Hulk vs Hulk

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2008)

*** SPOILERS BELOW ***
Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk film was perhaps less than the sum of its parts. Still, the parts themselves were often striking, and as long as you had nothing against exploding frogs, split screens, heavily italicized comic-book dialogue, psychedelic Dali-inspired dream sequences, Hulk poodles, and a deranged Nick Nolte, you could be more than adequately entertained for long stretches of the film. Its main problem was that its notion of the Hulk as embodying a regression to a state of infantile rage sounded better in theory than it worked on the screen. The fanboys who complained about their hero being reduced to a big green baby weren't wrong.
The new Hulk film returns to the more familiar -- to those of us raised on the TV series -- Jekyll-and-Hyde archetype, now with Edward Norton credibly stepping into the Bill Bixby role. Dr Banner is again the haunted scientist searching to cure his terrible secret affliction. The Jekyll-and-Hyde premise is a tried-and-tested formula, and the new film begins well, with shrewd borrowings from the earlier film (the first of many, right from the imagery and expository use of the opening credits) and the Bond franchise. In no time at all we are in the midst of a superbly executed street chase, culminating in our first dramatic glimpse of the Hulk.
The trouble is, none of the film's later action sequences equal the tension of this early scene. By the time the Hulk takes melancholy refuge in a hillside cave midway through the movie, a sense of deja vu is already sinking in; and when we reach the ostensibly climactic final fight, we are, as one critic rightly observed, in King Kong versus Godzilla territory. For this turns out to be a film, assuredly intelligent and accomplished though it is in places, that nonetheless has not a single original idea of its own. Can anyone doubt that, this time, the studio made sure it got exactly the film it ordered? The cast looks good on paper, but thanks to a moderate script mostly delivers one-note performances. It's particularly disappointing to see William Hurt wasted in the role of General Ross. In the earlier film Sam Elliott brought both menace and empathy to the role. Hurt can manage neither, but he is not given much to work with. I also sorely missed the earlier film's sheer visual spectacle. The new film begins amid stunning views of an impoverished Brazilian township, but there is nothing later in the film to match the first film's desert chase, where the Hulk does battle with the military against a backdrop of vast sand dunes, ancient rock formations, and finally San Francisco's traffic.
The Hulk utters one of his signature lines at the climax of that scene: "Puny human!" He is hallucinating as he falls unconscious from a fighter plane he has ridden into the stratosphere, and he is addressing his terrified human alter ego. The new film gives him his other signature utterance, also at the climax of the action: "Hulk SMASH!" At this point the Hulk pounds a hole in the ground and his opponent falls into it. The contrast just about sums up the difference in ambition between the two films.