Marvel Mondays #42 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Blimey, the blog lives! Yup, I'm aware it's been a while since I updated this thing but I've finally got round to cracking on with the Marvel film reviews so expect a few new bits to pop up on here over the next few weeks.

Anyway, for our comeback special, we're looking at another much-maligned instalment in the X-Men film series, namely "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" The previous X-Men film 2006's "Last Stand" had originally been intended to largely wrap the series up with several characters essentially being written out after being killed off (Xavier, Cyclops, Jean Grey) or losing their powers (Magneto, Mystique, Rogue). However, it seems the lure of getting some cash from another instalment eventually proved too much to resist and Fox were left with the unenviable proposition of having to do a rewrite with most of the main characters gone. Their solution was to announce plans for a couple of origin films, one on Wolverine and one on Magneto. However, the Wolverine film was critically panned (even though it did decent enough numbers) and led to a change of plans with the Magneto film instead becoming "X-Men: First Class" which we'll deal with in a few weeks. First up though, let's take a look at Wolfy's back story...

The film begins in 1845 when a young James Howlett witnesses a violent altercation between his father John and the family groundskeeper Thomas Logan. John is shot by Thomas and James is so incensed that his mutation is activated and he impales Thomas using his bone claws. With his dying breath, Thomas tells James that he is his real father and James is forced to go on the run with his half-brother, Logan's son Victor (the future Sabre-Tooth, played by Liev Schrieber), another mutant who can also heal himself and extend claws from his fingers (albeit from the points rather than the knuckles). The pair become mercenaries, fighting in the American Civil War, both World Wars and Vietnam.

Over time, Victor has become increasingly out of control and in Saigon he attempts to rape a Vietnamese woman and then shoots his commanding officer when he tries to stop him. Sentenced to death by firing squad, the pair survive the bullets and are banged up in a dungeon where they're given a way out by General Stryker (who you may remember as the baddie from X-Men 2 although in this film he's played by Danny Huston rather than Brian Cox) involving his covert mutant strike force, Team X.

The other members of Team X are Agent Zero (an expert sniper), Wraith (who can teleport, played by Will-i-am from the Black Eyed Peas), Wade Wilson (an expert swordsman...and yes, this is Deadpool and yes, it's Ryan Reynolds playing him here), Bradley (who can manipulate electricity) and Dukes (who has a layer of unbreakable skin). We join them a few years later on a mission in Nigeria where Zero, Bradley and Wilson help them infiltrate a diamond smuggling operation to help Stryker get access to a meteorite. However, when the team, led by Victor, start getting violent with an innocent group of villagers in the aftermath, Logan has had enough and walks out.

Six years later, Logan has settled down in the Canadian Rockies working as a logger with his Native American girlfriend Kayla Silverfox while Bradley has also quit the group and is now working the fairgrounds in Ohio. However, after he's finished work one night, Victor unexpectedly turns up and kills him. The next day, Logan gets an unexpected visit from Stryker and Zero at work who tell him that Victor has also offed Wade the previous week and are worried that he's working his way through the team one by one. Still angry at them, Logan tells them to go stick it.

However, Stryker's warning is prescient as the next day Victor ambushes Kayla and kills her. Enraged, Logan tracks him to a bar and fights him but loses. Stung, he decides to take Stryker up on his offer of an enhanced mutation which sees his skeleton injected with adamantium giving him the steel claws we all know him for. However, when Stryker attempts to then wipe his memory in order to turn him into the killing machine "Weapon X", Logan flees by jumping down the waterfall from Stryker's secret base (which he'll revisit post-amnesia in X-Men 2) and into the lake.

Running across the countryside, Logan is taken in by an elderly couple, the Hudsons, but the next day Zero turns up and uses his superhuman sniper skills to assassinate them. The two mutants engage in a battle involving jeeps and helicopters which ends with Logan blowing Zero's chopper up (fnar fnar) and eliminating him. Speaking to Stryker on the radio afterwards, he vows to come after him once he's done with Victor.

Logan takes the Hudsons' motorbike and drives to Vegas where he finds Wraith and Dukes at a gym. Wraith explains to him that Victor and Stryker are still working as a team - as this sequence is happening we see the pair apprehending a young Cyclops at his school and taking him away. As Wraith explains, Stryker is running a facility called the Island where mutants are being taken and having their powers extracted to feed a new super-mutant that Stryker is developing to eliminate any threats from the mutant population (sorry, I know this is probably making your head hurt by now but just bear with me, we're almost at the end I promise). Dukes meanwhile has piled on the pounds over the intervening decade to become "The Blob" and challenges Logan to a boxing match to get the info out of him. After initially taking a battering, Logan bounces back to win by using an adamantium headbutt. Blob explains that only one man has ever escaped from the Island, a mutant by the name of Remy Lagarde aka Gambit.

