Posted by
Daniel Crandall on Sunday, June 15, 2008 11:28:44 PM
I really hate men in green!! Oh, wait ..
The Incredible Hulk is back on the big screen, smashing everything in his path to tiny bits and pieces. If you were in the Marvel Movie-verse and lived in some city or town this lunk-head wandered into you better have your property insurance paid up. Otherwise, you'd be looking at piles of rubble with nothing to show for it.
I came away from
The Incredible Hulk on the down side of a mixed reaction. I just didn’t care all that much for the protaganist, and cared too
much for the antagonist.
… OK, I’ll write it … some may take what I write as spoilers … be “warned” …
Norton’s Banner is based on Bixby’s Banner from the television show.
He’s wandering the world trying to find a cure for his ‘problem’ while
doing his best to not get angry and to stay away from the guys trying
to capture him and learn the secrets of the Hulk, i.e., the American
military. Honestly if you were trying to find a cure for a ‘disease’
you suffered from and were being sought by a group who wanted to ‘cure’
you of this problem, wouldn’t you at some point just say, “Hey, what
exactly am I running from?”
But not Banner. Like the Energizer Bunnie he just keeps going & going & going & …
It seems odd that one of the smartest men in the world (the world
being Marvel’s Movie-verse, where Banner’s competition was the
super-genius Mr. Fantastic, Reed Richards) couldn’t figure out that
doing R&D for the American military might lead to weapons
development. For a genius he’s pretty dumb. But there in lies Banner’s
problem with the military; he’s afraid that his work will be made into
a weapon. And so you'd know for certain why Banner hates the military he gives you the same line, "They want to use it [the Hulk] as a weapon!", twice.
So we’re supposed to believe that Banner doesn’t like weapons, eh?. But
while in South America he trains himself in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which,
in addition to helping him control his emotions, turns him into a
walking weapon. In this new movie Banner acts like any other liberal,
weapons are good for me, but not for thee.
And there is no mistaking that the American military is the bad guy.
Gen. “Thunderbolt” Ross is the protaganist in this movie. Tim Roth, who
becomes the Abomination, is just one of Gen. Ross’s tools.
In a time of war I have a real problem with the American Army being turned into the bad guys on the big screen. I do not think this movie will go over well with men and women currently serving in harms way in the Army, Navy, Marines or Air Force.
So there I was rooting for the “bad” guys, thinking that the “good”
guy is a whiny wimp who is too stupid to recognize what’s right in
front of him (granted, if he did there either would be no movie at all,
or it would be a very different movie).
The more I think about it the less I liked this version of the Hulk.
The two best things in this movie: Stark’s (Downey’s) cameo appearance
and the fact that you don’t have to sit through the credits for any
special scene. When the credits start to roll feel free to get up and
go home.