Revisiting Ang Lee’s Hulk
Released on June 20th, 2003, Hulk was already facing an uphill battle – the summer box office season was not going according to plan. Marvel itself though was solidly unstoppable. Just a year earlier, the first Spider-Man film broke all records and beat the second Star Wars prequel as the year’s top grosser. Just a month prior to Hulk’s release, the second X-Men film, X2: X-Men United was critically and commercially successful. Even February’s release of Daredevil was considered a success despite its tepid reaction by audiences and critics.
By and large though, Hulk was facing an uphill battle. A number of high profile star vehicles and franchise pictures had already flopped in theatres and there were more to come. The most high profile failure was The Matrix Reloaded, which, despite eventually running up a final domestic gross of $281.5 was widely panned by fans and critics alike. The biggest success of the year would end up being the tale of a lost fish.
Into this atmosphere came Hulk. It was going to be the next big superhero franchise opportunity. You could tell by the way that the character was staring up at you from everything including chip bags and car ads. The colour for 2003 was going to be green, the colour, coincidentally, of both the Hulk and the money. So what happened?
Well, I think all the money guys that poured bucks into Hulk thought that it was going to be a different movie. It’s not as if the man that made The Ice Storm was going to deliver something as forwardly campy as a big-budget version of the old Bill Bixby television series. Was Crouching Tiger advertised like Rush Hour simply because they both contain martial arts? Hardly and I never expect any film to be judged simple by its genre. Isn’t it possible that a comic book monster movie can have the depth and feeling of a period drama?
The answer for Hulk was yes. Under Ang Lee’s direction, with scripting by regular writing collaborator James Schamus, the Hulk becomes more than some puny scientist that becomes a soaring, green rage-ohol whenever he gets ticked off. Lee’s Hulk deals with issues of abandonment, detachment, belonging, love, legacy, power and science run amok. It has some interesting performances and a provocative narrative, which is framed with an interesting narrative device that easily invokes Hulk’s comic book origins.
That’s not to say that the film is without problems, primarily Eric Bana’s casting as Bruce Banner. Bana sort of went against the traditional portrayal of Banner who typically is the antithesis of his angrier alter ego: meek, unfit, definitely nerdish and utterly repressed. Bana’s Banner seems a little more balanced and while he does have issues with repression, he’s seems a little more assertive and socially well-adjusted. As for fit, well, Bana is a good looking man, and Bruce is even seen riding his bike to work for crying out loud. Can you see the comic book Banner riding a bike downhill without getting winded?
One of the film’s adversaries, Major Talbot played by Josh Lucas, is another weak area of the film because Talbot comes across as the Zack Morris of the military industrial complex. It’s seriously a wonder that Banner isn’t able to dispatch him without a breaking a shirt. Plus, Talbot is pretty one dimensional for a film where everyone else is multifaceted; I can only presume that they need someone for Hulk to smash that no one would feel bad about.
One could make the argument that Sam Elliott as “Thunderbolt” Ross is equally lacking of depth, but I’ll be damned if Elliott isn’t fascinating to watch. He nails Ross because Ross, despite lack of equivalent size and superpowers, has always managed to meet the Hulk in terms the monster understands: extroverted rage. Hulk’s existence is a betrayal of the order of things; he’s a loose cannon and Ross can’t tolerate that. The Hulk will be used in the right way or not at all. But key to Ross’ fleshing out is his distant relationship with his daughter Betty (played by Jennifer Connelly). He’s a father trying to make up for the fact that he’s put his duty first, but at the same time he’s unapologetic for that fact.
Connelly gets the unenviable task of playing the film’s heart and soul. While the men get to be all crazy with the anger, she has to be more level-headed. And unlike the typical female role in a superhero movie, Betty isn’t a victim. In fact she’s key to the plot because it’s the Hulk’s love for her that calms him and keeps him grounded in his humanity no matter how repugnant he thinks it is or how puny he finds his Banner side, in other words.
By far the most controversial development had to be turning Bruce’s father into the primary nemesis. Not only is David Banner responsible for the genetic conditioning of his son that allowed Bruce to become the Hulk, but he too transformers into a variation of Hulk big bad The Absorbing Man. This renewed origin, where the elder Banner self-experimented with his DNA-altering research and passed these experimentations on to his son, creates fertile thematic ground; the sins of the father and so forth. David Banner was played by Nick Nolte and while the jury’s kind of out about whether or not Nolte was playing himself or playing along, one can’t deny the magnetism of his performances.
But aside from the performances and the intricacies of the story, the way that Lee packages Hulk is truly inspired. Using stacked and occasionally overlapping split screens, Lee creates the aesthetic feel of a comic book while keeping the narrative and science heavy story moving briskly. And while Iron Man was lauded for its effects restraint in order to build character and relationships, Hulk did it first and it seems was maligned for it. Still, Lee constructs a couple of solid action sequences that really captured the full rage, I mean range, of the Hulk’s abilities. You have to wait a little longer to get there, but its well worth it.
But having said all that though, I perfectly understand the rationale for re-imagining, or revisiting, the character outside of what was established before. Universal and Marvel didn’t get the movie that they wanted so they’re perfectly justified in seeking out the means and the people to achieve that vision; I just don’t like the way that Ang Lee’s work has been discounted out of hand. Granted Edward Norton will make an infinitely better and more complex Bruce Banner, but I’ll definitely miss Sam Elliott as General Ross and I’m not sure if William Hurt can carry off that same hard case menace.
If The Incredible Hulk’s a success then it’ll just one more thing people will point to as proof that Lee didn’t get the character in the first place and that his version was something of a his calculation. I don’t think so though. I believe thoroughly that people will revisit this Hulk in the years to come and appreciate it as a misun
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