The green colossus
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- June
- 6
What’s the biggest movie of the summer that no one seems to be talking about?
That would have to be “The Incredible Hulk,” which Yours Truly will be front and center for when it opens next Friday.
To be sure, there’s a little of what we entertainment experts — yeah, right — like to call “buzz”. The third and fourth seasons of the late-’70s and early-’80s TV series “The Incredible Hulk,” with Bill Bixby as haunted scientist Bruce Banner and Lou Ferrigno as his big green alter ego, have just been released on DVD. Ferrigno himself will take part in a special “American Gladiators” (8 p.m. Monday, CBS/Channel 2) that will salute all things Hulky, including Hulk Hogan, Hulk smash hands (think very cool boxing gloves) and Hulk masks.
Still, in a summer of Indy, “Sex…,” and the late, lamented Heath Ledger’s Joker (sob!), there’s been little press anticipation of the new “Hulk” beyond the usual reports of behind-the-scenes angst. Seems star and co-writer Edward Norton (seen here as the tormented Bruce Banner, courtesy of Universal Pictures) was unhappy that his preferred longer version of the film is not the one being released. (How very Hulky of him.)
As a writer whose stories are regularly whittled by editors, I have to laugh at actors-who-write thinking every word is sacrosanct.
Memo to Edward: Even the Bard had editors — lots of them. Don’t become The Incredible Sulk.
That said, I think Norton is perfect for Banner. He’s made a whole career of playing angry young men with doppelgängers (“Primal Fear,” “Fight Club”). Plus, he’s one of the few actors who looks intelligent enough to be a physicist.
In cyberspace, however, there have been some reservations about the casting of Norton and the computer-generated Hulk. (Hulk look like Tom Cruise on steroids. Hulk think that better than it sound.) And indeed, early reviews on “Ain’t It Cool News”:http://aintitcool.com and other sites have been excellent.
But I guess lots of Hulk fans are spooked by memories of Ang Lee’s “Hulk” (2003), which apparently is to Hulk-dom what the Titanic was to shipbuilding.
Lee’s disturbing film is an intensely psychological study of damaged father-child relationships, with lots of split-screen points of view, dream sequences and nightmarish flashbacks. Star Eric Bana, whose underlying gentleness made him such a poignant figure as the counterterrorist in “Munich” and Hector in “Troy,” is both too handsome and too nice to be Banner. A traditional summer flick, it isn’t.
The new film — which begins some time after Banner has had the gamma radiation accident that transforms him into the Hulk whenever he’s thrown into a rage — is apparently a far more linear action-adventure movie. It’ll be interesting to see how it compares to Lee’s effort and the other comic-book blockbusters of the season.
The Hulk, of course, transcends movie-making. Born in 1962, the green colossus straddles the mythic intersection of the timely and the timeless. The Hulk’s setup played to post-atomic, Cold War-era concerns about radiation poisoning and a distrust of science and the government, particularly in its military aspect.
But this is also a classic Jekyll-and-Hyde tale with Hyde-like Hulk representing the beauty in the beast, the id we all love to scratch.
What makes the various Hulk incarnations fascinating — and the latest movie so promising — is the recognition that nerdy, tortured Bruce is as much an escape for the Hulk as he is a horrifying liberation for Banner. After all, when you’re filled with a terrible emotion, there is some salvation in retreating into your mind.
In “Paradise Lost,” Milton’s Satan — a far more terrifying character than anything in comic books — sums up the attitude:
“The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”
Me like it.
This entry was posted
on Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 3:52 pm by Georgette Gouveia.
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