HULK SMASH!!!! . . .FINALLY!

So the beautiful Miss Ness and I went and saw The Incredible Hulk this afternoon, after two of the weirdest days at work I've had for a while. (No sleep + too much Pepsi = thinking dressing up in film offcuts and dancing around the projection room is a good idea!). The Incredible Hulk - now known as TIH - is the second film to come out of the recently formed Marvel Productions, after Iron Man. Marvel is the comic company that owns these characters and has been publishing them since the 40's, so they really care about what happens to their meal tickets. And with these two films, it really shows.

Now, I heard a lot of people asking "Didn't we just see a Hulk movie?" And yeah, several years ago, Ang Lee of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame directed a Hulk film, starring Eric Bana as the purple panted road rager. I didn't mind that film. It was beautifully shot, well acted, dealt with some interesting subjects and all in all was quite a good film. The problem was, it wasn't the film everybody wanted to see. When you make a film about a 20 foot green monster that can hurl tanks around, Joe Q Public expects a certain amount of mayhem, which just wasn't delivered in that film. People wanted HULK SMASH! What they got was HULK CONTEMPLATE!

So, in this new film, they didn't waste their time with any of that shit. very time Banner, played very convincingly by Ed Norton this time around, HULKS out, shit gets Broke! And Burned. And blown up. And thrown about. And knocked down. And . . , well you get the picture. General Thunderbolt Ross is back, still trying to stuff Banner into a test tube and mass produce him. This time we get a whole new treat, in the form of Emil Blonsky AKA the Abomination. Imagine if the Hulk fucked a Tyrannosaur, what the off spring would be. That's what this big sucker looks like. The last ten minutes of the film is the two beating the living shit out of each other in down town New York, which doesn't leave a hell of a lot standing. I had a blast all through out this film. And, as any one who stayed till the end of Iron Man would know, they are working their way up to doing an Avengers movie, so there were a few References towards that end - Blonsky's transformation was a result of a combination of Hulk blood and Captain America Super Solider Serum, which seems to have gone a bit off after sitting in the fridge since WWII - and there was also the big fanboy moment of Robert Downey JR appearing as Tony Stark, mentioning them putting a 'team' together.


Ok, so that was the good stuff. The one downside of this movie was the CGI. It looked like CGI. The Hulk himself, abomination, any sort of vehicle or background that was done digitally in this movie wasn't fully realised. The animation of the characters was great, don't get me wrong. But they didn't look like they belonged with the rest of the world they were interacting with. One shot of the Hulk walking in a shallow stream in the rain comes to mind, where his feet didn't look at all like he was stepping in the water. And the Scientist guy towards the end was so over the top, it looked like he was coming back down the other side.

Other than that, The Incredible Hulk was fantastic. Well acted, well made, exciting - everything you want out of a Superhero movie.