The Incredible Hulk

A Gentle Stumble.

written by

abe

Released the same year as _Iron Man_, _The Incredible Hulk_ tells the story of Bruce Banner, the man when exposed to intense emotions, becomes the dangerous and freak of nature known as Hulk. The film was at first pretty good. It sets up a quick and simple introduction to Banner, explaining the inciting incident that leads to him having gamma radiation, before having to hide away from the government. Little flourishes like how long has it been since Banner has since turned back to Hulk again, his routine, the clear pattern of trial and error of figuring out how to stop his "illness". Engaging and ensures the audiences gets an understanding and appreciation of Bruce. Soon, the first major conflict arises with him being found and he finally becomes Hulk. It's nicely done, showcasing well what makes Hulk so engaging to watch as a character. The scene isn't overly full of action, where it's just guys running in and constantly mag dumping the guy, but instead it's a nice and incremental increase in pace to the climax of the scene where the audience and the characters of the story understand the beast they are dealing with. Then the rest of the movie continues on. It becomes a much more subpar experience, as I could see what they were going for...but the execution falls flat. As for example: when Bruce transforms into the Hulk again, we get back to back shots of Emil Roth and General Ross reacting to that. However, it's strangely done with dolly zoom shots. Usually, these are done to highlight a character's emotional reaction to something or a revelation (like in Vertigo when John experiences vertigo and the world distorts while looking down). For Roth and Ross, both have seen Bruce transform already before, both are aware of what's coming, and both are funnily the only few survivors of the Hulk attacks. It would have made more sense if Betty perhaps had gotten the dolly zoom for her shot, as that would have been more effective in highlighting her seeing this side of Bruce. This, alongside the quite poor cinematography and editing choices, create a very bad movie experience. This isn't aided by the pacing being quite slow comparatively to the start of the movie, where it had me engaged. By the end, the movie was quite boring, the battles lacked real urgency, motives were flimsy at best, and much of the images were entering and leaving my head. What is interesting outside the first twenty or so minutes of the movie is the already interconnecting pieces of Marvel coming together. References to the previous work already appear, which go outside of being just an easter egg. That is quite interesting, making me curious what Marvel has planned next.