In theory, Ang Lee’s Hulk had a lot to offer, but in practice is where a lot of folks will start to argue since Lee’s version was designed to go deeper into the character of Bruce Banner and his father and unfortunately it ended up feeling rather flat. The whole premise of the Hulk is the unspoken anger and rage that finally comes bubbling up and manifests itself in a destructive manner, which has been this character’s gimmick since his inception into Marvel. But while Ang Lee was definitely going for a different angle with the Hulk, he somehow tripped and went into an uncontrolled skid and started doing things with the idea that could have made a great deal of sense but tripped and started snowballing in a big way. The movie had a great cast, but they were used in such a way that they didn’t even feel real in a comic book sense. The Hulk had a few great scenes in which his absolute power was hinted at, but he never got to let loose in a huge way. The strange way that he grew and bulged at times was kind of off-putting since a lot of people couldn’t get their heads around it, and the Hulk dogs were, well, more than a little ridiculous. Seriously, if you’re going to make Hulk hybrid canines there has to be a better breed to pick than a poodle.
There was a great deal of story to this movie that was trying to break through and be noticed, but it does feel as though it might have been too much at the wrong time since people weren’t used to this kind of exposition in superhero movies and to realistic, the Hulk and Bruce Banner are a little more simple than people want to admit. Everyone wants to talk about the complexities that exist between the two and how hard Banner’s life is due to the idea that once he gets angry he turns into a massive, green-skinned rage machine, bu the pity party tends to get old very quickly sometimes since Banner is a grown adult and could possibly figure out how to cope or find ways that would help him to cope as it happened in Edward Norton’s role in the next Hulk movie. It’s easy to give props to Ang Lee since he tried working the father angle into the mix in order to help people understand why Bruce was, inwardly, such an angry person. But it also detracted from the original story in a way by suggesting that Bruce had the Hulk inside of him from the very beginning due to his father having injected himself with a serum that ended up affecting his unborn son. This wasn’t the story that people remembered, even though it had the distinction of making Bruce even more dangerous since the idea of a child that doesn’t throw tantrums or get angry usually suggests that they have a mental deficiency or they’re growing up in an abusive home and are scared to speak out.
It was an interesting approach to be certain, as was the use of actual comic panels in the movie, but it does feel that Ang stretched things a little too far since not only did Bruce already have the gene in him, but it was exacerbated and activated by his accident with the gamma rays. Anyone that knows anything about the Hulk knows that an explosion was what turned Bruce into the Hulk, but the mention of his father passing something along to him was interesting, to say the least. Let’s put it this way, Ang Lee’s Hulk wasn’t the worst movie ever made and it does have a few redeeming qualities, but it was ahead of its time to be fair and dealt with issues in Bruce’s past that people weren’t ready to see on the big screen. It can be argued that people simply wanted to see more shock and awe and not have to deal with as much exposition, but the truth is that a lot of folks want to know that their favorite heroes and villains are going to be represented in a way that they agree with and without having to think too much about them or go into a massive amount of detail within the movie. Short and to the point is how a lot of people like their movies, an Ang Lee was definitely going for something that was far more than just the regular superhero experience.
Stating that a person isn’t intelligent enough to get Lee’s point, or saying that they’re all about the shock and awe moments isn’t really fair, but a lot of people know what they want in a hero movie, and while Ang Lee was definitely ahead of his time with this one, his vision of the Hulk just wasn’t what a lot of people wanted to see.
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