Travelling to New Orleans, Logan and Wraith track down Gambit in a casino - after Logan mentions that he knows about the Island, the two of them engage in a fight with Gambit turning his cards into bombs and blowing Logan through a wall. As he's recovering, Victor turns up and kills Wraith after a struggle before extracting his DNA, the same as we saw him do with Cyclops earlier. Logan and Victor fight again but this time, Gambit breaks it up by starting another fight with Logan. Eventually, the pair talk and Gambit agrees to take Logan to the Island where we see Stryker starting the process to convert Wade into the new super-mutant Weapon XI. When his superior, General Munson, threatens to shut him down, Stryker kills him.

Logan arrives at the Island where Stryker springs a surprise on him by informing him that Kayla is still alive and is a mutant with the power of persuasion who Stryker sent to spy on Logan after he left Team X. Angry, Logan simply turns around and leaves but it's then revealed that Stryker has double-crossed both Victor and Kayla by promising the former an adamantium skeleton (which it turns out his frame isn't properly suited for) and the latter that he'll release her diamond-skinned sister who's one of his prisoners. Hearing their cries for help, Logan returns to the facility and helps them escape and free the prisoners (including a young Cyclops, Storm and Nightcrawler) with Kayla being wounded by Stryker in the process.

As they're escaping though, Stryker summons the new Weapon XI, the former Wade Wilson now with his mouth sewn shut and named "the Deadpool" due to the fact that he has the powers of all of his brethren including Wolverine's extendable claws (which are swords, his preferred weapon), Cyclops' laser vision and Wraith's ability to teleport. I won't go into what a stupid idea this is...suffice to say it bears no relation to the actual Deadpool character and it was one of the main bugbears that Marvel die-hards had with this film. Logan and Victor fight him on top of a cooling tower, eventually winning by beheading Deadpool whose laser vision as he falls down the chimney causes it to collapse with him on the bottom.

Victor escapes from the Island after bidding Logan farewell while the mutant prisoners, led by Cyclops and Emma Silverfox, meet up with Professor X nearby and escape in his helicopter. Logan discovers a critically wounded Kayla as he leaves and attempts to help her off the island but is shot in the head with an adamantium bullet by Stryker which wipes his memory (thus explaining his amnesia in the first three X-Men films). With her dying breath, Kayla uses her persuasive power to tell Stryker to walk away until his feet start to bleed where he's eventually picked up by a group of soldiers who want to question him in relation to Munson's death. Logan eventually comes round after being revived by Gambit but doesn't remember anything including who Kayla is when he sees her body. The film ends with Logan walking off into the sunset and, eventually, his meeting with Rogue at the start of the first X-Men film while during the end credits we see a hand reaching out from under the wreckage of the cooling tower to retrieve Deadpool's severed head.

If all this plot description seems a bit meandering and all over the place with countless twists and turns that don't really add anything to the story...well, congratulations you've just identified the big problem with "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" - this whole thing is just so stupidly convoluted that it just feels twice as complicated as it needs to be with characters zipping in and out of the story left, right and centre with no real room to develop them and it really brings this film down (just writing this review and trying to summarise the plot gave me a headache tbh). And as for the complete bastardisation of the Deadpool character...well, let's just see I can see why Ryan Reynolds takes the piss out of it so often in the modern Deadpool films where they actually re-wrote the character as it was meant to be.

From here, the X-Men series would move on to "First Class" which was a bit of a return to form and we'll review it on here in a few weeks. Jackman would next appear in 2012, "The Wolverine", another misfire before reuniting with the rest of the X-Men in the ultra-confusing "Days of Future Past". And Ryan Reynolds, after one more comic book tie-in misfire on the DC side, would eventually see his long-mooted Deadpool film project come to fruition in 2015 and would set things straight on which the correct version of Deadpool was in his own inimitable style (1:20 in the video below). Which probably sums up this misfire of a movie better than anything ever could...

FINAL RATING: 🐺🐺🐺🐺 (4/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Punisher: War Zone (2008) (4/10)
29. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) (4/10)
30. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
31. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
32. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
33. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
34. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
35. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
36. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
37. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
38. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
39. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
40. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
41. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
42. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
43. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
44. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
45. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: We return to the MCU (thank the lord) with Iron Man 2...

