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The Incredible Hulk

Starts slow, ends well.

• Structure

Though Banner’s nature is that he’s on the run and in hiding, such a passive character grinds the movie. Thrillers often have the main character on the run for the first half of story, then the guy goes on the offensive in the second half. Here, Edward Norton/Bruce Banner/Hulk only goes on the offensive in Act 3, which was late. Despite his goal till then of finding a cure, it’s never good for an action movie when the antagonist pushes everything forward.

Despite the cool showdown in Act 3, it was pretty much the same as Iron Man (released two months earlier from the same producers), though not as interesting. In Iron-Man, the other creation had a specific goal to kill Iron Man/Stark. In Hulk, the other creature had no objective. It was good that Tim Roth was seemingly on drugs and desperate for more gamma juice, but he should’ve had a plan as to what he was going to do once he hulked up.

• Casting

While Tim Roth is a great actor, he looked nothing like a Special Ops guy. He didn’t even lose all of his British accent. And I didn’t like near the end where, after his miraculous recovery in the hospital, he joins the others in Harlem in his commando outfit and brandishing a machine gun. At that point, the character would’ve looked better without the military paraphernalia. Besides, he and the others knew that machine guns and whatnot were useless.

• Other

I think they should’ve copied Spider-Man and tried to use an actor in costume for much of Hulk’s scenes, using CGI just for the difficult action. It’s possible, a tough guy in mini-stilts and head-to-toe latex… Total CGI stripped the humanity from Hulk and, despite how good most effects are, CGI for humans and human-like characters are still below par.

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