On The Incredible Hulk
The Incredible Hulk: A Review
By John David Ebert
In a way, Marvel’s new Hulk movie is not so much a sequel to Ang Lee’s earlier (and much better) film about one of their most famous comicbook characters as it is a remake of the first movie, for it tells exactly the same story, and does so with little imagination or attempt at varying the theme. In the new movie, as in the Ang Lee film, the Hulk spends most of the narrative fighting the American military, and then ends up at the climax fighting another bizarre supervillain created as a misbegotten child of a science experiment gone awry. The storyline, then, is formulaic and so one wonders what the motives of the film’s makers could have been in constructing a new movie with different cast members but with exactly the same premiss. The lack of imagination demonstrated here by the filmmakers reminds one of the old Hulk television shows, for television, especially of the 1970s variety, was once virtually synonymous with the phrase ‘lack of imagination.’ Today’s television, however, with shows like HBO’s Deadwood and Rome or Showtime’s Weeds has gone way beyond this old stereotype toward the creation of some really interesting and inventive narratives. Marvel’s new movie, unfortunately, belongs in the dustbin with the old television shows of the 1970s.
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