Hulk (2003)

Hulk (2003)

Release Date: June 20, 2003

I was only 10 years old. Spider-Man had just come out at the cinema, but due to the film’s 12 rating, I was too young to see it at the time. Salvation came when a friend revealed that they had a bootleg video of the film and let me watch it. The video had a trailer for this film on it.

I was hyped. Summer 2003 couldn’t come soon enough! When Summer 2003 arrived, I was first in line at the cinema. Imagine my disappointment when the finished film failed to live up to the trailer's promise. The world didn’t make sense to me anymore. Up was down, black was white, I had no idea what was happening. Two years later, I realised that I could not go on like this any longer, and so, I ended my life…

OK, that’s a gross exaggeration of what actually happened. I did not commit suicide over this film, otherwise how would I be able to write about it here? (I guess I could be a ghost writer... Ba Dum Tsh!) However, the disappointment was true. Watching it again as an adult, I was hoping that I might find something in the film to make me appreciate it better than as a child. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. It’s just as dull as I remember it being.

In the 1960’s, Dr David Banner is a military scientist experimenting to find a method for humans to gain an instant healing factor, so that it can be used to create invincible super soldiers. The problem with his experiments are that David is a bit unhinged, and the test animals keep dying, which is why his boss General Ross angrily forbids that David use human experiments. David inevitably ignores him, and uses himself as a test subject, For Science! The result is that he passes his infected blood onto his son Bruce, who suffers a terrible skin condition. General Ross is unimpressed when he finds out that David didn’t listen to him and shuts him down. David’s disproportionate response is to detonate a nuclear bomb to destroy the military base, then try to stab baby Bruce to death, accidentally killing his wife instead.

Following the incident, Bruce is put up for adoption, and in the present day, Dr Bruce Krenzler is working as a scientist himself. Things aren’t going well for him right now, as his co-worker Dr Betty Ross is his ex-girlfriend, his work (which is a smaller scale version of his father’s) is going nowhere, and he’s facing a buyout from Douchey McDoucherson. (That isn’t the character’s actual name by the way, he just gets the “honour” of being the first character to be referred to with a demeaning nickname.) When a workplace accident gets a colleague stuck in a machine set to generate gamma radiation, Bruce saves the colleague, but is trapped in the room himself and bathed in radiation. Because of his tainted blood, he survives and the skin condition is cured as a bonus, until the creepy new janitor arrives and reveals himself to be David Banner, recently released from prison and also Bruce’s biological father. Having been told that his birth parents were dead, Bruce is rather upset at the creepy hobo’s claims, particularly when he starts going on about Bruce carrying on his father’s legacy. David explains that his formula created new tissue when a subject was injured, but because Bruce was born with it, it also affects him when he’s emotionally damaged. Unfortunately for Bruce, he’s a complete headcase with daddy issues and repressed memories to spare, so he turns into the not-so-jolly green giant and smashes the lab.

The next day, General Ross places Bruce under house arrest because his wallet was found at the lab. Douchey McDoucherson comes to keep him company and torments Bruce with the knowledge that David plans to attack Betty in order to get revenge against her father and Bruce. Hulk smashes Douchey (serves him right, the smug prick) and heads for Betty’s house, where she is being attacked by David’s dogs, which had been injected with the infected blood and turned into Hulk Dogs.

Hulk smashes the dogs and saves Betty. She repays him by drugging him and handing him over to her father. What an ungrateful bitch! Meanwhile, David finds out that the Hulk Dogs failed, so he turns himself into Absorbing Man to gain new powers from whatever he comes into contact with.

Betty protests when her dad reveals that he plans on keeping Bruce locked in a sensory deprivation tank for the rest of his life. What did she think he was going to do? He doesn’t stay in the tank for long, because Douchey McDoucherson switches it off so that he can zap Bruce with a cattle prod, an act of stupidity that ranks pretty highly on the list of stupid things that should not be done. Douchey then tries to shoot Hulk with a missile, blowing himself up when the missile bounces harmlessly off him and rebounds towards Douchey, blowing him up in a terrible death scene.

