and noticeably so. The very, very few attempts at humor in the movie fall flat, which is too bad because the character is ripe for comedy. Stretchy purple pants and “You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry,” are the worst kind of jokes to put in these movies. They amount to making fun at the expense of the source material in an attempt to elevate the ‘serious business’ adaptation we’re watching, and that’s not the direction that eventually made Marvel the biggest name on the block.

All of this sounds incredibly harsh, but the movie isn’t without merit of any sort. Tim Roth is terrifying as Blonsky, and the Cronenbergian body horror of his transformation is great fun to watch. Norton does a pretty good job in a very downbeat role, which was probably in his contract at that point in his career. The Hulk using two halves of a cop car as boxing gloves is simply delightful, and a highlight in an otherwise drab CGI fest of a final fight. There are a few fun “Oh, I get that!” references, and a few nice moments scattered throughout. The movie isn’t terrible, really, just very thoroughly average. Very little sets it apart, and I doubt anyone would ever give it a second thought if it didn’t come up every so often on retrospectives like this one. It’s made perfectly competently, and you can pass an inoffensive evening with it. It’s an easy miss even if you’ve never seen it, but if it’s on TV or something, you could do worse.

Overall:

Stray Thoughts:

• Seriously, Banner missing a bottle liberally smeared with blood on an assembly line of clear bottles is ridiculous.
• Banner learning martial arts is a nice idea, and one that’s been used in the comics before, although I don’t like him as too powerful a fighter.
• They use the original TV theme really well in this. It’s not exactly subtle, but it works.
• The humor in this is terrible: “Boy, New York cabbies sure are crazy, huh?” is the pinnacle of this film’s comedy. Really.
• This movie has some bizarre editing choices. The romance scene between Betty and Banner is weird, the revelation of the Abomination is visually confusing. There seems to be no reason for it, either.
• Thank God two of the characters in the gigantic flaming helicopter crash had names, or they’d be goners!
• Post-credits scene: acceptable. Nice way to tie the two movies together, more RDJ is always a good thing.
• Stan Lee cameo: thoroughly unimpressive. Not terrible, but kinda tangential and not that funny.