(Delayed) Marvel Mondays #41 - Punisher: War Zone (2008)

QUICK NOTE: Apologies for falling a bit behind with this blog again - due to being away on holiday I just haven't really been at home for long enough to watch a film and write the review up. I'm currently doing a catch-up job with both DC Saturday and Marvel Monday so expect to see a few updates in the next few days as we get ourselves back up to speed. Starting right about.....now.

"Punisher: War Zone" represents the third and final Punisher film to date and is probably one of the most notorious Marvel commercial flops of the last decade, making less than a third of its budget back. Made in conjunction with Lionsgate, it was meant to launch the "Marvel Knights" series of darker more adult-oriented films but the idea was quickly abandoned although I s'pose you could argue its spirit lives on via the blood and guts approach of the Marvel Hells Kitchen serials (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and most recently the new Punisher series itself).

The genesis of the film was an awkward one - it originally started life as a sequel to the 2004 Punisher film starring Thomas Jane but the production quickly got bogged down in difficulties leading Jane to walk out on the series and the film to turn into a reboot. British actor Ray Stevenson would sign on for the title role with another Brit, Dominic West from "The Wire", playing his nemesis Billy "Jigsaw" Russotti. As with both of the other two Punisher films, despite getting mediocre reviews, there are a group of die-hards who swear by it so let's see how it bears up...

The film is set five years after the first Punisher film (although Castle's backstory is rewritten here to make it more consistent with the comic books - his family was killed in a botched Mafia hit in Central Park and since then he's been on the road for extremely bloody vengeance). It opens with veteran Mafia don Cesare discussing a potential smuggling deal with one of his henchmen Billy "The Beaut" Russotti who wants to use his warehouse facilities to help a group of Russian mafiosi smuggle a chemical weapon into New York.

Cesare refuses to back Russotti who leaves the house in a huff with his men just as the host and his guests are settling down to dinner. However, their meal is rudely interrupted by Frank Castle - cue the blood and guts. I should point out by the way that this film ratchets up the violence even further than the 2004 one did and is most definitely not for the squeamish. Unfortunately therein lies its main problem - lord knows I've seen enough violent Marvel stuff in recent years but there comes a point where you can over-saturate it to the point where it stops being entertaining and crosses over into just being downright depressing and "War Zone" just blunders over that line without any subtlety whatsoever. Shame.

We find out that Castle has an agreement with the local cops who are happy to let him wreak his vengeance on the criminal fraternity as it makes their lives easier. One of the two cops who've been staking out the house, Saffiotti, tips him off about Russotti heading for the docks before punching himself in the nose to make it look to his partner Soap as if he's been ambushed by the Punisher.

Russotti and his goons, Ink, Pittsy and Donatelli, head for a bottle plant at the docks where they reach an agreement to do the deal with the Russians given that everyone else in their familia has now been shot. We also find out they've got a group of drug-addled parkour-obsessed goons led by the dreadlocked McGinty who work as their underlings. However, when Castle arrives, it's time for the villains to scram - Ink and Pittsy escape while McGinty and his crew do a runner across the rooftops. However, Russotti and Donatelli are left inside with Castle shooting the latter and the former being knocked into a glass crusher which Frank switches on before walking away. However, upon hiding behind Donatelli's body he realises that Donatelli was an undercover FBI agent trailing Russotti's gang.

This leads Castle to have a crisis of confidence and initially he visits Donatelli's widow and daughter to try and pay them some financial compensation but they give him short shrift and turn him down. Crestfallen, Frank tells his associates Microchip (his tech nerd helper) and Carlos (a former crim who's now crossed over to the good guys' side) that he's getting out of the vengeance game for good and leaving town. However, when they tell him that Russotti survived and is likely to come after the Donatelli family, he realises he's got a job to do to protect them.

Russotti, meanwhile, has been busy planning revenge. Although he survived, the resulting surgery has left him so badly disfigured that his face has several stitch lines in it leading him to take the new name Jigsaw. His first move is to re-recruit Ink and Pittsy and bust his cannibalistic brother Loony Bin Jim out of the local asylum (where he eats the guard who's been tormenting him's kidneys - yuck) and head to the Donatelli household to look for the money he believes the agent stole from him.

