“Staff Picks” is a deeper look into movies that we love here at Video CULTure. Each edition of this column will focus on a single film that we think you should check out, either for the first time or for a long-overdue revisit.
By Patrick Bartlett (Twitter: @alleywaykrew)
I vividly remember my theatrical experience with Ang Lee’s 2003 take on “Hulk”. I’m pretty sure I always will. I spent the whole time really enjoying the film. I loved the tone, I loved the character work, I loved the fact that it actually felt like how reading a comic feels to me. When the lights came up in the theater, I looked excitedly at my friends for their reaction. They clearly did not share my enthusiasm. In that moment, I knew exactly what the public opinion would be and I was not wrong. I’ve been waiting a very long time for that to change. I believe this film deserves a reappraisal. “Hulk” is actually great and is even more interesting now in the greater context of superhero cinema as it’s come to be.
I guess I should mention at the beginning that my earliest superhero related memory (of so very many) involves the Hulk character. My dad used to show me the old Hulk and Batman shows when I was a child and despite my lifelong obsession with Batman, the first superhero thing I remember is Bill Bixby’s Banner turning into Lou Ferrigno’s Hulk. It simultaneously terrified and excited me. A legitimate thrill. I largely moved on to other characters to be obsessed with (especially Daredevil after seeing “The Trial Of The Incredible Hulk” a while later) but Hulk will always hold a special place in my heart because of the way it completely opened my eyes. Also, for the record, I completely understand the most common criticism about this film and can’t completely argue against it. To put it simply, there’s not enough “HULK SMASH” in Lee’s film. It’s somewhere around forty minutes in before we even get a glimpse of the Green Goliath. I understand why a large part of the audience found that off-putting. I do. However, the fact that Ang Lee’s film basically takes various elements of years’ worth of Hulk stories and builds all of it from the ground up means there’s a lot of ground to cover that isn’t necessarily action-oriented and I feel like that needs to be accepted when judging the film.
Hulk’s origin story is a pretty well-worn piece of lore that most people know even if they don’t know anything about superheroes. A scientist gets blasted with radiation (specifically gamma) and instead of killing him like it should have, it instead causes his angry moments to manifest as him turning into a huge musclebound monstrous version of himself. It’s not unlike the curse of the werewolf. Doctor Banner spends his life trying to cure himself of what he sees as an affliction but many others see as something to exploit. This film doesn’t necessarily deviate as much as deepen the story. David Banner (played by Nick Nolte) is a scientist experimenting with various animals’ genetic abilities in an attempt to create super soldiers for the army. He’s not granted permission to experiment on human subjects, so he experiments on himself. He ends up fathering a son named Bruce (played by Eric Bana) that he passes some of the odd side effects to a genetic level. Sam Elliot’s character of General Ross finds out what’s happened and puts a stop to the whole project. In the process, David kills his wife and Bruce is taken to be raised by foster parents, never knowing anything of his tragic past. He grows up to become a scientist as well, attempting to heal people with gamma radiation along with his ex-girlfriend and the general’s daughter, Betty Ross (played by Jennifer Connelly). One day, Bruce ends up taking an amount of gamma radiation that should have killed him in an attempt to save a coworker from being exposed and instead of Bruce dying, he seems absolutely fine. Actually, he seems better than he was before. David has returned and taken a job as a janitor in Bruce & Betty’s lab, tells Bruce that he’s his father and shares with Bruce the idea that the reason that he’s still alive is because of the experiments and what they’ve done to their DNA. The stress of all that coupled with Josh Lucas’s character of Glenn Talbot trying to use what Bruce is developing also to create super soldiers against Bruce’s wishes ends up causing Bruce to change into the gigantic, green-skinned, musclebound Hulk.
From that point, the movie really does feel more like an action-adventure superhero movie. You have Bruce trying to avoid having his new found “abilities” exploited by his father or the Army and in the process, hulking out on a pretty consistent basis. That’s the main reason that while I understand the criticism about the movie not having enough action, I disagree, as when all the characters and the story are established…you essentially have all you could ever want from a Hulk movie. However, because Ang Lee approached the film as “a Greek tragedy”, it feels wholly different and grounded in a different way than other superhero stuff that was coming out around the same time (namely stuff like Raimi’s “Spider-Man” which came out the year before). It’s actually more interesting now with the way that superhero movies have settled into an increasingly familiar formula. It may not be an over-the-top action romp but it’s not a dour film either. It’s a movie that explores how a creature like Hulk could exist in the real world, among characters that mostly feel like real people.
The reason that these people feel mostly like actual human beings is because of the cast Lee managed to assemble. Eric Bana was cast based on his wonderful performance in the Australian crime film/biopic “Chopper”, Jennifer Connelly had just won an Academy Award based on her performance in “A Beautiful Mind”, Sam Elliot in addition to being exactly as much of a freaking man as I always pictured General Ross to be, also looks exactly like the character from the comic book just somehow walked off the page. Nick Nolte’s mostly original character is a mashup of a bunch of different comic characters that Nolte manages to simultaneously play really big and also really small in equal measure throughout the film in a pretty fascinating way. Josh Lucas is the only one that feels out of place in terms of his performance but it still kind of works because his take on Talbot adds a bit of what you’d expect from the superhero subgenre while it was still figuring itself out in terms of scenery chewing.
As great as the cast is, I can’t say enough about how much Ang Lee brings to the piece. I admittedly love a lot of his work but this has always been my favorite. I’m curious what Terminator 3 would have been like if he had taken that job instead of this one but I definitely don’t think we would have gotten as interesting a film as we did here. They even tried to do a quasi-sequel remake in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I don’t think anyone could argue is even close to as successful as a film. Lee’s sensitivity, understanding of character, and frankly… I’m not sure if it’s due to the culture he grew up in or something unique to him as a person and a filmmaker but he understands the nature of anger and what it’s capable of in a way that I’m not sure that many others do. To be honest, a Hulk movie can very easily just be a superhero version of a werewolf movie. Lee manages to go in another direction and make the character feel both tragic and heroic without losing a sense of menace. It’s an extremely difficult balance to pull off but Lee does it with aplomb. I just wish he got more credit for all he did here.
As I said at the start, I’m still waiting for a reappraisal of this film. This film deserves that. The fact that a superhero film that simply dared to take a more grounded approach before that became cool and ends up treated as a punchline is horrifying. As much as I unabashedly love the majority of superhero movies, it’s hard to argue that the genre as a whole hasn’t at least mostly settled into a fairly predictable formula. Granted, often what’s done with that formula is great. I’m not one of the movie brats claiming these films aren’t cinema. All I can say is that I would love to see more movies that take as big a swing as “Hulk” did if for no other reason than it manages to upset an established model in a truly fascinating, character-driven way. At the very least, that aids in looking at the established model in a different way. I feel like the audience deserves more movies like this and the genre truly deserves it too.
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch