Hulk...talk about his innermost feelings!
Of course, the film still had some action. I was gratified to see a scene in which the Hulk rips apart some tanks. This part would've been even better if he'd actually said he was going to smash something. In fact, I don't think he used his trademark word even once during the entire movie. Equally disappointing was the caliber of the military pilots brought in to combat the Hulk. Aside from almost colliding with each other at every possible opportunity, they also had an unfortunate tendancy to hover their Helicopters right in front of the raging Hulk. While this might have satisfied their urges to be dramatic, they would have survived much longer had they been more than ten feet above the ground. Possibly due to these two reasons, the smashing scenes weren't my favorite ones in the movie. In fact, I believe the best part came at a quiet moment when the monstrous Hulk goes to visit his girlfriend, and steps out from the trees. Why was this great? Because he kept reminding me of the Green Giant. Of course, he couldn't be nearly as jolly as the Green Giant. But I still expected him to start offering canned vegetables to everyone he met.
You'll notice that they didn't even try to call the movie The Incredible Hulk. And with good reason. The only thing incredible about this Hulk was the stretchiness of his purple shorts, which could miraculously expand as must as needed to fit the enormous size of the Hulk. Good thing Bruce Banner had the foresight to put them on before he became the Hulk, otherwise the movie could've been a whole lot worse. Of course, in my opinion, the Hulk was never much of an incredible superhero anyway. He was way down in the heroic ranks, far below the likes of Superman, Batman and the X-Men, and only marginally above the likes of The Green Lantern, The Flash and the Human Torch. All in all, I think the Jolly Green Giant would've made a much better hero than the Hulk. And a better movie too, for that matter. He even already has his own themesong! You can bet that the Green Giant wouldn't waste any time talking about his feelings; he'd talk about canned vegetables instead, a much more interesting topic.
As this quote might suggest, I just saw The Hulk the other night, and have to admit my disappointment. It really wasn't a very good movie, but it does provide great inspiration for a quote, so it's not all bad. My main complaint about The Hulk was that there was too much talking, and not enough smashing. Of course, the reviews and previews I'd seen beforehand had me suspecting that this would be the case. One reviewer even went so far as to call The Hulk a human drama, as opposed to an action movie. Unfortunately, that proved to be the case, though an inhuman drama would likely have been a more accurate description. In short, rather than smashing things (which is what the Hulk should be all about), this movie saw him having indepth discussions about his deep-seated psychological issues. By the midpoint of the film, I was half expecting the whole thing to be resolved in a psychologist's office, where the Hulk would sit on a couch and gush out his problems to the smarmy shrink. This fellow would then surely have claimed that it all went back to Hulk's childhood memories somehow, and in this case he would even have been right! It almost goes without saying that I don't want to see the heroes rambling repeatedly about their feelings in an action movie. I expect them to be just like Arnie, and have no feelings whatsoever.
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