Hulk (2003)

Directed by: Ang Lee | 137 minutes | action, science fiction | Actors: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Mike Erwin, Sam Elliott, Nick Nolte, Josh Lucas, Brooke Langton, Lou Ferrigno, Cara Buono, Paul Kersey, Todd Tesen, Kevin O. Rankin, Celia Weston, Mike Erwin, Stan Lee, Regi Davis, Craig Damon

Take a renowned actor director, an acclaimed cast full of top actors and top it off with a good dose of state-of-the-art CGI. Then what do you get? That’s right, a flop. Where did it go wrong? You will read more about that later. Let’s take a look at the story of ‘Hulk’ first.

Hulk centers on the depressed Dr. Bruce Banner (Bana). The man struggles with an inferiority complex and things are not going well for him either. Fortunately, Banner can always fall back on his high intelligence. When our hero conducts a dangerous experiment involving gamma rays, an accident happens. Banner comes into contact with the deadly substance. Miraculously, he survives the dose, but something is wrong. His DNA is mutated and when the Dr. gets angry, he turns into a brutal monster. Enter the Hulk.

The Hulk’s story is well known. The green giant first appeared in comic strips before he got his own cartoon series and TV series. Although the Hulk is nothing more than a variant of Frankenstein’s monster, he remains immensely popular and may have caught up with his source of inspiration in terms of name recognition. The spiritual father of the green colossus, Stan Lee, saw something in a film version of his creation.

Lee is at the helm of Marvel Comics Publishers. And after the success of his other inventions, think ‘Spider-Man’ and ‘X-Men’, the dollar signs came into the bespectacled eyes of the old comic magnate. The Hulk should also score big at the cinema box office! And the latter just didn’t happen. And that’s quite strange when you see who all participate in the production. First of all, you have cinematographer Ang Lee.

The director made his name with prestigious dramas such as ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘The Ice Storm’. In addition to drama, Lee also masters action films, as witnessed by the success of the beautiful ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’. In addition to being a good filmmaker, ‘Hulk’ has also gathered a strong cast. Eric Bana proved his versatility as an actor with ‘Chopper’. And we know Jennifer Connelly as an arthouse heroine, thanks to beautiful roles in ‘House of Sand and Fog’ and ‘Requiem for a Dream’. And you don’t even have to talk about veterans like Nick Nolte and Sam Elliot. Yet it went wrong.

‘Hulk’ has become a fat film. The comic is portrayed by Ang Lee as an epic story along the lines of ‘Hamlet’. All characters suffer from their existence and the deepest emotions of Bruce Banner are explained. Get ready for an overdose of Oedipus complexes, narcissism and fear of commitment. Banner and his girlfriend Betty (Connelly) are meticulously sifted out. And to be honest, that’s pretty interesting. Lee has an eye for his characters and the actors’ strong performances ensure a strong start to the film.

Unfortunately, Lee takes his psychological approach too far. ‘Hulk’ really isn’t a Shakespearean drama. The action scenes in which we finally get to see the Hulk don’t fit at all with the elaborate structure of the film. Not only is the action unconvincing due to the Hulk’s fake appearance, the pace of the film is also unbalanced. Once the Hulk makes his appearance, the pace drops regularly. The explosions of violence are intense, but the build-up to the grotesque finale of the film takes far too long.

And then the Hulk himself. Although the monster looks reasonable, it remains an odd one out. The creature does not look realistic due to its shiny skin and the violent man does not fit into the environment. It becomes painfully clear that the monster was only mounted in the film during editing.

Not only the Hulk is not out of the paint. Nick Nolte also seems to be lost in this production. During the filming, the actor was arrested for drug possession. And it shows, Nolte looks very apathetic and his playing is crooked. It seems he isn’t there. Bana and Connelly partially compensate for their colleague’s weak play, but even they can’t stop the many scenes with Nolte from coming to fruition.

To make matters worse, the ending of ‘Hulk’ is also cringe-inducing. The big fight between the green hero and another super strong character is drowning in bad computer effects and improbabilities. The calm structure and the intelligent approach to the subject get bogged down in an extravagant cabinet of curiosities that is laughably bad.

In short, ‘Hulk’ is an ambitious project that fails miserably in the strange split between action and drama. Lee has taken on too much. Unfortunate.