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Movie Review: The Incredible Hulk (2008) – Complete and Utter Failure
At the moment, I’m posting some old rants, reviews and the likes to my blog. Some of the stuff has just been lying around on different computers and desktops, some of it has been posted online, some has even been banned online (damn that dirty mouth of mine!), but whether it’s interesting or not, well… You be the judge
Here’s one I originally posted on IMDb on September 20, 2008. At the time of writing, it’s still there, but you never know when some “user” will take offense and call it “abuse”, so here it is again:
This one definitely belongs on Failblog.
I seem to have the diametrically opposite opinion as some other commenters in here, in that where Ang Lee succeeded in the previous Hulk movie attempt in actually creating characters for us to like, no such attempt is made in this movie, and thus we couldn’t care less about the white, black, yellow, and green characters on the screen.
Apparently, the team here decided to totally ignore the previous installment of Hulk, both by changing the title from Hulk 2 to The Incredible Hulk, and by ignoring the story that precedes this installment. So, basically, we’re starting from scratch. Let’s see.
“We must explain how the characters know each other, why they’re supposedly in love, why they hate what and who they hate, etc., let’s get that over with during the opening credits.” Fail.
“If we cut the fundings for CGI effects, we’ll have more money for marketing!” Fail.
“‘Wroooarrara Roowowoaraaa Wrrraaaahh’ makes for good dialogue.” Fail.
“The Hulk smashes things, so the point of the story must be to smash things.” Fail.
And this last point is exactly why Ang Lee got it right. I can understand if some people who left their trailer homes with Oprah ranting on the television would find it hard to have to endure in excess of an hour being fed plot and character construction before the Hulk finally gets around to throwing around tanks and soldiers, but that’s exactly what’s needed to makes an over-sized angry Apache helicopter smashing green guy become recognizable and worthy of empathy, and not just some joke character worthy of pity laughs. Which is what happens in this second Hulk movie.
Ang Lee’s Hulk worked because of this, Spider-Man works because of this, Iron Man to some degree also, but this? This? This is just awful. You hate the characters on screen, each and every one of them, because they didn’t earn your caring. I find myself mentally responding to Tyler’s “Nooo!”s with, “Why don’t you just shut up?!”, and The Hulk’s “Hulk smash!” with, “We knooow, why not try something else instead?” I’m sorry, but bad CGI and smashing stuff, including the army firing miniguns from choppers at residential buildings in downtown Manhattan (what the fuck’s that about?) just doesn’t make a good movie. It makes for audience disrespect.
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