Director: Louis Letterier
The Hulk is unlike other superheroes. He is a genuinely tragic figure. Other superheroes actually enjoy their alternate persona 's they enjoy the job most of the time. Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) sees his predicament as a curse, even a disease, which has ruined his life.
He is not wrong. It's not just anger that brings on the green, it's any excitement. He can't even make love without turning into a monster.
For any film about the Hulk to work then, the audience has to feel sorry for him. It is not enough to just show the big green thing going around smashing things up. Letterier's version of the story has greater pathos than the first movie and that is why it is a better film.
"The Incredible Hulk" is not a sequel, nor strictly speaking is it a remake of the first movie. It's sort of a halfway house between the two. At the end of the last movie Bruce Banner is in a jungle somewhere in South America and at the beginning of this movie he is living in Rochinas Flavela in Rio and working in a bottling plant.
When an accident causes his gamma radiation-poisoned blood to get into a bottle, the military, headed by his old nemesis Gen. Thunderbolt Ross, tracks him down. He ends up cornered in the bottle factory. This makes him very angry and unless you have no knowledge of the Hulk mythos at all, you know what happens next.
Bruce makes his way back to the States to meet up with scientist Samuel Stern (Tim Blake Nelson), with whom he has been corresponding secretly and who promises him a cure. Meanwhile, the military are still after him.
There's a scene that could be in a romantic movie, where Banner's old flame Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) sees the fugitive for the first time in years and chases after him in the rain. It's quite touching and proves that Liv Tyler is a pretty good actress.
The main bad guy is Emile Blonsky, a Russian born British royal marine whose goal in life is to be the best fighter in the world 's a position currently held by the Hulk. He eventually becomes "the abomination," a lizard-like monster that is at least as strong as the Hulk.
The climatic scene in the movie is the big rumble between the two, in… you've guess it, New York. It would be nice if just once film makers decide to smash up some other town for a change. It gives super villains in the real world bad ideas, as we have all seen.
This is a film full of contradictions. Blonsky at 39 is portrayed as being an over-the-hill soldier while Banner, played by Norton who is also 39, is a man in his prime. The film is promoted as having a very brief origin story which is somewhat different to the first movie. Norton, who co-wrote the script, said this on the matter: "I don't even like the phrase 'origin story,' and I don't think in great literature and great films that explaining the roots of the story doesn't mean it comes in the beginning."
Practically, a good reason for not having an origin story is to avoid making the movie a rehash of the first film.
Actually the whole movie is in fact an origin story of how Blonsky becomes "the abomination" and how Stern becomes "the leader," another super villain in the Hulk universe.
What is clever about this movie is the fact the makers are aware the audience are adults who grew up with the TV show also called "The Incredible Hulk" and there are nods in that direction. The movie is more similar in tone to the show than it is to the first movie. In particular there is the theme of Banner being a brilliant man reduced to the level of a pauper and constantly moving from place to place, helping people out, then moving on. Most superheroes and super villains are rich, but Banner's so down-and-out he is mistaken for a homeless beggar at one point.
There are lots of little references to the TV show. Viewers who know the show can have fun spotting them. One is Lou Ferrigno, who played the original Hulk, making an appearance in a cameo.
"You're the man," Banner tells him.
I am actually one of those people who thinks that the original Hulk movie, despite all the Oedipal nonsense, wasn't that bad 's but this one is better in almost every department. There are lots of heroics, plenty of sad moments and there is lots of smashing stuff up, you can't ask more than that.
Now showing in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
