Released in 2003 to quite some fanfare (this was the first time the Hulk had appeared on the big screen in well over a decade) under the direction of martial arts film specialist Ang Lee, "Hulk" received mixed reviews at the time with some critics saying it was a brave attempt to branch out and others decrying it as dull (it's certainly cropped up on a couple of "Worst Marvel films" lists I've seen down the years). I seem to remember missing it first time out as a friend went to see it before I was planning to and told me it wasn't worth bothering with. So...underappreciated hidden gem or creative mis-step? Let's find out.
The film starts off with a backstory in the 1960s. Scientist David Banner is working on a government research facility experimenting into regeneration. The aim is that he is planning to invent a serum that will create a new race of supersoldiers with this characteristic which will effectively render them indestructible. However, his commanding officer "Thunderbolt" Ross bans him from moving his experiments from animals to humans. Because of this, Banner is left with no alternative but to experiment on himself.
Although the experiments have no effect on Banner, soon afterwards his son Bruce is born and exhibits strange characteristics including his skin starting to turn green when he's stressed. Banner Senior quickly adds another arm to his research of trying to work out what has happened to Bruce and whether he can cure it. However, Ross discovers that Banner has been experimenting on himself when he discovers a vial of human blood in the lab and quickly shuts his experiment down. Furious, Banner sets the equipment in the facility to self-destruct and does a runner.
Twenty years later, Bruce (Eric Bana) has been brought up by a foster family and now goes by the name of Bruce Krenzler. He works in a lab in Berkeley, California with his girlfriend and research partner Betty Ross (Jennifer Connelly), Thunderbolt's daughter. The pair have been conducting experiments very similar to David Banner's in terms of cell regeneration but all they've succeeded in doing so far is making a bunch of toads explode. They're also being approached by a wealthy industrialist Glenn Talbot who wants to buy their lab and use the facility to help the military but neither Bruce nor Betty are interested, especially as the latter is now estranged from her father. These sequences also see the first appearance of something we'll encounter a lot throughout the film, namely the action suddenly going split-screen to presumably emulate the comic books. Words alone cannot convey just how annoying and potentially migraine-inducing this is.
With Talbot continually on their case, Betty decides to try and mend fences with her dad in the hope of putting the kibosh on his hostile takeover. However, Ross is aware of Bruce's past and is intrigued as to what's going on. However, things take a turn for the worse when back at the lab, one of the pair's colleagues, Harper, inadvertently causes the machine to spring a fault and go into meltdown. Bruce runs into the lab to get Harper out of there but ends up getting hit by a blast of pure radiation. Strangely though, he survives with hardly any ill-effects and is quickly discharged from hospital.
However, while Bruce is in the hospital, he's visited by a janitor from the lab (Nick Nolte) who it turns out is David Banner (nice nod to the '70s Hulk TV series there). Banner warns him that he may have triggered something that he can't control and needs to be careful. He also explains that he is Bruce's father but Bruce doesn't believe him, telling him that both his parents died when he was young.
A few nights later at the lab, Bruce is doing some research after a very very stressful day including dealing with both Talbot and David. The stress causes his body react and he turns into the Hulk for the first time, smashing up the lab before escaping. David sees him in the corridor and almost gets attacked but the Hulk ultimately leaves him alone.
Bruce wakes up the next morning to find an army squad led by Ross at his door. They explain that he is under house arrest until they work out what happened the previous night. Meanwhile, Betty goes to visit David to try and get some explanation out of him but Banner Sr still hasn't forgiven Ross Sr for all those years ago and sends a trio of mutated dogs (which he's injected with the same serum as Bruce has in his bloodstream) to kill her.
Meanwhile, back at Bruce's house he gets an unwanted visit from Talbot. The pair end up arguing and Talbot gets violent, attacking Bruce which causes him to Hulk out and beat ten bells out of Talbot. Just before Talbot's visit he also gets a phone call from his father explaining that he has reluctantly had to eliminate Betty. Hulk runs to her house and eventually kills the three Hulk dogs (including, erm, a Hulk-poodle - wtf?) after a less than convincing CGI fight scene.
