Movie Malcontent / HULK

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HULK / Malcontent's Mark: C

June 20th, 2003

Bruce Banner: Eric Bana
Betty Ross: Jennifer Connelly
Father: Nick Nolte
Ross: Sam Elliott

Directed by Ang Lee.
Written by John Turman, Michael France, James Schamus, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee.
Rated PG-13

Hulk had all the makings of a classic comic book hero coming to cinematic life: acclaimed director, talented actors, and cutting edge CGI. But I get a sense that many will be disappointed with director Ang Lee’s vision of the comic book fantasy. What went wrong? The way I see it, Lee was just out of his element. Don’t get me wrong, Lee’s one our most gifted filmmakers with an impressively diverse palette, from period dramas (Sense and Sensibility) to martial arts fantasies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). But it looks like bringing the green guy to the screen wasn’t quite within his grasp.

Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) has daddy issues – the primary issue being he’s never known his real father. As a San Francisco scientist messing around with gamma radiation, he unknowingly continues the experiments his father (Nick Nolte) started on at Bruce’s birth: to make the Indestructible Human. Trouble is, the grown-up Bruce wants everyone to have equal access to the lab results whereas the bad guy, Talbot (Josh Lucas), wants indestructibility to go straight to the military, natch. In the lab, Bruce accidentally gets zapped by gamma radiation and senses something is different about him. When Talbot gets too greedy, and slaps Bruce around, the mild-mannered scientist transforms into the Hulk and rampaging ensues. Bruce’s ex-girlfriend Betty (Jennifer Connelly) asks her military general Ross (Sam Elliot) for help. Also, Bruce’s father shows up to heap psychological baggage onto his son. This all leads up to Ross and a small army going after Hulk like the angry townspeople in the Frankenstein movies. I believe Lee was trying to pay homage to the classic Universal monster movies and I think gets this right, producing one of the more gripping parts of the movie: Hulk doing battle with tanks, jets, and helicopters in some unnamed desert locale. But mostly, the film itself seems a bit bloated and gets crushed under the weight of Lee’s ambitions.

I’m probably going to piss off a lot of comic book enthusiasts, but I’m going to compare Lee’s Hulk with Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man from last summer. I know they are two very different comic book characters; my comparison is simply meant to show how the Spider-Man filmmakers clearly knew the expectations of their key demographic (men between 8-28). Raimi and crew knew that most comic-book narratives could be boiled down to one essential ingredient: wish-fulfillment. Comic book readers expect Peter Parker to go from scrawny to beefcake overnight, beat-up the school bully thus winning the admiration of his peers, make-out with the girl he’s wanted all his life but was too shy to talk to, and finally stand up for himself by besting a evil, powerful authority figure.

If Lee followed these same wish-fulfillment watermarks, the Hulk audience would get to see Bruce get bullied, try to hold-back his rage, then eventually erupt with fury and Hulk-out. This happens just once when Talbot roughs up Bruce, but it should have happened more often. What else was missing? More rampaging through cities; Hulk should have decimated several recognizable San Francisco buildings - it would’t matter if it was by accident or on purpose – most people cannot deny an inherent desire to bust things up. Another disappointment in the wish-fulfillment area: no real adversity. Sure, Hulk protects his girl from Hulk dogs, but where’s the villain of equal or greater strength? And don’t tell me that his father turning into Rock Biter from The Neverending Story and then a giant glob of snot was worthy villain showdown material.

As promising as it may have sounded at first, this movie should NOT have been directed by a dilettante of Greek tragedies; it should have been directed by someone who grew up pouring over the pulp stories in the Marvel comic books, someone who rarely missed Bill Bixby bust into Lou Ferrigno in the ’78 -‘82 TV series.

So what do we get instead with Lee’s version? The “weighty” symbols of lichen, star fish, and dying trees and overwrought father conflicts, made most embarrassing by a third act tête-à-tête between Bana and Nolte staged like a Shakespearean tragedy.

Probably Lee’s most egregious attempt at trying to make it look like he knows what he’s doing would be his decision to break up the screen into comic-book panels. He just brings too much attention to the medium and takes too much attention away from the story.

I still consider Lee one of filmdom’s most ambitious directors, but in Hulk, he may have become too ambitious. My hope is that, despite Hulk possibly not meeting box office expectations, Universal continues on with the franchise, with someone less highfalutin and more hip in control of the beast next time.

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