Meanwhile back at the police station, Donatelli's old FBI partner Budiansky has turned up and requested to be assigned to the Punisher Task Force. Which, as we find out, only consists of Soap who we saw on the raid earlier. The Punisher himself, meanwhile, is off tracking down Jigsaw's gang one by one starting with McGinty. When he hears news from the cops that the parkour gang have just robbed a convenience store, he promptly heads to the rooftops, blows two of them up with a missile before kneecapping McGinty. Once he's got the information he needs off him, he pushes him off the rooftop to be impaled on some railings...ouch!

Budiansky and Soap have also been alerted to the robbery and the former gets into a fight with Castle and eventually apprehends him. Castle warns them that Jigsaw and his gang have headed over to the Donatelli residence. A police car is duly dispatched there but Jim quickly offs both of the officers when they enter the house. Realising something's up, Budiansky heads over there himself but is quickly apprehended by Jigsaw when he threatens to shoot the two hostages. Leaving Ink and Pittsy to guard the prisoners, Jigsaw and Jim go to search the house. However, Castle persuades Soap (who's been trailing him for a few years and has gained a grudging respect for him through his case) to let him go and breaks into the house, punching Ink so hard that he caves his skull in before blowing Pittsy's head off with a shotgun and escaping with the Donatellis. Budiansky radios the other cops who promptly turn up and arrest Jigsaw and Jim.

However, the Russotti brothers manage to negotiate a deal with the FBI to gain diplomatic immunity by grassing up the Bulat brothers, who they were due to do a deal with over the chemical weapon meaning that when Jigsaw and Jim turn up to seal the deal, the Rooskies quickly find themselves cuffed and carted off in a helicopter.

Now freed and with their money returned to them, the Russottis decide to finish the job by getting vengeance on Castle. They manage to locate his hideout midway down a subway tunnel leading to Jim kidnapping the Donatellis again as well as critically injuring Carlos with an axe while Jigsaw heads to Microchip's house and kidnaps him as well as killing his vegetative mother. Castle returns to his lair to find Carlos bleeding to death there and agrees to put him out of his misery.

The Russottis hole up in an abandoned hotel and recruit a motley collection of hood thugs, Yakuza and Irish gangsters to protect them. Realising he has no-one else to turn to, Castle goes back to Budiansky and Soap and strikes a deal with them to help him. They approach the remainder of the Russian gangsters who Jigsaw was initially doing a deal with and strike a deal whereby they attack in the ground floor leaving Castle clear to enter the building further up. After the expected bloodshed, Castle takes on Loony Bin Jim and beats him up to the extent that he goes scurrying off back to Jigsaw.

Jigsaw and Castle have their big confrontation in the hotel's penthouse suite with Jim holding a gun to the Donatellis' heads and Jigsaw doing the same to Micro forcing Frank to choose. Instead though, Frank shoots Jim dead leading Jigsaw to do the same to Micro. Castle and Jigsaw then have their big climactic (well not that climactic to be honest) fight which ends with Jigsaw being impaled on a metal rod and thrown on a fire. Afterwards, Castle returns the Donatellis to Budiansky to keep them safe and heads off for a drink with Soap, stopping only to blow the head off a mugger who threatens the cop en route. The end.

I know I seem to say this after every Punisher film but good lord that was grim. I see what Lionsgate were trying to do here but as I said earlier, by upping the ultraviolence quota at the expense of the plot, it makes "War Zone" a real slog to get through. Eventually the nonstop bloodshed stops being cool and just becomes boring and depressing and it really makes the latter stages of this film difficult going. Not even because of how violent it is, just because you end up thinking "oh...more people getting their heads blown off by shotguns. Right. Sigh...here we go again..." To be honest, while none of the three Punisher films are exactly classics, I would say that this one just to say takes the award for being the worst of the three. It's not especially terrible but it's depressing and dull enough to be below average, that's for sure.

As we mentioned earlier, "War Zone" bombed horrifically at the box office and the Punisher promptly returned in-house to the MCU, first appearing as a character in season 2 of "Daredevil" before being given his own series. Although still incredibly bleak, it did at least mark a step up from the movies with Jon Bernthal portraying the role well and enough of a plot to back up the carnage. Similarly, although the Marvel Knights series died a death here, the general premise of a series of darker and more adult-themed Marvel visual material did eventually come to fruition with the Hells Kitchen serials on Marvel. And, funnily enough, we will be seeing Ray Stevenson again on Marvel Mondays in a very different role as Falstag in the Thor films. As for "War Zone" though - I guess hardcore gorehounds may find something to watch here but a combination of a thin plot, below-par acting and overdoing the bloodshed to the level that it just becomes repetitive mean that this one can be safely skipped.

