Review of The Incredible Hulk (2008) by Diyar G — 25 Apr 2016

The Incredible Hulk is definitely an improvement over Ang Lee's Hulk but is it a huge significant improvement? Kinda but it still has some problems but some good moments I liked. Let me explain what I liked/disliked.

Positives:

1. Edward Norton is really good as Bruce Banner. His performance is solid and he does a decent job. Hulk looks very menacing and awesome, though he looks nothing like Edward Norton but oh well.

2. The action; the entire movie is pretty thrilling, he gets chased down by the SWAT and army and it is pretty thrilling. The scenes with Hulk are awesome, especially the fight scene between Hulk and Abomination is great and thrilling.

3. Abomination is a great villain, he is similar to Hulk and the fight like I said before is awesome. Tim Roth also does a great job playing the character of Emil Blonsky as well.

Negatives:

1. The tone and writing; unfortunately this film feels and stylistically looks dull. Besides the action, I'm not very invested in the story and some of the characters' banter. It does have some humorous moments but for the most part the characters talk like they are contractually obligated. They don't pour enough emotion or witty banter to make it very appealing.

Thunderbolt Ross who is played by William Hurt who does a decent job is not very likable unfortunately. Throughout the film it seems like he doesn't care for his daughter's well being except for one moment where he screamed when it looked like she was in the explosion at the college action scene. But for the most part I didn't feel that attachment and he overall isn't written very well, hell the boyfriend character seemed more concerned for Betty than Thunderbolt's concern for Betty. Betty Ross played by Liv Tyler, great actress but I didn't think she pulled off a great performance here in my opinion. Her acting seemed kinda forced and it didn't feel natural.

2. Character development; like I said Thunderbolt Ross isn't written very well, not only that he is also not developed properly. They don't really flesh out his character more so we can feel for him and that was a let down. Bruce Banner isn't very developed too, they rush through his set up as Hulk and they don't explore the character enough. Betty Ross isn't very developed too, I wanted it to develop her relationship with her father it hardly does that.

Overall:

The Incredible Hulk is better than Ang Lee's Hulk but not very significantly better. I personally wanted this movie to focus more on Bruce Banner's origin story and developing his character a lot more. They could've maybe done that and then do a plot like this, but this plot took center stage and we didn't get much of a origin story. All in all The Incredible Hulk for me was okay, it has its moments but it is a very inconsistent movie and it honestly felt rushed and it could've been so much better.