The Incredible Hulk

I liked it better than Iron Man.

Strangely, I've never watched The Incredible Hulk and if you should know anything about me and Marvel is that The Hulk is my guy, has been my favorite and will continue to be my favorite. So why have I just now watched it? I honestly don't know cause I thought it was pretty good. Yes it has problems, problems that make me very angry, but on the whole it gave me what I expected and wanted and did so in a entertaining way. So Bruce Banner has been overdosed with gamma radiation and after a little incident has lived off the radar in Brazil looking for some type of cure for his condition, but pretty soon the U.S. military is on his tracks as Bruce has to evade capture, control the beast within, and f*** stuff up. And what's weird is this is the black sheep of the MCU, it's not on any streaming service, Disney does not own it, and I think on every collection of these movies it is MIA (Could be wrong stay tuned to find out if I'm wrong.). Why? I don't know. So it kinda bugs the hell out of me that the one solo movie for The Hulk in this entire series isn't readily available with every other entry, it's kinda screwed up I mean at least Spider-Man got joint custody. But how's the movie? Quite good I'd say, it introduces interesting elements and yet subsequently shoots itself in the foot. I'll try to explain. Edward Norton is a good lead, I very much like his performance and I'll see how Mark Ruffalo does in the future. Liv Tyler is a bit basic in terms of character but the chemistry she has with Norton is nothing short of sweet and cute. The supporting cast is where it starts to fall apart, Tim Roth is a blah villain, William Hurt is that perfect prick character but his line deliveries are hard to make out so thank God I watch everything with subtitles, and the bit players are just okay. The action is honestly quite good, yet again using practical effects as much as possible so thank you for that movie but it did move a teeny tiny bit fast near the end to where I had to focus. And...okay here's the thing about Hulk's design, I hate it. This is gonna sound really friggin' stupid and weird, but he just looks too muscular. When it gets to the point where I can see every vein and muscle bundle, you went too far, the poor guy looks like he got injected with a gallon of steroids but thankfully I know the design gets a facelift and actually looks pretty good in the future. I adore the fan moments cause you know, the movie did not have to give us The Lonely Man Theme, it did not have to give us a Lou Ferigno cameo, it didn't have to give us the purple pants joke, but it did and for a Hulk fan I really enjoyed it! Now here comes the two biggest and strongest positives and negatives about the movie, it is a love/hate relationship zone we are entering. I love the idea of Bruce meditating, controlling his breathing and his body, getting more in tune with himself to control this force inside him. That is interesting, that is brilliant, it's such a fascinating and yet logical solution to control his emotions and to discipline his mind. That's rad! But here comes the big time stupid, Bruce can Hulk out due to an increased heart rate, not anger. I'm sorry, what?? The one golden, unfallable, engraved in stone rule about The Incredible Hulk is thrown out the window. This is made of stupid. An elevated heart rate should not trigger a physiological change in a person's biochemistry, because anything can set it off! If Bruce hits 200BPM he Hulks out, but man you can get your heart rate up just by going for a jog, that is not the same thing as anger. Anger, or aggravation, or rage, whatever you want to call it, is a biochemical reaction in your brain that does a multitude of things to your body, it does not just make your heart beat faster because it's more complex than that. The guy can't even get his rocks off with Liv Tyler because his heart rate gets so high, for obvious reasons, so he can't even pop a boner without growing 4 feet taller with the ability to throw a car like it's a paperweight. I mean what in the actual hell were you thinking? I just...I can't, I'm gonna give myself an aneurysm, I'm moving on. Stupid is as stupid does. It will be interesting to see the Hulk's progression and dynamic change with this Avenger's team so I'm always going to be happy to see him even if I don't like the movie. Find this one if you can, 3 stars, 7.5/10! And we got ourselves the first sequel coming in tomorrow.