Hulk is a comic-book superhero movie that it at an all time low. I mentioned this in my review of Spider-Man, a superhero movie that's in the same comic-book type style as this. Alas though, Spider-Man is by far the superior picture, even by comic-book standards. Besides, I like the character of Spider-Man over the character of Hulk by a long shot.
Hulk was in development since 1990, and went through many directors, screenplays and actors, until finally Ang Lee was set to direct and Eric Bana was set to star as the titular character. The result was an origin story that could have been a lot better and couldn't have been that much worse.
Hulk is a muddled, overly cartoonish and overlong motion picture. It's drawn out to an almost unbearable 140 minutes. The editing on the film is quite poor. It tries to give the film the look of a comic-book. Instead, it makes it all more confusing and hard to look at.
Fortunately, Ang Lee casted his movie quite well. Eric Bana is convincing enough as Bruce Banner, who is transformed into the Hulk. Jennifer Connelly is his girlfriend Betty Ross, Sam Elliot is her estranged father who works for the US Army, and Nick Nolte is Banner's father, who serves as the primary antagonist.
Unfortunately, Ang Lee turns the character of the Hulk into a CGI effect. The Hulk runs around like King Kong out in the desert, destroying every Army tank that comes after him. As a result, we don't feel the emotional impact that Banner/Hulk must have been feeling then. He feels like a detached and unlikeable character, and a character that's not as fun or entertaining to watch as Spider-Man, Batman or Superman would be. He's a mentally deranged, frequently angry type of guy. How are we supposed to root for him? That only makes this movie less and less enjoyable as it drags on.
The moderate box-office gross and decisively mixed critical reviews caused Hulk to be rebooted with the 2008 the Incredible Hulk.
**/5
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