Dark, thrilling tantaliaing, but just falls short..

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2020)

The ugly duckling of the MCU, and yet had the potential to turn into its swan. The Incredible Hulk is a fun watch, very different from the usual MCU fare that we're now used to in 2020. It's dark, intense, devoid of humour, and more about the man behind the Mr.Green than the Hulk itself.
It is not an origins story, so that is a fresh side of the story. Bruce Banner's transformation story into the Hulk is covered as part of the opening credits scene, and then we're taken on a journey of a hunted man, on the run, desperate for a cure. There's action and adversity, lots of it infact, but it's the story of Banner that drives the movie.
Edward Norton does a great job bringing out the stark contrast in a vulnerable Banner and the Invincible Hulk. Liv Tyler makes Betty Ross believable and the two work well together.
Among the side cast William Hurt's Thunderbolt Ross and Tim Roth's Blonsky's suffer from inconsistent character development but both make the most of it, making the sudden changes in motivation and characters believable to an extent.
What brings the film down is that after an excellent first half, we get a very generic like for like antagonist, without any backstory or reason. General Ross who plays the primary antagonist in the first half, with his ruthless, win at any cost mentality, suddenly out of nowhere turns face. All this brings down what could have been a thrilling, dark tale of both external and internal conflicts, of how Dr. Banner comes to terms with his alter ego, how the Hulk goes from America's most wanted, to be a part of the Avengers initiative, but it was not to be.
Taking nothing away from it, The Incredible Hulk is a fun watch, excellent in parts, and a definite and welcome departure in tone to the usual Marvel fare, but a sloppy final half brings down what could have been the MCU's shining light, because this is where, and not Iron Man before it, that we get the first hints of a larger universe being built.