Marvel Month - Mini review: The Incredible Hulk

So, the Hulk. A classic Jekyll and Hyde story. You’d think there’s potential for great movies with that concept but with Aang Lee’s introspective but ultimately incredibly boring adaptation was a colossal failure and the less said about the Incredible Bulk the better. But neither of those are part of the Marvel cinematic universe, this is, despite the Hulk being played by Edward Norton in this movie and Mark Ruffalo in the others.

This movie was very much overshadowed by Iron Man, making only $260m on its $150m budget but that was enough and met Marvel’s expectations. Critics marked this with a 67% Rotten Tomatoes rating, only one film in the entire MCU has a lower rating than that, but we’ll get to that in due course, for now, here’s what I think.

So, the story focuses on Banner trying to find a cure for the Hulk, he has an ally, who we know only as Mr Blue for the time being. They’re close but Mr Blue needs data to continue his work. And the with the Military having discovered him, he decides to head back home where he reignites old flames and faces the military’s latest blunder, Emil Blonsky… the Abomination

I’m going to be honest, it’s an OK movie, average, which for the MCU equates to being sh*t, but Iron Man was the only other movie at the time so just put it down to a slight stumble. But let’s start with some positives. It does its best to remedy the problems people had with Aang Lee’s Hulk movie. The pacing is tighter, the villains are much more powerful and the narrative doesn’t get too bogged down in melodrama. The tone is a little more humorous, something which would become par the course in an MCU movie.

Because the Aang Lee movie had come out, they decided to skip the origin of the Hulk, this is good because we were much quicker to the action but also bites them in the ass when it comes to some of the characters.

When it comes to acting, Edward Norton was a good Bruce Banner, I wouldn’t say more than good but good. William Hurt plays a good Thaddeus Ross, and there’s a good reason why he’s the only actor who’s made a return in the MCU. Tim Blake Nelson as Mr Blue aka Samuel Sterns was hilariously funny in his brief role in the movie, making me disappointed we haven’t seen him become the Leader in any of the Avengers movies.

Tim Roth was largely forgettable as the Emil Blonsky and the Abomination, part of the trouble was the look they chose was the generic monster look, similar to how they designed Doomsday in Batman vs Superman. Beyond that, he’s a fairly generic villain. Ross was more 3-dimensional thanks to his daughter but speaking of her…

Liv Tyler is the worst thing about this movie for me. She plays Betty Ross, a character so essential to the Hulk’s mythos they gave him a relationship with Black Widow in the Avengers movies and her name hasn’t yet come up in anything Marvel related. Considering all of Tony Stark’s entourage has appeared in one form or another in the wider MCU this is disappointing... Who am I kidding, I'm fine with that. Her performance is bland, her chemistry with Edward Norton is non-existent and her relationship with her father gives them maybe 3 lines to each other. It does say something when you make Hulk and Black Widow feel like the better couple.

The CGI in this movie doesn’t hold up in places too, some of the throwing scenes look painfully fake and let’s just say there’s a reason much of the Hulk action takes place in the Dark. Some of the CGI, I hesitate to say bad, so I’ll just say it hasn’t aged well.

A solid story isn’t enough for me to like the Incredible Hulk, Betty Ross in performance, dialogue and chemistry ruins the movie for me, and its other faults only exacerbate the problem. Also, the tease with Stark makes no sense.

Rating 50/100