The Hulk

The Hulk

Zasvedeh: I could have simply remarked ‘It’s not easy being green’ and avoided this whole mess about Hulk, but Ang Lee tends to spoil me with another film that I can’t be snippy about. Yes, it is essentially about a great big green guy who breaks things which is like saying Hamlet is about this college kid who has a bit of a breakdown.

The Hulk is at the very pole of the comic-book-movie ghetto, let’s say, the pole of snore format, as in, say, Daredevil where the only merit of the film was the sight of Affleck’s butt in a leather jumpsuit. Lee’s movie is stylized as comic book its multiple views and split screens recreate the dynamics of a graphic novel’s pages and it’s like a mind-boggling and downright grotesque amalgam of Jekyll and Hyde, King Kong and a Greek tragedy.

Blessed to have long been working with his screenwriters James Schamus, John Turman, and Michael France and of course, the mind behind the Marvel character, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee’s creation, Lee has successfully managed something quite unusual. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Ride with the Devil. He has managed to cultivate a comic film that rests on its weight but fails to flaunt this weight. It’s a feminist dominated art movie turning into a blockbuster grossing summer movie.

Yeah, sure it’s all gamma rays, human guinea pigs with psychotic tendencies and torn garments, it’s the Hulk bringing the pain and the military attempting to dispose him as being their ultimate WMD. But the reason why the Hulk goes on a rampage are primal needs of male self control with a son’s inherited rage from his father more than a lot of unnecessary mayhem.

It’s a film meant for getting the young-men aged 12-34 aged sub section in the audience and the marketing makes that very convenient to fathom by encouraging the destruction of inanimate objects only to have that audience question their desire to see them destroyed in the first place and what mental barrier do you have that you rejoice at a large green lump smashing everything? What the f**k man.

Bruce Banner seems like a man with a lot of anger and reasons too. His girlfriend, Betty Ross portrayed by Jennifer Connelly who is also featured in ‘A Beautiful Mind’ and ‘Requiem for a Dream’ has just broken up with him. The father Ian thought had passed away long ago, Nick Nolte who appeared in ‘The Good Thief’ and ‘Simpatico’ has appeared out of the blue and admitted to using Ian as a test for his freakish genetic experiments.

Then there is Talbot played by Josh Lucas in ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and ‘Deep End’ who is determined to take over the science project that Ian and his girlfriend Betty made. It goes without saying that Eric Bana, known for his roles in ‘Finding Nemo’ and ‘Chopper’, was a great choice to play Ian Banner as he is an actor filled with emotion and confidence which lets him portray a man who embodies feelings but hides them.

When Ian is confronted by Betty who explains, Ian was never someone passionate so it was best for Betty to let him go, the audience can see that Ian is in denial and wishful thinking, essentially self-imposing the idea of how things should be. And of course, the last one indicates everything started from this problem.

But then the anger. Bruce’s first change into the Hulk would almost seem to have been triggered not by gamma rays penetrating deeply into the already diseased Bruce DNA but by Bruce surrendering to his emotions and finding out how angry he truly is. Everything smashing? It is, in the words of the man, “emotion dissolving into anger” as well as, “pain which clearly exists and is present in the fictitious gory graphics face of the beast.” and the half pain, which is better presented, aimed at those, who wants to make him their weapon.

So here’s the crux of the matter. In a narrative steeped in ironies and fatalistic dramas only the woman who once advised Bruce that he was too much away from his emotional balance now seems able to pull him back from the raging edge; the father who all but discovered the means of transforming his son into a monster prefers tempting him rather than assisting him the gravest one is perhaps the belief, for all its popcorn-movie brashness of summer, Hulk does not yield to the crass appeal of the typical audience which is primarily the boys aged 12 to 34.

For all its dramatic components, the general direction of the main plot in Hulk is too much about sexualization that makes sense fury and rage and how, in certain occasions, fury and rage makes sense. For all its apparent ferocity, no one will be able to argue that the movie distracts most people with graphic violence.

You’ll see, the absent spine but very obvious source of bulk the mainmast of Hulk comes in the extended gross meaty portion where the United States military uses new hardware to hunt down a transformed Bruce, who has broken free from a clandestine army facility in the Western desert and is making his way to San Francisco, to Betty. Tanks, choppers, fighter jets, they use everything but a nuclear weapon. All branches of the military are going into battle mode.

But there is something unsettling, almost inherently tragic, about this display of power. It’s not that it’s useless against the Hulk, it’s that the entire military power structure is in a grotesque manner an extension of the man who commands the tanks and the chopper and the fighter jets. General Ross (Sam Elliott: The Contender), Betty’s father, is one such individual. He is angry too. But unlike Bruce who may have some reason, General Ross has none of it but customarily has more means to create destruction than Bruce can ever think of.

There’s a whole ton of fury within Hulk regarding the abuse of the US armed forces but for now that would be for a different day.

But consider this too, folks, when those crashing helicopters that tried to pursue the Hulk completely disintegrate as expected flame ball explosions which Bruckheimer has taught us always accompany crashes despite the fact that the tanks are empty why is there an overwhelming need to watch it? What is it that you are holding back, bro that you cannot help but want to see it explode and feel the emotional satisfaction of the destruction?

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