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Somebody owes Ang Lee an apology. Actually, a lot of people do. And I'll start. I was never interested in the Ang Lee film Hulk, because of the near unanimous bad reviews. Even the premium cable channels seemed to rarely show it. I finally decided to watch it yesterday on USA network and, wow....
SPOILERS FOR ANG LEE'S HULK AND THE INCREDIBLE HULK
Was it boring! I almost didn't make it through Ang Lee's Hulk. Eric Bana was expressionless, Nick Nolte was horrible, Sam Elliott was unlikeable (and that's no fun, he's usually a cool character). In fact, I honestly think they chose Eric Bana because his non-descript face was the easiest to mimic with computer graphics - and it was clear that the Ang Lee Hulk was meant to facially resemble Bruce Banner in his non-angry state. When Hulk fought a mutant poodle I was ready to concede Hulk as the worst superhero movie ever.
But then something happened. About 3/4 of the way through this tedious movie, there was a genuinely exciting and - dare I say it - reasonably convincing - extended action scene that starts with Hulk breaking out of a containment chamber in a military base, fighting M1 tanks and Comanche helicopters in the desert, then riding an F22 Raptor into the stratosphere, only to be captured on the streets of San Francisco. This was one of the best action sequences ever made for a superhero movie. And I have to say, the CGI was quite good. That's not to say that the Hulk was totally convincing. But it didn't require much more suspension of disbelief than is required in a lot of non-superhero action movies. And that's quite a feat.
Of course, the ending got really stupid with Bruce Banner's father turning into some sort of shape-shifting villain but the earlier long action sequence put any of Iron Man's brief heroics to shame. And overall, apart from the animated mutant dogs, it really did seem like the CGI in Hulk tried hard to convince you that he was real and really interacting with his environment. It was certainly better than I expected.
OK, but what about The Incredible Hulk? Guess what... It's boring too! It has just a few appearances by the Hulk and here's the thing - the CGI in this movie is horrible. Maybe the Hulk in Ang Lee's version looked fake at times and cartoonish at others - but it had its convincing moments also. The Incredible Hulk looked positively ridiculous. It had skin tone and muscle tone that didn't even look like a living creature, just some sort of computer-generated texture. It was really preposterous. The lighting, environment and facial effects didn't look 5 years newer than Ang Lee's, they looked 10 years older. And there really is no excuse for that. We truly are living in an era where computer programmers can ruin a movie just as thoroughly as any director, actor or cinematographer ever could.
Worse, the writer and director of this movie seemed to learn almost nothing from Ang Lee's "failure". All the same mistakes are made. Bruce Banner is practically emotionless. The general is so relentlessly, implausibly one-dimensional that he seems faker than the Hulk. The love interest is unconvincing (I have to give Liv Tyler credit for being more emotional than Jennifer Connelly, though both are quite easy on the eyes). Tim Blake Nelson overacts almost as much as Nick Nolte, even though he's only in the movie for a few minutes. The Hulk really doesn't do much in this movie, certainly not any more than in Ang Lee's version. The Incredible Hulk was slightly more fast-paced, but since nothing really happened anyway that's not worth much. Oh yeah, the villain is every bit as phony looking as the Hulk. He's actually much more interesting as a human than as a monster.
This is how I can definitively say Ang Lee's version was better: if I ever have the chance to see Ang Lee's version again, I might be able to sit through it to see the good action sequences, or else to try to appreciate the dialogue a little more (more likely I'd just fast forward to the good parts). But there is absolutely not a single scene in The Incredible Hulk that is worth seeing once, let alone twice. It is truly at the bottom of the heap of superhero movies. The cartoonish CGI is an insult to the audience - at least in Ang Lee's version it seems like they were trying to make it realistic (except for the giant poodle, of course).
It is absolutely mind-boggling how the filmmakers intended to erase the bad feelings associated with Ang Lee's Hulk by making almost exactly the same movie.
It is to Edward Norton's credit that he seems to be distancing himself from this film.


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