When Hulk hit theaters 20 years ago, audiences were excited. After several problems with superhero movies in the 1990s, it seemed Hollywood was finally learning how to make a movie following X-Men in 2000 and Spider-Man in 2002. Marvel hadn’t had too much luck with their characters on screen, i.e. Howard the Duck. And others were direct-to-video disasters like Captain America in 1992 and The Punisher in 1989.
Hulk had a top-notch director in Ang Lee and a rising star in Eric Bana, who had surprised many people as Delta Force commando Hoot in Black Hawk Down, who was a composite character of several real-life Army service members. There was also the critically acclaimed Chopper where he played real-life criminal Mark Brandon Read. So, what could go wrong with the movie?
A lot, to say the least.
For one, Dr. Bruce Banner and his alter ego The Incredible Hulk isn’t really a superhero as much as a person whose superpower is more of a curse. He has to live a life of peace and tranguility. Otherwise, he turns into the hulking green creature. It was a metaphor of how we can seem normal at times but a totally different character when we’re mad and angry. I had watched the TV show growing up with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. So, I was excited to see the movie.
And so were a lot of other people who expected the same thing X-Men and Spider-Man had delivered. Except this was a different movie. It was more character driven turning Bruce’s condition into somewhat of light body horror. Bruce is working as a research scientist at the Berkeley Lab with his girlfriend, Betsy Ross (Jennifer Connelly). However, Bruce doesn’t know his name isn’t Kenzler but Banner.
In a prologue set decades earlier, Bruce’s father, David (played by Paul Kersey) was a genetics research scientiest working for the government hoping to improve human DNA. However, the supervisor, Col. Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross (Todd Tesen) forbid human experimentation. Regardless, David experimented on himself passing along his genes to his son when he and his wife get pregnant. What we find out after many flashbacks is that David went crazy causing a dangerous explosion on the military base and tried to kill Bruce as a child, but killed his wife instead.
David was locked away in prison while Bruce was adopted. Since he was still a young child, he doesn’t have much memory just bits and pieces. Years later, David (played now by Nick Nolte) has been released from prison and worked his way into a job as a janitor. There’s a subtle hint that he may even have killed the previous janitor to gain access. Betsy and Thunderbolt (played now by Sam Elliott) are estranged. The shady Glenn Talbot (Josh Lucas) who worked under Thunderbolt and has a history with Betsy has shown up at the lab. He says he’s interested in the nanomeds research they’re working on.
One day at the lab, Bruce helps out an assitant when the grammasphere malfunctions. He saves the co-worker’s life but exposes himself. Waking up in a hospital bed, he seems normal but David has shown up telling him he’s really named Banner. Eventually, Bruce’s intensifying rage when he returns to work and sees what the military and Talbot want to do causing him to change into the green creature and destroy the lab.
Thunderbolt puts Bruce under house arrest as the government seizes control of the lab and the experiments. With Talbot pressuring Bruce more and more, he attacks Talbot, injuring him, and leaves the house to go after Betsy at her cabin where David has sent three mutant dogs to attack and kill her. The government realizing what Bruce has becomes wants to take him for experiments to use. Even though he’s a four-star general now, Thunderbolt expresses that he “still takes orders” as the private sector seems to have more control.
It’s a different style of superhero movie using the origin format to tell a story of overbearing fathers and the trauma it inflicts on their children. There are action sequences but the Hulk is fighting the military not some evil supervillain’s army. In a post-9/11 world where the Iraqi War was only a few months old, the country was divided. While the Hulk doesn’t kill anyone, it probably made some people mad regardless. Talbot causes his own death in a foolish way.
Lee himself directed the movie in a style that was supposed to evoke a comic-book format feel. While I liked this approach, I think it turned off some of the more normal audience members who were expected something more straight forward. Lee is a very skilled and talented director who’s resume includes a wild range of movies and genres including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Ice Storm and Sense and Sensibility by 2003. If you hire Lee to direct a superhero movie, you’re going to get a Lee movie.
Granted the special effects aren’t the best. And for a movie that had a reported budget of $137 million in 2003, it shouldn’t have looked as bad as it did. The mutant dogs are downright laughable. And then there’s scenes of the Hulk running through the desert which has been turned into an Internet meme and the jumping around like a Peter Pan character doesn’t help. The ending with a showdown in water between Bruce and David who turns into Zzzax for some reason.
Reportedly the movie had lingered in development Hell for much of the 1990s with the scripts being worked on by Jonathan Hensleigh, Zak Penn, J.J. Abrams and Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski among others. James Schamus, who worked with Lee on other movies is credited as the writer along with Michael France, who would go on to write the 2004 Punisher and 2005 Fantasitc Four movies. Lee also wanted Billy Crudup instead of Bana to play Bruce. Crudup reportedly wasn’t interested. He would go on to play Jon Osterman/Doctor Manhattan in the 2009 film adaptation of Watchmen.
Despite mixed reviews and a negative response from the audiences, the movie went on to make nearly a quarter of a billion worldwide. But even though the ending sets up a sequel, it would be another five years with Edward Norton stepping in the role and the movie functioning as the second entry in the Marvel Cinemative Universe after Iron Man. However, Universal Pictures which had distributed both Hulk and the 2008 The Incredible Hulk had rights to the movie. Response to the second Hulk movie was more favorable.
Recently, it was announced Marvel finally got the distribution rights back to the Hulk even though the character has appeared in multiple other MCU movies with Mark Ruffalo playing the Bruce for the third time in movies. There’s also been a recent backlash against superhero movies featuring Marvel and DC Comic characters. And there’s no reported plans for a third Hulk movie. With Ruffalo at 55, who knows how long he’s going to play the character?
It’s a different idea for a superhero movie that takes the origin story format and turns it into a family drama. This turned audiences offer because they were expecting the good vs. bad concept of other movies. I think if it had better special effects and dialogue, it could’ve been remembered as one of the best. But I can understand Universal and Marvel’s desire to turn it into something more audiences would’ve accepted such as Hulk battling The Abomination.
In many ways, the first of all superhero movies are usually a little problematic. Spider-Man 2 and X2: X-Men United were considered better movies by audiences and critics. And despite the reshoots, some people consider Superman II a far better movie. The Dark Knight is better than Batman Begins. And Captain America: The Winter Soldier may just well be the best of the MCU so far.
Bana gives the character the right pathos of a man struggling with an affliction he doesn’t want. Elliott seems born to play Thunderbolt. I felt he was better than the late William Hurt. And Connelly, fresh off her Oscar win for A Beautiful Mind, proves that she’s one of the most underrated actresses around. I felt she brought more to the role than Lily Tyler did who played the role as the more “generic girl role” in superhero movies. The only problem is Nolte overacts in a role that requires him to be the yang to Bana’s ying.
Maybe Hulk works better in Thor: Ragnarok or The Avengers movies.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 