Reviews by johanlefourbe

I already saw this movie but since I have it on DVD and since I just bought an awesome brand new TV, I thought I might as well check it out again. First of all, once again, 5 years later after Ang Lee made his 'Hulk' which is still considered as one of the worst super-heroes ever made (I think I is actually one of the best movies in this genre but that's a different story), they tried again to launch a franchise around the big green guy and once again, well, they pretty much failed. I mean, in spite of casting Edward Norton, one of the best actors around at the time, and even though it did receive some better reviews than 'Hulk', it didn't become the massive success they were hoping for. Eventually, even though I did like this movie when I saw it in the movie theater when it was released, each time I re-watch it, I find it less and less impressive. First of all, even though it seemed awesome at first that such a respected actor like Edward Norton would play Bruce Banner, he wasn’t amazing after all and, above all, he didn’t look anything like the Hulk, especially if you would compare him to Eric Bana or Mark Ruffalo. A bigger problem was the fact that the story was actually rather weak, even weaker than in ‘Hulk’. I mean, sure, the action scenes were badass, the Hulk looked much better than in Ang Lee’s movie, I’ll give you that, but I really had a hard time to care about this tale and I think it is even more obvious if you watch this movie a couple of times. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, I still think it is a decent blockbuster though and it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Even though this movie has a rather lame reputation  (it is even considered by many as one of the worst super-hero features), I always had a weak spot for the damned thing and, in fact, I would even go as far as saying that it is one of my favorite movies in this genre. Indeed, even though Marvel has been incredibly successful with its MCU,  most of the movies in this franchise always follow the same generic and rather boring template and Ang Lee followed a different path which was, in my opinion,  much more interesting. Basically, he went for some kind of Greek tragedy as Bruce Banner got his powers from birth after his father did some experiments on himself and, to amplify the drama, his father killed by accident his mother in front of Bruce who became highly traumatized in the process. That was some heavy stuff and Marvel would afterwards always focus on some much ligther material staying away from such dark tales in the future which was just too bad. Furthermore, Eric Bana was actually pretty decent playing this conflicted character and, at least, he was physically not such a huge stretch from the Hulk, especially compared to Edward Norton who looked nothing like the green monster. Eventually, the only major issue with this movie and the major reason why this movie was widely dismissed was the fact that Ang Lee clearly didn't care much about the action scenes. Indeed, there were only a few of them, they were not really convincing at all and, to make things worse, the Hulk looked very often pretty ugly which was considered like a major offense for all the fans of the comic-book. Well, like Ang Lee, I didn't care much about these action scenes,  I thought he gave a really interesting portrayal of this character and, in my opinion, this flick must be the most underrated super-hero feature made so far.