Hulk
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- Release Date: June 20, 2003
- Directed by: Ang Lee
- Written by: John Turman, Michael France and James Schamus
- Runtime: 2 hours 18 minutes
- Series: The Incredible Hulk
Ang Lee's Hulk was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. When I first saw a TV ad for it, I didn't know anything about the character at all, but I knew that I had to see this movie about a big green guy fighting tanks and mutated dogs. Because it was rated PG-13, my mom obviously wouldn't take six-year-old me to the theater to see it. But, she did buy the VHS tape of it as soon as it released, and I watched it over and over again. As a kid, I loved the movie almost entirely for its action, and it introduced me to what would become my favorite superhero at the time. As an adult, I can see that there are many aspects of movie that went completely over the head of young me, and I appreciate it more now than I ever did before.
While many modern-day comic book films tend to lean in on the fantastical elements of their source material, Hulk decides to focus on the human side of its story. At its core is a conflict between father and son that takes some inspiration from the 1980s issues of the comics that explored Bruce Banner's abusive father and childhood trauma. While Bruce is the main character of the film, his father, David, is the driving force behind everything that happens. In this version of the origin story, David is an unstable, violent genius who conducts experiments on himself to unlock regenerative abilities in the human body. When Bruce is born, David discovers that the experimental genes have been passed down to his son, which horrifies him. He tries to kill Bruce with a knife, but ends up killing his wife instead when she throws herself in front of Bruce to protect him. David is institutionalized, and Bruce grows with no memory of what his father did to him and his mother. When a lab accident bombards Bruce with radiation, it sets off the experimental genes that were passed down to him, leading him to transform into the Hulk. Even though this origin story is very different from the one presented in the comics, I find it to be one of the most compelling interpretations of the character. Two of the things that inspired the creation of the Hulk were Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and their influences are strongly felt here. David takes science into his own hands and not only spawns a son who is damaged by his treatment of him, but he also has a literal curse inside of him that was just waiting to be awakened. It's a classic story of a mad scientist who is horrified of their creation, while at the same time being awestruck and envious of its sheer power.
A good chunk of this movie feels like a tragic drama, and it takes its time to develop its story and characters. The first 40 minutes of the film are largely made up of flashbacks and dream sequences that reveal David's experiments and Bruce's personal troubles growing up, and this really helps to show that the two characters have equal stakes in this story. When the movie finally starts to dive into the character of the Hulk, it does so in a bit of an artsy way. His first appearance is in a dream sequence where he is standing in a doorway and shrouded in darkness, like a lurking monster waiting to get out. His first real transformation features a great shot where he rips up and holds a big piece of machinery, and he clearly takes the shape of Atlas holding the world on his back. When the Hulk begins to appear more frequently, he is always portrayed as a hunted creature instead of a hero, always running from those who are trying to harm him. This has always been my favorite way that the Hulk is portrayed, whether it's in comic books or the 1970s TV series. It's such a shame to me that most of his modern-day appearances reduce him to just being a big guy who smashes things, since the story of a hunted man with a curse inside of him is a much more compelling angle to take with the character.
I also have to commend this movie for just how well its effects hold up after more than two decades. The Hulk's movements may be a little too smooth at times, but many shots in the film still impress me with the level of detail that they show in the character. His early appearances take place at night, and this dark lighting helps the character feel a lot more real in these scenes. When he is shown in daylight, there are several shots where you can see the pores in his skin, or the sweat on his face as he runs from the pursuing military. It looks so much more real to me than the 2008 film, which is great on its own, but I always felt that the CGI in that film looked a lot more like a video game than a movie. If there is one effect that is sure to polarize audiences to this day, it's the editing of the film as a whole. It takes the approach of mimicking comic book panels by having scenes overlap each other visually, or cutting to multiple angles at once to look like a comic page. I've never seen another comic book film take this approach, and while I think it gives the movie an extremely unique look and feel, there are many people out there who find it to be distracting and unnecessary. I strongly urge everyone to try to look past the editing style, because if you can get over the excessiveness of it, you'll find a story that is rich with drama and emotional torment.
I've loved Hulk ever since it released, and I still hold it as one of my favorite comic book films of all time. It was a very bold comic book movie for its day, and it paid the price for being so unique at the time that it released. One year after Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, audiences who were expecting a fast-paced action spectacle instead got an arthouse-influenced drama about a father and son's shared curse. It may not have had the best reception in its time, but in the modern era where Marvel films have become insufferable cliches of what they used to be, it's a breath of fresh air that is well worth revisiting.