FINAL RATING: 💀💀💀💀 (4/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Punisher: War Zone (2008) (4/10)
29. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
30. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
31. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
32. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
33. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
34. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
35. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
36. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
37. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
38. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
39. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
40. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
41. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
42. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
43. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
44. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: The X-Men series continues to go down the tubes quality-wise with Wolverine Origins...

Marvel Mondays #40 - The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The last time we saw the Hulk in a film was for the Ang Lee effort in 2003 starring Eric Bana. This was an ambitious idea for a film which unfortunately fell flat on its face due to a convoluted storyline and being about half an hour longer than it should have been. With it underperforming at the box office and receiving mixed critical reviews, Universal got cold feet on filming a sequel and in 2006, the character reverted back to Marvel just in time for the launch of the MCU.

"The Incredible Hulk" is a bit of an odd film in that it's technically a sequel to the first one but with a completely different cast and a few noticeable changes meaning it's probably easier to classify as a reboot. It would also prove to be Edward Norton's one and only film as the Hulk with Mark Ruffalo taking over the role in time for Bruce Banner's next appearance in the first Avengers film. However, it received better reviews than its predecessor and performed respectably at the box office so let's see how its held up in the intervening ten years, shall we?

Five years on from the events of the first Hulk film and Bruce Banner is still holed up in South America and is now working as an electrician in a bottling plant. As he has worked out that he transforms into the Hulk when his heartbeat goes over 200bpm, he is doing everything he can to try and prevent that happening including yoga and meditation which has helped him keep things under control for the previous five months. He's also in e-mail contact with a scientist colleague who is trying to develop a serum with the pair using the alter egos "Mr Blue" and "Mr Green".

Banner's cover is blown when he cuts his finger working on the production line one day with a drop of his blood falling into the pop bottle. When a man in Wisconsin (that'd be Stan Lee doing his cameo) drinks the bottle he becomes sick with gamma radiation poisoning which alerts "Thunderbolt" Ross (played in this film by William Hurt) who traces the bottle to its plant and sends a division led by British Royal Marine Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) down to Rio to arrest Banner. Initially Bruce tries to escape from his flat to the bottling plant where he runs into a gang of men from work who have been trying to rough him up for a while and start laying into him. Of course, that causes his heart rate to go to 200bpm and...well, you can probably guess the rest but it begins with "Hulk" and ends in "smash"...

Banner wakes up in Venezuela (wow, that must've been some night) and, realising that he's been forced to go on the run again, Banner flees to Mexico and from there back to the States and his hometown of Culver in Virginia. Crashing at his friend Stan's local pizzeria, his plan is to sneak on to campus (watch out for a cameo here from the original Hulk Lou Ferrigno as a security guard!) and recover his research by logging on to Betty Ross, his one-time girlfriend and research partner's account. Unfortunately but predictably, the research has long since been deleted and Bruce prepares to leave town and continue his search for an answer elsewhere.

However, on his way out of the pizza restaurant, he unexpectedly runs into Betty who's played by Liv Tyler in this film. Luckily for Bruce, she has a spare copy of the research at her house on a USB stick and gives it to him to take with him. Unfortunately I have to say here that Tyler's acting is well and truly dire in this film as she sounds like she's just got off a six month course of EST for most of it - I dunno what's happened because she's normally a good actress.

Ross Sr manages to track down Banner to the university after a tip off from Betty's suspicious boyfriend and Blonsky and his team turn up to ambush Bruce and Betty as they're heading for the bus depot. En route, Blonsky has managed to get hold of a dose of the serum which originally transformed Banner (a variant of the "Super Soldier" serum that created Captain America...but more on that in a few weeks' time) from Ross which has given him enhanced power and speed but he's still no match for the Hulk who throws him full velocity into a tree pretty much breaking every bone in his body.

Bruce and Betty go on the run and eventually hole up in a forest cave outside the city. Bruce decides that his best shot now he has the data he needs is to contact Mr Blue, revealed to be a New York biochemist called Samuel Sterns, the pair head for the Big Apple. Ross gets word of their movements and sends a miraculously healed Blonsky, now dosed up with a second helping of the serum, and his team after them.

