Continuing from the tin beer can is the big green galoot; The Incredible Hulk. Now going into this movie there were some advantages and disadvantages, while the Hulk was most likely the most recognized Marvel hero due to the 1978 tv series it also had the stigma of the previous Hulk movie directed by Ang Lee. To make it short and sweet it was a mess, the Nostalgia Critic gave this gamma green turd a proper smashing so check it out here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9PF-9MIkiM
Also for the debut story of the Hulk here’s Linkara’s review for context.
http://atopthefourthwall.com/the-incredible-hulk-1/
The main differences here is that there’s no Rick Jones (except for a blink and you'll miss it Easter egg in the opening credits). There's also no Russian spy nonsense, no Gargoyle and we get straight to the iconic green Hulk instead of the the half way grey Hulk. Now since the Hulk has the two previous mainstream-incarnations Marvel most likely decided that they didn’t need to retread old ground. So they wisely decided to give a clip notes version of the events of the Ang Lee movie and just cut to Bruce played by Edward Norton hiding out in Brazil trying to find a cure for the Hulk while learning meditation and breathing techniques to keep him suppressed.
Eventually General Ross played by William Hurt learns his location due to the Stan Lee cameo and sends down his special troops to bring him in. But Bruce loses control, goes green and escapes the Solders. However the field leader Emil Blonsky played by Tim Roth wants another crack at the Hulk so agrees to undergo an injection of some bootleg Super Solder serum resulting in him becoming the Abomination. So with a knockoff Hulk on the loose Bruce embraces the beast and takes the Abomination down before he retreats from society again not to learn how to suppress the Hulk, but control him. Which all ends with Ross drowning in his latest failure when Tony Stark pays him a visit telling him about the new Avengers initiative and that he wants the Hulk. I can just tell that there was a lot of trepidation going into this one especially given how the last Hulk movie turned out, but it obviously payed off.
We have the drama of Bruce trying to control himself but also a decent balance of action to keep the drama from overwhelming the movie. The pacing does seem to be better then Iron Man as we never stick to one location for too long. General Ross is a pretty hateful villain, wanting to turn a man suffering into a weapon just for the sake of the military, where they don't even have an appropriate force that something like the Hulk would be needed for. On top of that he's willing to kill or imprison for life anyone he deems an obstacle to his goals. Though with that said the "real villain" Blonsky is a little stock, he starts off as an old solder thriller junkie that wants a shot at the Hulk since he's a real challenge, goes crazy, starts splicing himself and becomes the Abomination, pretty much the template for this kind of villain.
Now I'm not saying the archetype is the problem it's just the execution is a bit lacking. It's the motivation behind the villains that helps make them convincing but a stock motivation with a stock archetype makes for a, well stock villain. Speaking of lets talk about Tim Blake Nelson as Samual Sterns. This character, while playing a major part in the movie being the one Bruce is talking with to try to find his Hulk cure and completing Blonsky's transformation into the Abomination was a bit of a hedging of bets. We'll get into more detail once I cover The Avengers but anyone who knows the comics know what this guy was put into the movie for, to set up him becoming The Leader.
We see some of the Hulks blood get on an open head wound of his, he starts to mutate and then he's out of the movie, BYE! Now this was obviously setting him up to be a new bad guy in a potential future sequel but that never came to pass so congrats at failing Chekov's gun on that one guys, though they could have set him up for another reason, again a story for another time. But of course my favorite part of the movie was the Lou Ferrigno cameo when Bruce was trying to find his old research data at the university. As Bruce said "you're the man". Oh and yes they do use a remix of the "lonely man" song from the tv show, god I love little touches like that.
Now funny enough the MCU Hulk seems to have the same problem as his original comic book run. While this is the only solo Hulk movie (so far) the original comic run only lasted for 6 issues, and both seemed to do better in crossovers, kinda wacky how that turned out eh? Wrapping up I think The Incredible Hulk was an all around good movie, it did its job well and gave us some cool action scenes, especially with the final fight against the Abomination. Though the CGI was a little distracting cause I never got the impression that the Hulk was really there. But then again I might have been spoiled due to both future MCU movies and the John Wick movies so that could just be bias talking.
So now with the promise that Fury made starting to seem plausible and the continuing success of the Hulk movie fans were starting to wonder if they were really going though with this. An entire movie universe of interconnected stories where we'll finally see a live action depiction of some of the worlds greatest heroes on the big screen? Where will they go from here? Captain America, Ant-Man, Thor? Well maybe they'll just have to settle for Tony acting like a jackass, borrowing loosely from the story that dealt with his alcoholism and blandly introducing Black Widow? Eh, guess that'll have to do, and I'll give you my thoughts on that next time as we continue the March to Infinity.
Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.
The Incredible Hulk is owned by Paramount Pictures, Marvel Studios based on The Hulk created by Stan Lee and Jack "The King" Kirby
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