You know a comic book movie was really, really bad when Marvel decides to completely re-launch a character just a few years later. It also speaks volumes of what Hollywood thinks of the green skinned goliath and the franchise of movies that could be based around him. Coming just five years after Ang Lee’s embarrassing 2003 movie The Hulk, comes The Incredible Hulk directed by Louis Leterrier and staring Edward Norton as Bruce Banner (a.k.a. The Incredible Hulk), Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky (a.k.a. The Abomination) and William Hurt as General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross.
I have to admit that the first Hulk movie looked so bad and got such awful reviews that even the huge comic book fan that I am waited for the movie to come out on DVD before finally watching it. But, after seeing this trailer The Blot will definitely be seeing this one in the theaters on opening weekend. For those already planning out their summer movie schedule, The Incredible Hulk will be hitting theaters June 13th, 2008.
Let me first just be on record to say that just from this short 2 minute preview I can already tell The Incredible Hulk looks 1 million times better than that previous monstrosity of a movie staring Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly. Everything about this trailer seems to be spot on from the comics and I love the fact they decided to add an actual Hulk super villain in the form of The Abomination. Instead of doing what both the previous movie and television series did, which is just pit Bruce Banner and his green skinned alter-ego against the local authorities and U.S. Military, they finally gave him an actual super villain (this is something I think is a must for every super hero movie being made today). I think with another gamma radiated foe in the movie allows us to see the Hulk to really flex his muscle by finally going against a worthy opponent.
The only fear I have about this movie is that it appears there are already creative differences between the star and studio. I always thought it was the director (and sometimes studio) whose vision crafted the final cut of the movie but according to Wizard Universe, “Incredible Hulk screenwriter and star Ed Norton – who rewrote a draft of the film by X-Men: The Last Stand scribe Zak Penn – and Marvel Films are currently trying to work out a final cut of the highly anticipated film.” (link) When news starts leaking out about creative differences and which cut of a movie to use often spells doom for a movie…thankfully this isn’t a movie that really needs much story direction, especially since its coming out in the middle of the summer when all audiences care about is action and crazy special effects. Hopefully the two sides can work out their creative differences and focus their attention on bigger, louder action sequences. While I would say its impossible to screw this up, we’ve already seen that happen once back in 2003 so I’ll just go with the hope Ed Norton doesn’t know how to make a bad movie and go with that.