Arriving in New York, Bruce and Betty meet up with Sterns who puts him in a room and carries out a Hulk transformation before injecting him with a dose of antidote which turns him back to normal. Afterwards, Sterns explains that he's been keeping Banner's blood samples that he was sending him in his lab and believes that they could have the potential to be a huge benefit to the world of medicine. Bruce, however, isn't so sure and orders him to destroy them as he doesn't want them weaponised. Unfortunately that's the cue for Ross' troops to turn up, shoot Banner with a sedative dart and take him and Betty away.

However, after he's left the lab, Blonsky corners Sterns and has a word with him, asking if he could have a dose of the serum he's been working on. Sterns says no but Blonsky, whose sanity has well and truly gone walkabout since he started taking the serum, threatens him. The dose causes Blonsky to transform into the Abomination, a giant Godzilla-type beast who's just as powerful as the Hulk. He beats the living daylights out of Sterns who also ends up infected with the serum causing him to start mutating (presumably into the Leader as per the comics which makes me wonder if he would have been the main villain had a sequel happende) before going on the rampage through New York. Realising the monster he's unleashed, Ross agrees to let Banner go as the Hulk is the only one who has any hope of taking the Abomination down and thus the stage is set for the final "Rampage" style confrontation. Which I'm not gonna spoiler here.

Although it's not perfect, this is still a big improvement from the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk film with a plot that's much easier to follow and much better action sequences (let's be honest, the previous film hardly had any at all). The things wrong with it - it arguably goes over into being a bit too simplistic at times and the acting is very uneven (Roth is great as Blonsky, Norton is decent as Banner but as we mentioned earlier, Tyler is well below par as Betty - to be honest, they'd have done better to ask Jennifer Connelly who was one of the few decent things about the first film back). Looking back, it's still probably the weakest of the 20 MCU films so far but even so, it's still a more than respectable effort by the standards of what we've seen so far in this blog. There's lots of nice little knowing nods to the '70s Hulk TV series and films as well - watch out for the old Hulk end theme playing while Bruce is in Mexico and the student photographer called Jack McGee who captures the Hulk's fight with Blonsky at the Uni on his cellphone!

However, this is the last Hulk-based film to date - as we mentioned earlier, Norton decided against filming a sequel and, with the new Mark Ruffalo-portrayed Hulk making his debut in the Avengers, the project was put on ice, initially temporarily but now seemingly for good. However, the Hulk will make a few more appearances in this blog, both in the three (and upcoming fourth) Avengers films and "Thor: Ragnarok" so don't worry, this is far from the last we'll see of the big green feller. As for this film, it's not quite up to the standards of the other MCU films but it's still a good effort and probably the strongest of the eight (count 'em!) Hulk films we've reviewed in this blog.

FINAL RATING: ✊✊✊✊✊✊✊ (7/10)

CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE

1. Iron Man (2008) (10/10)
2. Spiderman 2 (2004) (9/10)
3. Spiderman (2002) (9/10)
4. X-Men 2 (2002) (8/10)
5. Men In Black (1997) (8/10)
6. X-Men (2000) (8/10)
7. The Incredible Hulk (2008) (7/10)
8. Blade 2 (2001) (7/10)
9. Blade (1998) (7/10)
10. The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) (6/10)
11. Spiderman 3 (2007) (6/10)
12. Fantastic Four - Rise Of The Silver Surfer (6/10)
13. The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk (1989) (6/10)
14. The Punisher (2004) (6/10)
15. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
16. Elektra (2005) (6/10)
17. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
18. X-Men: Last Stand (2006) (6/10)
19. Blade Trinity (2004) (6/10)
20. Men In Black 2 (2000) (6/10)
21. The Incredible Hulk (1977) (5/10)
22. The Fantastic Four (2005) (5/10)
23. Doctor Mordrid (1992) (5/10)
24. The Punisher (1989) (5/10)
25. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
26. Nick Fury: Agent Of SHIELD (1998) (4/10)
27. The Fantastic Four (1994) (4/10)
28. Hulk (2003) (4/10)
29. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
30. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
31. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
32. Ghost Rider (2007) (3/10)
33. Bride of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
34. The Death Of The Incredible Hulk (1990) (3/10)
35. Man-Thing (2005) (3/10)
36. Return of the Incredible Hulk (1978) (3/10)
37. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
38. Howard The Duck (1986) (2/10)
39. Captain America (1990) (2/10)
40. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
41. Generation X (1996) (2/10)
42. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
43. Daredevil (2003) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Another Punisher reboot, this time with the violence cranked up to ridiculous levels. And somehow it still doesn't stop it from being boring...