3:27PM, Nov 18, 2008
Ang Lee's 2003 version of the comic book divided audiences like Moses and the Red Sea. With Ed Norton about to take over the role of the not-so-jolly green giant, skymovies.com reviewer Rob Daniel and Editor Rich Phippen re-appraise, and go toe to toe on, the subject of Hulk.
Why I love Ang Lee's Hulk, by Rob Daniel.
It's not easy being green. When Hulk smashed onto US cinema screens in 2003 with a $62m debut, it seemed that those naysayers who'd guffawed at the trailers had snorted too soon.
But, when the following weeks' grosses tailed off and the film wheezed to $132m in the US, the same naysayers fought over who coined, "You won't like me when I'm Ang Lee" first..
But, Hulk triumphs as it transforms the silly into the extraordinary, while revelling in its lineage to the classic monster movies that made studio Universal's fortune, and Hollywood's best sci-fi movies, including RoboCop and Terminator.
Director Lee sets out his stall from the beginning with dazzling opening credits that mirror panels of comic book art, breathlessly introducing Dr David Banner's obsession with a serum that will allow wounds to heal immediately, to the point that he tests on himself, and unwittingly passes on side-effects to his unborn son,
Bruce.
These credits and a childhood trauma Bruce spends the rest of the film remembering introduce the energetic AVID editing that wipes, dissolves, split-screens, smash-cuts and crash zooms through shots and scenes, replicating Stan Lee's hyperbolic writing and Jack Kirby's dynamic artwork.
But, wed to this restless visual style is a script, polished by Ang Lee's creative partner James Schamus, that is unafraid to get its hands dirty dealing with the dark emotions that swirl around in Bruce Banner's repressed subconscious.
The death of a loved one typically puts a character on the hero path, but, even more than the mentally suspect Batman, Lee's Hulk is a difficult superhero, a 15ft howling mass of raging muscle barely grasping onto his humanity, and capable of impressive destruction despite doing the superheroic tasks of saving people in distress.
The suitably named Eric Bana (in a role initially offered to new Hulk Edward Norton) complained that the atmosphere on set was po-faced, but Lee understood that his cast had to play it dead straight if the big screen green-meany was to work.
Ah, the put upon green colossus - that CG creation that split audiences like the atom; greeted with calls of "Shrek" when he was first revealed half-finished in a notorious Superbowl TV spot.
But, finished and in context, even five years on Hulk remains mean and just the right side of cartoony, introduced in a nocturnal scene of exploded anger not to disguise dodgy special effects, but to acknowledge the character's affinity with horror fiction, notably the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's creation.
The encounter with Banner Sr.'s three mutant dogs at Bruce's sweetheart's cabin (again based on the comic) also comes down on the right side of silly due to tough, violent treatement of pulp material.
Like Spielberg's Jaws, Lee takes his time to reveal the titular meany, holding his green giant back for forty minutes before unleashing Hell.
And as Paul Verhoeven did with RoboCop, Ang Lee climaxes Hulk with a thirty minute extended action scene that moves from a showdown with tanks and choppers amidst desert mountains (including a knockout moment of Hulk throwing a tank, discus like into the middle distance), to an F-14 face-off on the Golden Gate Bridge and an ambitious, metaphysical lakeside duel with Bruce's power-crazed, mutated pop, David (a wire-haired Nick Nolte).
What truly smashed Hulk in the summer of 2003 was a brightly coloured, hollow confection entitled Pirates of the Caribbean. Why watch a blockbuster with psychological depth and action woven into the story fabric, when a scattershot trawl through pantomime mugging and tongue-in-cheek swordplay requires zero brain engagement?
No, it's really not easy being green.
Rob Daniel