Betty asks Thunderbolt to take Bruce to a government facility underneath the town in the Mojave desert where they both grew up for safekeeping. Unfortunately Talbot promptly gets the government to override the order so that he can do some experiments on Bruce. This goes about as well as you'd expect and the decision to stimulate his brainwaves bringing back memories of how his father attempted to kill him, thinking he would grow up to be a monster only for his mother to throw herself in the way of the knife and die instead, causes him to transform into the Hulk. Talbot attempts to neutralise him with foam so that he can drill his head open but that doesn't work and Talbot ends up getting killed by a grenade thrown by Hulk.
Busting out from the facility, Hulk heads across the desert towards San Francisco. We get a few fight sequences which have a couple of neat moments (Hulk swinging a tank around like it's a hammer) but it's all a bit a) dragged out and b) a bit silly when you see tanks being thrown across valleys and helicopters knocked out of the sky only for the soldiers in them to crawl out afterwards as if nothing had happened!
Eventually, the Rosses track down Hulk in San Fran and he reverts back to being Bruce thanks to Betty's calming influence. Unfortunately the government has ordered that both Banners be sent to the electric chair so that they no longer pose a threat (David having voluntarily turned himself in so that he can see Bruce again). As they're sat in said electric chairs (which for some reason are in the middle of an aircraft hangar!), David tries to get Bruce to transform into the Hulk but he refuses. However, David has been doing some further experimenting on himself and has managed to acquire the ability to take on the consistency of anything he touches. He promptly bites through an electric cable turning himself into a man made of electricity and the shock first turns Bruce into Hulk and then blasts the pair of them halfway back across the desert.
The two have a confrontation at a desert lake with David overwhelming Bruce due to his newfound power and attempting to absorb the Hulk's energy from him. However, he ends up turning into a sort of giant gas cloud which makes him an easy target for some incoming government fighters which promptly blow him to kingdom come.
A year later, we see Bruce has started a new life in the South American jungle working as a missionary (with Betty and Thunderbolt both presuming him dead). As he's working at a med camp, we see some mercenaries attempt to attack and the film ends with Bruce telling their leader "Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry..."
I can see what Ang Lee was going for here with a different take on the Hulk story and he deserves credit for that but there's no getting around the fact that unfortunately "Hulk" just doesn't work. It's far too long for its own good (quite honestly, they could easily have taken at least half an hour off this thing) and seems to take forever to get going. And when it does, the fight scenes are either a disappointment (Hulk poodle? Evil gas cloud? Really?) or just dragged out way too long for their own good (the desert sequence). And those stupid split screen sequences are just an unnecessary assault on the senses. Overall, it just feels like a film that's trying to take itself far too seriously for it's own good when it should just be cutting loose with the Hulk Smash.
"Hulk" ended up being a box office bomb, doing well on its opening week but rapidly dropping off the radar thereafter and turning in a very small profit considering how big its budget was. Plans for a sequel were shelved and Marvel would bring the character back in house with the creation of the MCU a few years later. Although 2008's sort-of-sequel "The Incredible Hulk" would touch upon the events of the first film very briefly, it would end up being an almost total reboot and, coincidentally, a much better film. I guess "Hulk" is maybe worth a watch for reference purposes to see where the MCU kind of began but compared to its successor (and even to two of the three '80s Bill Bixby Hulk films), it's very much one of the poor relations of this particular Marvel franchise.
FINAL RATING: ✊✊✊✊ (4/10)
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
2. X-Men 2 (2003) (8/10)
3. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
4. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
5. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
6. Blade (1998) (7/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
8. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
9. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
10. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
11. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
12. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
13. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
14. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
15. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
16. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
17. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
18. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
19. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
20. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
21. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
22. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
23. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
24. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
25. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
26. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
27. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
28. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)
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