Ang Lee tried his skilled hand at this superhero in 2003 (his version was titled simply Hulk) and everyone considered it a failure. Hulk made $132 million dollars domestically and almost a quarter of a billion worldwide, but the studio, salivating for box office tallies in the league of the Spider Man and Batman franchises, immediately scrapped plans for a sequel and set the character aside.
Five years later, Hulk’s helm was handed to Louis Leterrier, a director with a very short resume. His effort, titled The Incredible Hulk, improved over Lee’s by less then $3 million domestically and less than $20 million worldwide, but it was still considered a big success.
I personally disagree with the bad rap earned by Hulk, a movie well acted, with an interesting love story, and decent visual effects. Furthermore, any studio lucky enough to get a director as talented as Ang Lee to work on one of these often empty projects should count its blessings.
The new version benefits from Edward Norton’s acting skills and visual effects whose quality has exponentially advanced in 5 years, but the basic story is quite predictable and the newly introduced character of Emil Blonsky, played by Tim Roth, feels increasingly ludicrous as the movie rolls towards the inevitable face to face between him and Hulk.
Overall this isn’t a bad comic-book-based movie, but I don’t think there has been much improvement over Lee’s version.
Grade: 7
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