Horrible

Rating: 3/10 (17 August 2008)

When I walked out of Spider-Man 3 last summer, I kept asking myself, "I liked it, didn't I?" Of course I did. This was Spider-Man 3 after all, and after the phenomenal showing in Spider-Man 2, Spider 3 had to blow the second one out of the water. I was so thoroughly convinced I liked it that I went again the following night. It wasn't until a whole week later that I had to admit it. "Spider-Man 3 sucked big time." I had similar feelings as I walked out of "The Incredible Hulk" only I was smarter this time around.
After hiding out in South America for five years, Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) is still plagued by the gamma radiation which turns him into the Hulk, or as Ferris al-Ghazi from "The Kingdom" said it, "The Green Beast!" Banner is still being hunted down by General "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt). I always wondered who would name their kid thunderbolt, even if it was only a comic book. I recently found out that it's a nick name for Thaddeus; makes sense. By some strange twist of fate General Ross discovers Banner's location and brings in Emile Blonsky (Tim Roth) to help hunt Banner down. Blonsky is an aging soldier who is more or less on his way out because he looks like crap. He says he'll do the job as long as he can although his body looks less like a whip cord and more like a pillow. Bruce comes back and takes the aid of the general's daughter Bettie (Liv Tyler). This was Bruce's love interest from the first film. Yes, the first film which we're supposed to pretend didn't happen.
It's pretty much at this point where the film's narrative element just stops moving. Did last year's writers strike have something to do with it? The makers could've at least tried to give us more meat in the story but they chose to give us the senseless action. The rest of the film is pretty much Hulk versus Blonsky in three (or was it four?) different rounds. Every time he gets his ass kicked though, Blonsky comes thundering back with the help of, as Thaddeus puts it, a super soldier serum that was developed during World War II; an obvious reference to Captain America.
Now as far as the action goes I'm coming right out and saying it. The first time we see the Hulk, he looks fake. I mean fake with a capital "F". The CGI was done by Rhythm and Hues, a special effects studio based in Hyderabad, India. Normally they do great work and they even won an Academy Award for last year's "The Golden Compass." But the first scenes of the Hulk were painfully bad. It was like a cartoon sitting in the middle of a live action film a la Roger Rabbit. The later scenes are done much better but they don't make up for the fatal mistake of giving us a crappy first look of the film's main attraction.
This film is Marvel's second home production after Iron Man. What made Iron Man great was a good story, talented cast that had loads of chemistry, a balance of action and narrative, and characters that felt real and not "reel." It was like they all had a history and they worked together. In this film (like so many other summer action films) the story gets kicked to the curb the last 30 minutes to give us the special effects bonanza, none of which was that entertaining.
I'm sure this'll make loads of money on opening weekend but that much is expected. Why couldn't they leave this one alone? Didn't the studios lose enough money on the first Hulk disaster? Apart from poor writing, bad CGI, under developed characters, and overly cartoon-ish action, The Incredible Hulk isn't a bad movie. Oh, and there's a surprise at the end. Problem is, I knew about this surprise six months ago.