Past Entertainment Articles.
Article for the week of 7/7/08
The Incredible Hulk: Incredibly much better than the last one
By, Cozmic
The above might be a bit of an exaggeration, but one has to work with what one has, and besides, Ang Lee's “The Hulk” is a movie that joins “Ghost Rider”, “The Fantastic Four”, “Daredevil” and “Elektra” in the “trash starring Marvel characters” category.
So a new film starring the big green guy with anger management issues is a pretty welcome addition to everything, especially when one considers it has Edward Norton as Bruce Banner.
So, this “new” (it has been out a few weeks and Paul has reviewed it but it was either this or me bragging about how I saw Bad Religion and NOFX and nobody wants that again) Hulk movie starts off with Banner in South America, trying to find ways to control his outbursts into that rather scary green thing, and what little of an origin story there is is quickly flashed by in the beginning, along with a reference to Stark Industries and Nick Fury, for those who know what such things are.
Of course, the main reason Bruce is in South America is because the military is after him, as clearly he is a weapon, more than a man, and thus needs to be captured, have mean things done to him, and God bless the patriot act, or something. Anyway, this is of course spearheaded by the bad-guy General Ross, played by William Hurt, who then manages to pull in the “who wants to command, i just like fighting” Emil Blonsky, played by Mr. Orange himself, Tim Roth.
Oh yeah, and then there's Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, Bruce Banner's one true love.
Of course, Banner's calm life gets ruined, the big green guy does an appearance and we quickly hop to the United States.
I like this new Hulk movie, it contains a few nice injokes (the reason
why the Hulk always manages to keep his pants on is explained) and even
a few references to the old TV-series, and even the most important Hulk
line of all time. And of course, since that is what we all want to see,
action, more action, even more action, and then some action for good measure,
and all of it is good enough that t never falls in to the Ghost Rider
trap of a one-trick pony and no fight scenes worth mentioning whatsoever.
As far as the acting goes, it's enjoyable enough, although nobody really
sticks out as completely brilliant, although Edward Norton never seems
to do a bad part. It is not Iron Man levels of fantastic, but few things
are, and it never felt contrived to me. That Edward Norton is continually
replaced with CGI is also perfectly fine, as said CGI does some pretty
cool stuff.
All in all, while there are better superhero movies to see, there are
far far worse, and The Incredible Hulk manages to be entertaining from
beginning to end.
