A dull green hue

Rating: 5/10 (30 January 2016)

The second film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is a rebooted Hulk that pretends the 2003 version directed by Ang Lee never happened. One of the virtues of this attempt is that it doesn't spend much time on Hulk's origin story, mostly dispensing with it in the opening credits montage. I think this is the filmmakers at least acknowledging that, yes, we all saw this story a few years prior and we really don't need much detail. Another virtue is Tim Roth, whose rat-like Emil Blonsky injects some much needed verve into the proceedings, as does Tim Blake Nelson in the smaller role of Samuel Sterns. The rest of the cast is saddled with playing one note each in one-dimensional roles. Edward Norton and Liv Tyler seem like they would be more convincing as a pair of siblings than as former lovers. Neither are quite as somber or severe as Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly were in the same roles, but neither really manage to make Bruce Banner or Betty Ross terribly memorable. (We get a brief shout-out to Bill Bixby in the form of a television clip from "The Courtship of Eddie's Father," but that just brought home the sad fact that we haven't had a finer Bruce Banner than Bixby in the 1970's Hulk TV show. Sorry, Mark Ruffalo, thanks for trying.) It seems that most of whatever creative energy was spent here went into rendering a convincing Hulk who can convincingly smash stuff and interact with human characters, and on that score the film succeeds. If only the human characters were more interesting, we might have something here. This isn't the worst film in the MCU (the worst, to date, would come next), but it is the most boring.