lucasw's Journal: Hulk

An interesting and watchable failure.

I gave this a rent a week ago and plowed through the special features.
I recall watching the box-office for this movie when it came out (yes I'm one of those people)- it has to be some kind of record for largest first-to-second weekend drop in revenue. Most movie drop about 50% every following weekend, 40% if they've got good buzz, 60% if they're crap or have heavy competition- Hulk is very exceptional here.

The special features of these movies are interesting because all the interviews were finished before anyone had seen the film or any feedback received- so the production people talk about certain scenes which they put tremendous effort into, but then you watch the movie and those scenes are unimpressive and nobody thinks twice about them.

For me, that scene in Matrix Reloaded was the burly brawl, and here in Hulk the dog fight.

Going off these two examples, these scenes seem to rely heavily computer generated imagery. So I think it follows that there is a tremendous time and money sink potential for a heavily cgi scene, where the advantage of cgi tweakability is also a liability because there is no end to how much retouching can be done- it's not just retouching, the entire scene can be changed around. And studios don't know how to budget well for that yet, where a practical effects sequence has known ins and outs and limitations and those can be planned for easily.

The Hulk dog fight was lackluster for a lot of reasons:
-Here we have a supersized person fighting supersized dogs, so the size difference is canceled out. The only contextual information we get about their increased size comes when they get near the car, but most of the scene takes place in a forest, where there isn't much reference.

-The dogs look silly. There isn't much of an explanation for them either, it doesn't make much sense in the movie- but Ang Lee and the rest had this incredible vision for a dog fight and here it in all its forgettable glory.

Compared to the final fight at the end of the movie, the dog fight was pretty good. The fight at the end is just so lackluster- here's some desolate scenery at night. No, we're not going to go all out and destroy a city block, just destroy uninhabited and dull mountainy area. And the exchange between Nolte and the Bruce Banner character was pretty good, but the excitement generated there dissipates as fast as the characters transform into their super powered versions.

The one time he does get into a crowded city and gets ready to do some real damage, the love interest appears and short-circuits the situation.

I probably don't need to comment on the jumping- but even having accepted this high-jumping invincible-for-all-purposes Hulk, why doesn't he leave more of an impression in the ground after landing and jumping of again? I'm thinking shattered rocks and large impressions and airborne debris, but the Hulk touches down light as a feather.

The continual reminders of the fact we're watching comic book movie are annoying, but some of those transitions are neat and almost seamless.

At the same time, the filmmakers seem to be trying hard to make the characters fully-developed and avoid too much that would be over-the-top or obvious. I liked the blonde villain most of all (walking up to the enfoamed Hulk with a huge syringe was probably the best scene in the movie)- it seemed like his cheap asshole rivalry worked a lot better than the father-son thing. He reminded of a character another movie, some kind of comedy (an Adam Sandler film?), where some blonde asshole is walking around in a neck-brace and bruised all over.