Monday, June 16, 2008

The Incredible Hulk Review!



The Incredible Hulk Review

So this was exactly what you would think a Hulk movie would be. Which is good. It had a lot of action, it moved quickly and had decent actors hamming it up. It was also a little forgettable. So go see it if you wanna see a not-super-dumb popcorn summer movie. Its no Iron Man. But its good fun. Here are problems with it:

Hulk… LOVE!
There is no chemistry between Ed Norton and Liv Tyler. Like, none. Every scene with them feels like their first meeting. They were supposedly lovers for years, but every scene has the exact chemistry of the first 30 seconds of a blind date.

“Oh, you must be… Betty?”
“Yeah. Nice to meet you. General Thunderbird Ross said you were his most promising scientist.”
“I was. Listen, do you wanna help me find a cure for my gamma radiation?”

In fact, every scene between them is just as awkward as the first 30 seconds of a blind date if one of the parties has just revealed that they were exposed to gamma radiation.

“Waiter! Do you have any bibs… made of lead?”

Tough coming after Iron Man, where RDJ and Gwyneth (yup, just the first name) seemed like two people who genuinely liked each other, even though there were no “romantic” scene between them per se.

Hulk… DIFFERENTIATE!
So how smart is Hulk supposed to be exactly? If he’s a super dumb monster, why does he save Liv Tyler, and then have a total King Kong lets-sit-down-next-to-each-other-and-pontificate moment with her? Hulk is the equivalent of a guy who can differentiate the craziest equations, but then stares at an elevator wondering which button to press. It just doesn’t work if you keep going “Don’t make me angry! I become this huge awful destructive monster that I cant control”, but then every time you become the Hulk, you only fight the bad guys and totally help the good guys. It just doesn’t work. Hulk might as well be helping old ladies cross the street and picking up litter on the streets. Actually, that’s a good Hulk. The good Samaritan Hulk. “Don’t make me angry! I’ll start recycling, giving change to the homeless, and give a speech on the perils of global warming and the sustainability of veganism. You wont like me when I’m angry!”

Hulk… SOLVE MURDER OF RK MAROON!
The cgi Hulk looks cartoonish, fake and goofy. Whenever he bounded on the screen, I thought I was watching Roger Rabbit. I was waiting for Bob Hoskins to show up and totally give Hulk a lot of attitude because his brother was killed by a shitty looking cg character. “I hate computer generees.” I think we still don’t have the technology to make fully cg humanoids look good. We can read human faces too well. Even if something is slightly “off’, we can see it right away. We didn’t have the technology to do Hulk five years ago, and we don’t have it now. Couldn’t we have waited a bit longer? It makes me think of the mouse who keeps biting on the electrified cheese over and over and over. “How about now? Nope. Still no good. How about now? Nope. Lets wait another second and… How about now?” He also seems like he doesn’t have any weight to him, although that’s hard to judge since the Hulk is so strong that he doesn’t move like a human. The Abomination looks much better, because he looks more like a traditional monster. We haven’t been staring into the face of Abomination looking people our whole lives, so we don’t know the intricacies of their facial movements. I guess, on an Abomination planet, there is some douchey guy with a blog going “The Abomination’s face looks like shit, but the Hulk looks great!” Not to imply that I’m douchey. But a guy on an abomination planet with a movie blog? He’s probably douchey. Also, there, the movie would be called The Incredible Abomination.

But the action scenes are good and it moves fast. So go see it if you like that.

Also, why is Lou Ferrigno still so huge?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Robert downey jr. as Iron Man.

Edward Norton as the Hulk.

It must Ok for talented, physically unimposing actors to play superhero's now, right?

maybe Paul Giamatti will play Captain America