Hulk then runs off into the desert for an extended sequence of General Ross throwing military vehicles at Hulk and Hulk smashing then. General Ross wins when Hulk jumps onto a fighter jet, and the jet flies into space to make Hulk lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. David is allowed to meet Bruce again, having been gone for the last hour of the film. David reveals that his new absorbing powers have made his body unstable, and he plans to stabilise himself by killing Bruce and absorbing his powers. Bruce is naturally not pleased with this turn of events and turns into Hulk again. In response, David takes a bite out of a nearby power cable and turns into a giant electricity monster. The two battle, with David later assuming wind, rock and water forms before he successfully absorbs Bruce’s powers. However, there’s too much power for David to handle, and he mutates into a giant green bubble thing. General Ross finally decides he’s had enough of the Banners’ shit and nukes them both. Being a giant green bubble thing and therefore unable to escape, David is killed, but Bruce survives and later goes into hiding in South America.

The big problem with Hulk is that it’s dull. Dull, dull, dull. The characters all have severe emotional trauma, except for Douchey McDoucherson, who gets to be a douche instead. While there is potential for some interesting character relationships, that potential is unfortunately not realised because everyone is so glum all the time, it’s hard to care for any of the characters. It feels depressing to watch. Unfortunately, the action scenes don’t buoy things either. Hulk appears for the first time 50 minutes in, but the film doesn’t really build up towards it. In Alien, the tension is built up gradually with fake scares and false alarms until the audience is terrified when the Xenomorph finally appears. Hulk doesn’t compare to that, with the opening almost-an-hour instead spent on Bruce Banner’s day-to-day life, the emotional issues of the cast, and abstract dream sequences. When the final act arrives and is almost entirely action scenes, it doesn’t satisfy or feel like a reward for sitting through the rest, and the dream sequences now get to invade the action scenes while they’re underway, instead of waiting until they’re done. Perhaps it would have been better to mix things up, instead of having the first two acts be almost entirely drama and angst, and the third act almost entirely action.

The special effects are unfortunately rather weak. The Hulk Dogs look silly, and the Hulk isn’t very intimidating in his appearance, looking like a constipated, musclebound Shrek. He is a pale shade of green, which makes him look rather sickly, though this could be deliberate as a way of showing the Hulk as an unhealthy, unnatural being. David’s absorbing form at the end is better than the rest, though how much better depends on what form he’s currently in. In the comics, the character of Absorbing Man is not Bruce Banner's father, and his powers are magical in origin.

At times, the film shows a particular scene from several angles, laid out as if it was on a comic book page. This is a nice idea and it is visually striking, but it doesn’t really work in this film, because it clashes with the film’s sombre, grimdark tone. I would like to see another film do it because it’s not a bad idea. It could work well in a more stylish film like Blade, or a more self-aware, parodic film (Someone make a Deadpool film already!) However, there are times where the resulting scene looks silly, for example Douchey McDoucherson’s death scene and an early scene of Bruce looking at a photo of himself and Betty, which suddenly starts moving as if it were a magic photo from Harry Potter. Amusingly, this comes immediately after Bruce says that the lab is struggling, having not succeeded in their experiments. Patent that moving photo technology Bruce, you could make millions off it!

At times, it almost feels like Hulk is ashamed to be based on a comic about a big green rage monster, and that the license is holding it back from being its own thing with its own grand ideas, even though the X Men films proved that being adapted from a comic needn’t be seen as an obstacle preventing you from having something interesting to say. (The film’s director Ang Lee approached the film as a Greek tragedy, while star Eric Bana commented that the shoot was “Ridiculously serious... a silent set, morbid in a lot of ways.”) The comic panel layout and action sequences feel like lipservice the film put in to appease nerds who write online about how they got some part from the origin story wrong and that they didn’t stick slavishly to the source material, not because the film actually wants those elements there. Nevertheless, there is one nice thing I can say about Hulk. It isn’t content with going through the motions, instead trying to do something different in the context of a superhero film. Until next time.

Next Time: Did I talk smack about your favourite film, or praise a dud? The next film is set to punish me for it.

Stan Lee Spotter: Stan Lee can be seen as a security guard at the lab where Bruce Banner works. His colleague is Lou Ferrigno, who played Hulk in the 1970s TV series.