Movies: Hulk (2003)

Trying to catch up on some Avengers movies before I go see the coup de grâce next week. I already wrote my response to Iron Man, as well as I could without leaving drool marks on the screen.

I had to decide which Hulk to watch since there have been a few in the last decade or so. I tried to base it off the upcoming Avengers flick. Though there's a new actor playing Hulk the decision came down to the writer: the 2003 screenplay was written by Stan Lee, the 2008 one was not. Bam, easy. Then there was FINDING it. Do you know how hard it is to find the 2003 Hulk on DVD somewhere I could travel to rent it? Strangely enough, very difficult. Anyway, I persevered.

I think I'd seen parts of this one before. Bana makes a very cool Hulk, even if they did mangle his origins. Not sure why, maybe what we know now about gamma rays makes the original origin (boy that feels redundant) too easy to point out as flawed and impossible. It's a good flick but feels weirdly incomplete? How did it come that Betty and Bruce end up knowing each other, working together, having a romantic past, after living on the same base as children, but somehow over Betty's father chucking Bruce's father in prison and tossing him into (what I presume to be) foster care? Ross admits be forgot about the boy, buuuut here we are. Maybe I just missed something in the beginning that tied it up. Maybe it's canon somewhere and I never learned it. Maybe it's something they mangled in the origin rewrite that just never got prettied.

Ignoring all that, and the fact that people manage to not die when Hulk chucks them across ridiculous distances at ridiculous speeds and they fall from ridiculous heights (COUGHtankCOUGH) the movie is fun to watch. I love the comic style layout of some of the action frames (see screencap above). I dig the end, and my own presumption that the fight with Absorbing Man helped Bruce learn to channel the Hulk better, so he's not about to go apespit all over the people he was just trying to minister medicine to...

PS: I dig Stan Lee as the guy telling a security guard (Ferrigno cameo!) that they need more security at the lab! Bangarang!

PPS: I love Jennifer Connelly. If I had to pick the prettiest woman on Earth, she gets my vote!