The Incredible Hulk (2008)

director: Louis Leterrier

writers: Zak Penn, Edward Norton (Uncredited)

starring: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, William Hurt, Tim Roth

genre: Action, Comics

From all the Marvel characters Hulk is the one that we demand the simplest thing for him to smash. And here the filmmakers accomplish this with flying colors while the Hulk smashes whatever he finds and gets really angry.

The film is not so much of a sequel to the first film Hulk but a semi reboot. It gives a brief summary of the Hulk’s origin which we saw in Ang Lee’s Hulk but continues to Bruce Banner in hiding and containment of the Hulk. While in Brazil in hiding Banner is detected by General Ross (William Hurt) who has created a special team led by Emile Blonsky (Tim Roth) to capture the Hulk. But as we all know what can a measly team do to the Hulk? After the failure of the mission Ross experiments on Blonsky the old Super Soldier Serum that had been used on Captain America. After some bad side effects Roth transforms into Abomination and Hulk has to protect his love Betty (Liv Tyler) at all costs and defeat the Abomination.

What made me happy with this film was the adrenaline of the action scenes and the finesse in special effects especially the Hulk and Abomination effects. Also the film continues in the continuity of the Marvel films and connects in a special way with Iron Man. Also the respect the creators had for the original Hulk series is ever present with the lonely man theme and Banner constantly on the run that gives a different feeling compared to the first film of Banner searching for the connection with his father.Change was needed in the franchise with the bad performance the first film had. Even though in my opinion it was a very good film and actually made not that much diffrent money in the box office than this one. Here they went for a more mainstream approach which was not a bad choice because it works in areas better and worse in others. The choice Louis Leterrier who has already experience in action films seemed as the right choice for the big guy.

As good as the film is it lacks in the area of emotion. As a Hulk film I have to compare it to the first. And the first was an incredible father son story with great scenes and powerful drama courtesy of Ang Lee. Here it’s too little but only affordable for what the film needs and nothing more than that. Also Leterrier style of direction is conventional in difference to Lee’s incredible methods in filmmaking and simulating comic book panels.

In the end Hulk continues Marvel Studios run of success by creating entertaining films for geeks and casual fans. If your looking for big fights, huge explosions and puny humans the Incredible Hulk is just right up your alley.

Personal Rating:

Review by Paul