LogFAQs > #967082524

The Incredible Hulk
Release Date: June 13, 2008
Stand-Out Character: Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross (played by William Hurt)
Best Scene: Bruce Banner/Hulk vs. Special Forces in Brazil

Here is the bastard child of the MCU, so bastard that it isn't even on Disney+! It also came out a month later than Iron Man which is super strange, especially with how congested that the MCU feels nowadays with a movie every few months.

Anyway, The Incredible Hulk is about Bruce Banner being on the run from Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and the U.S. Army so they can experiment on Bruce Banner and use his blood to mass create more terrible monsters, "but right". Eventually Bruce Banner meets up with a biologist named Samuel Sterns who ends up mass creating Banner's blood when Thaddeus Ross and his primary soldier, Emil Blonsky, attack them and take Banner captive. Blonsky forces Sterns to turn him into a horrible Abomination with Banner's blood and he loses control and goes on a rampage through New York. Ross releases Bruce so he can stop Abomination and he turns into Hulk, defeats Abomination, and retreats once more to live in isolation.

So this is better than I remember it being. It's a very disjointed movie though. I guess I'll start with what I liked.

I absolutely love the opening credits scene. We don't waste any time with the origin story; they just tell everything we need in short snippets within a few minutes. Seriously, this is so well done I forgot how good it was. It's worth refreshing yourself with on Youtube or something!

Thaddeus Ross is absolutely awesome in this. Rest In Peace William Hurt. He's such a piece of shit, but all of it doesn't seem too out of place. He's a monster of a man that struggles with doing the right thing and his own hubris. He's absolutely cold and willing to do whatever it takes to get Hulk. He's obsessed and there are so many scenes where William Hurt just performs his role in such an understated way that gets this across with little to no words. People will point out what a piece of shit he is and you can tell it effects him, but he just will not show it. Every scene with Thunderbolt Ross is a treat and probably the highlights of this movie. I'm really sad we never got William Hurt as Red Hulk because the man deserved that. He'd do such a good job with that.

I also like Hulk in this quite a bit. Visually, I think this is the best he looks. I think the Ruffalo Hulk is kinda lame and doesn't come across as nearly intensely intimidating as Incredible Hulk. The way he moves and the transformations are also great too. There is something in that they had really good ideas for cool moments.

One particular moment is my favorite scene from the movie where they are trying to get Hulk in the bottling plant in Brazil. They build up to Hulk so well. People are flying, giant machinery everywhere. He's a horror monster just grabbing people from the shadows and heaving them around and everything they try causes nothing. Just absolutely brutal and monstrous and it's honestly done so god damn well. I don't think Hulk has ever been better than this one scene, and I think that's a shame. Give me more scary Hulk than middle-aged nerd Hulk for the love of god.

I also really like Emil Blonsky in this as well. He's unhinged and obsessed, like Thunderbolt Ross, and he just wants this power and to be the best there is. Tim Roth does a really great job in this movie as well.

And let's talk about the bad.

Betty Ross, played by Liv Tyler, is abysmal. Just horrible. Every scene just lacks any charisma with her. She's a void of charisma. She shows one moment in a comedic taxi scene of something else by OH MY GOD it was so hard to get through scenes with her. Nothing she does works. I've liked her in a couple things, namely The Leftovers, but she has a very specific amount of roles she can pull off and this was not one of them. She actively detracted from the movie so bad and that cannot be understated.

I also don't love Edward Norton as Bruce Banner, but I think I like him more than Ruffalo? I'll get a chance here soon to compare the two, but that's my impulse after watching this. I don't like that Banner is kind of... cool in this? Like he's doing parkour skills, challenging people to fights, among other things. I like Banner more as a bit of a nerd (such as with Ruffalo) to contrast Hulk. Cool Banner doesn't do much for me.

I don't think the plot flows particularly well. It's very clearly from one giant, badass action scene to the next, with smatterings of absolutely screeching to a halt scenes with Betty Ross. While I do like Sterns just being a dope and too excited to make duplicates of Banner's blood, I think we needed a bit more there to justify it (especially with how secretive Banner is to just trust him like this).

I also think that the Abomination/Hulk fight is kind of lacking. I never really enjoyed it a ton but on a re-watch I'm still not particularly impressed. Choking Abom out with a chain sucks. In terms of big meaty monsters slapping meat, we can do better.

Overall, it's a movie with a ton of problems, but it's still an enjoyable watch for the most part. William Hurt and Tim Roth carried hard though, as well as some cool Hulk scenes. But the issues are very noticeable and rough. My one regret is that we still don't have a proper Leader. One day, perhaps...

Girlfriend Thoughts: She thought Liv Tyler was god awful too, but was nicer about it than me. She also seemed to really enjoy any Hulk scenes. She was also very much not a fan of Thaddeus Ross and was repeatedly calling him a dick while I'm over there gushing about how great William Hurt is. She particularly enjoyed the carnage Abomination ended up causing too. We also enjoyed making fun of Leonard Samson looking like a turbo virgin when Chad Banner comes by and Betty just completely ignores him from that moment onward. I also choose to believe she never got tired of the multiple Hulk callbacks and easter eggs I pointed out and explained to her too.