My favourite MCU film

Rating: 9/10 (21 November 2013)

Marvel has had quite the starring achievement over the past couple of years. It generated a surprise hit with Iron Man, a monster hit with its sequel, another hit with Thor and Captain America but also giving the public one of the most over-hyped blockbusters of all time with The Avengers. For some reason in this little world of success, people forget this film, why? Its in my opinion, the best of all the ones mentioned in terms of story and characters. So why is this my favourite, the only one that flopped of the ones above? Let me explain.
The plot is that Bruce Banner has been on the run for 5 years, communicating with an unknown scientist about how to get rid of The Hulk but he accidentally reveals he's in Brazil to the American army who want to make The Hulk a weapon. He escapes by turning into the not-Jolly Green Giant and taking everyone out. He makes his way back to America and finds out Betty Ross is involved with someone else. The army finds him, after developing the only legitimate love relationship in these MCU films, and our friend, Hulk, makes an appearance and kills a soldier obsessed with him named Emil Blonskiy. Bruce then asks Betty if he could travel to New York city to meet with this scientist who apparently has a cure to Gamma radiation. They get it out of him but the obsessed soldier has been injected with the Super Soldier serum and asks to get some of The Hulk in him as well. He turns into The Abomination and Bruce unleashes The Hulk to battle him.
Okay I loved this movie as a kid and...I am amazed at how well it holds up. The development of Bruce and Betty's relationship is actually believable and it doesn't distract from the action scenes. The action scenes in this film are also very well paced, you can sit back and enjoy them without any questions of "why are they doing this?" because while the motivations are simple, they're fully explained and understandable. The Hulk is literally just the inside desire to destroy everything being unleashed and The Army wants that to be a new weapon...Its simple but understandable.
If I was to say anything against this film, I would probably have to say the supporting characters that are never experienced beyond 10 minutes of screen time. I mean there is Samuel Stern, the guy HAS A CURE TO GAMMA RADIATION and he's in it for literally less than 20 minutes. For people who have never read the comics, he also becomes The Hulk's arch nemesis who ends up controlling The Abomination, I'm guessing that would be important. Another character is Leonard Samson who would actually become The Hulk's sidekick and in this film is Betty's boyfriend. For the first few times he's introduced, we barely see the guy and he's in the movie for a count of 2 scenes. There is also Stanley, the pizza store owner who aided Bruce in remaining anonymous in the second act, giving him a job and even a place to live...he's in it for - get this - 2 scenes! I don't think the film suffers too much for this but I'd like to see more of them, please.
The thing that I do think is kind of "love it or hate it" is the humor. Personally, I'm in the middle. Some jokes have become cringe-worthy, others actually hold up to be pretty funny. The one where Bruce says "Don't make me hungry" instead of "Don't make me angry" in Portuguese has aged horribly, why? The joke was "he said something outside of what he wanted to say" (jesus, don't show people who found this funny Phoebe In Wonderland anytime soon). Betty screaming at a crazy cab driver, speeding through New York city, Bruce tells her to calm down, she tells him to shut up, thats funny because he's The Hulk, he can't complain about someone elses anger issues because he has the worst anger issues of anyone in that universe.
I also have to put in a compliment for the acting, Edward Nornton is fantastic as Bruce Banner, he understood the character better than anyone I've seen on screen. People hype up Mark Ruffalo but he came off as "too calm", even when he was angry at people and not The Hulk it was a testament to bad acting (and I know he can act!) and The Avengers also called for him to control the Hulk at will, so yeah, this might be the last Incredible Hulk movie we see for a while because all the struggles that this one set up of keeping the monster at bay, going through explosions and tons of property damage, that could've all been avoided if Nornton stayed "always angry"...I know this isn't a review for The Avengers but come on, I can't not address that. The other performers do a very good job too Tim Roth and William Hurt actually do justice to how I'd imagine them and while Liv Tyler was a good Betty Ross, I prefer Jennifer Connely, but I digress. Those are the 4 major performances and they all do stand out.
Overall I thought this film was actually pretty good in terms of holding up. It appeals to both kids and adults, it has a well developed plot and well developed characters (well...for a Marvel movie) and to top it all off this is the only incarnation of the character where they didn't sodomize him (except the 1990's cartoon).