Hulk Matters

As I said yesterday, I hadn't seen 2008's The Incredible Hulk until Thursday night. I'd avoided it all these years because I was holding a torch for Ang Lee's 2003 Hulk. Generally the word was that the 2008 film turned out to be vastly inferior, and I certainly found that to be true. Inferior not just to Ang Lee's movie but compared to other comic book movies in general. Certainly in 2008, which also had both The Dark Knight and Iron Man, it drew the short straw.

Do I have anything nice to say about it? It starts off more creatively than modern MCU movies, featuring location footage in Rio de Janeiro, and I love the fact that Bruce Banner is working at a soda bottling plant. It's so plausible and it connects the action plausibly back to the US but it's also really outside the box for a movie like this. I can't remember the last time a superhero had such a blue-collar job. Not since the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, I think. I guess there was Shang-Chi working as a valet, but that had such an obvious tie-in to the action.

Anyway, it turns out that The Incredible Hulk doesn't start with a clean slate. Producer Gail Anne Hurd, who also produced Ang Lee's movie, called The Incredible Hulk a "requel". And, yes, it does kind of pick up where Hulk left off. Banner is in South America and the people concerned about him in the US are Thaddeus Ross and his daughter, Betty, just like in the Ang Lee movie. Eric Bana as Bruce has been replaced by Edward Norton, Sam Elliot as Thaddeus has been replaced by William Hurt, and Jennifer Connelly as Betty has been replaced by Liv Tyler. From Elliot to Hurt was kind of a lateral move but Tyler and Norton can't compete with Connelly and Bana. Or with Mark Ruffalo, for that matter.

The two have absolutely no chemistry. Bruce pines for her and feels pained that he has to avoid her when he's back in the US but when the two do run into each other, despite a passionate rainstorm kiss, they quickly settle into a vibe of polite acquaintances. Tyler's very pretty but the script doesn't give her much. The real problem is Edward Norton.

This is one of the movies that cemented Norton's reputation as an actor who tries to take control of a production. It's why Bruce Banner was recast for The Avengers and I wonder now how much Joss Whedon had to do with that decision. One of the big points of contention between Whedon and the cast of Justice League is that Whedon wouldn't take notes from them. Whedon said he hadn't worked with "a ruder group of people." Now that Ezra Miller, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, and Gal Gadot have elsewhere established themselves as difficult to work with, are we not yet at a point where we can say Whedon knew what he was talking about? I still have no desire to watch either cut of Justice League, though. But I said the same thing about The Incredible Hulk, so who knows?

Edward Norton, like Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is a performer who's spent a career running away from the kinds of roles he was obviously made for. I know of only one occasion when Norton was perfectly cast--in Fight Club. He's perfect in that role because there's something fundamentally impotent about him. He's exactly the right contrast for Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden. But he's wrong for Bruce Banner because you don't ever sense his containing some kind of brutal, primeval anger. I get that impression from Eric Bana and Mark Ruffalo, not from Edward Norton. It's the same quality that prevents him from seeming like he's thirsty for Liv Tyler.

It's a shame Mark Ruffalo hasn't had a solo Hulk film. The problem is that Universal has distribution rights to any Hulk movie but Disney owns the character in every other way. Apparently Disney's relationship with Universal isn't as cosy as their relationship with Sony. You can't even watch The Incredible Hulk on Disney+, I had to rent it on Amazon.