invisibleunicornninja
The 2008 version may have an actual plot, but at least this version isn't boring. The Hulk in this movie has a presence, and the look of the movie is interesting. When this movie is bad, its funny. Being so funny its bad is better than being mindblowingly boring like the 2008 version. I would only recommend this movie if you like laughing at incompetent scrips, or if you're a fan of The Hulk.
Johnny H.
This is an embarrassment to one of Marvel's best superheroes and it makes it seem that 'it's not easy being green' especially considering that the film didn't bring much green at the box office. The film is a comic book movie that's WAY too literal in its editing (though it is a nice style in an otherwise sloppily paced movie) and even then the movie is BORING! For a film that has the word HULK in the title, it's very unfortunate that the film's name is totally out of place considering the story is basically a slow-paced and Hulk-lite story.As a fan of the Hulk character, this film didn't really want to focus on its title character; instead it wants to be Bruce Banner, a sooky and whiny insult to the character's alter-ego.For 2003 it's technically impressive and well-done multi-million dollar filmmaking, but today it's a bad egg that has collective nostalgia for some, but others not so much. I'm amongst the not-so-much crowd in that regard.
metalrage666
I first saw this when it first hit cinemas, and I've seen it several times since, either on DVD or shown on TV and each time I view it, I'm none the wiser on where this gets off on calling itself The Hulk. On reading some other reviews, apparently I'm supposed to fall in love with this as for a superhero movie, Ang Lee has attempted (and summarily succeeded I guess), to make this more cerebral and provide an alternate take on what The Hulk is supposed to be about. Personally I think that idea failed dismally. There's nothing cerebral about this, and if they wanted to make a more structured superhero movie then I'm all for it, but when it's done at the expense of the character itself, how am I supposed to enjoy it when all the life has been sucked out of it?There are more than enough reviews outlining the movie and what happens, but nevertheless - THIS IS NOT THE HULK. It's not the Incredible Hulk, Savage Hulk or even The Sensational She-Hulk! OK it may actually have the Hulk in it, as well as one of his long time adversaries, General "Thunderbolt" Ross, and Bruce Banner's girl, Betty Ross, but aside from the central characters, there is little else in this that resembles such an iconic figure. Putting all the same characters into an episode of The Young and The Restless, won't suddenly make that The Hulk either and so it is with this.I don't get the Nick Nolte character in this as Bruce's father, David Banner, nor do I get the bastardized origin story where the Hulk gene has been transferred to Bruce through conception, and the extra dose of Gamma radiation he ends up receiving at his lab is what finally tips the scales towards "anger equals Hulk". I get that this could've been yet another mindless, one dimensional and hollow superhero movie where the Hulk just smashes every "puny human" he comes across and is little more than a rage-a-holic, but there is no semblance in this that honours the characters' origins. The movie is way too long, has outdated CGI (even for 2003), and what in God's name was the deal with the Hulk dogs? David Banner experiments on his own dogs by exposing them to Gamma Radiation and sets them on The Hulk. Naturally The Hulk wins and the each dog explodes in a cloud of green smoke. I never got the significance of the entire scene and the effects were incredibly poor. The dogs looked fake, they weren't menacing and the scene just added unnecessary padding to an already overblown production. I would've preferred The Hulk to fight an actual villain from the comics, not this rubbish.David Banner then exposes himself to the same radiation and turns himself into a poor man's version of Absorbing Man where, as the name suggests, he can absorb whatever material he touches and then use that as a weapon. This power seems to be more of a side-effect to his experiment, rather than a deliberate result, and I had read that early drafts of this movie were supposed to have Absorbing Man as a villain, so I guess this was their way of ignoring the character completely, while still using his abilities. Next we get David Banner eating into a high power cable and in absorbing all the power, he becomes a high energy being reminiscent of a proper Hulk villain known as Zzzax, however Zzzax never had human origins and again this is another poor attempt to just ignore a good villain while still pilfering his powers and using them elsewhere. The ending is the most convoluted part of this whole misadventure where father and son are fighting each other under a lake. David Banner somehow manages to freeze the lake (maybe this is now his Hydro-man persona or something), thereby trapping the Hulk. The military blows up the lake, and they think he's dead, however he survives and he's absconded to South America to fight the rebels and give medical aid to local peasants.The 5.7 rating at the time of this review is, in my opinion, substantially generous. Regardless of how much money this made at the box office, the fact that it has been re- tooled or re-imagined twice with different actors indicates that ultimately the portrayal of the character failed to impress. Having said that, I certainly don't blame Eric Bana or his performance in this. I like him as an actor and he did his best with the material, but the 3 key points for ANY superhero movie to at least work with most audiences is - do justice to the character - don't screw up with the villains - and stay as close as you can to the source material. It's not advanced physics, it's a movie. How this managed to turn out so badly and yet have people defend it as being "cerebral" is an insult to over 50 years of Hulk comic history.
