ErikLundegaard.com - Hulk smash New York Times!

I'm not a big fan of these types of articles anyway. The star is bickering with X. The fan sites are saying Y. The first movie "flopped," even though it made over $130 million domestically. It's not "news," since it's not about something that's actually happened; it's just gossip and prediction.

I would've let it all slide except for this line: "The monster was mute in Mr. [Ang] Lee’s film, but this one speaks, a nod to the campy 1978-82 television series that starred Bill Bixby and the bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno (resplendent in green body paint)."

First, the TV show wasn't really campy — the way that Adam West's "Batman" was campy. "The Incredible Hulk" took itself seriously. Parts of it, in retrospect, may appear campy, but that wasn't the intention.

More importantly, and correct me if I'm wrong (Tim), but what nod to the series? Ferrigno's Hulk didn't speak. The comic-book Hulk spoke, generally without articles or proper grammar, but he spoke. If this new Hulk speaks, it's a nod to the comic book not the TV show.

Posted at 03:06 PM on Thu. Apr 10, 2008 in category The Media, Movies, Superheroes

COMMENTS

Tim wrote:

You are correct, sir. Ferrigno growled mightily, but his Hulk was incapable of forming words... The comic book Hulk, on the other hand, has had so many evolutions and backslides that any Hulk utterance from "Hulk SMASH!" to a dissertation on the nature of gamma radiation could be a "nod to the comics."

If they had wanted to be campy, Ferrigno's Hulk would have spoken. "Hulk smash," "Hulk angry," "Hulk crush little McGee," "Hulk only self-aware enough to know that name is Hulk, though that only what media call Hulk."

Comment posted on Thu. Apr 10, 2008 at 04:29 PM

Drew Sanders wrote:

The first movie may be considered a "flop" more because it failed to entertain than that it didn't make money.

Ang Lee is demonstrably a very good director, but he was absolutely the wrong choice to direct this movie. Considering the cast he had (Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliot, Nick Nolte) this film seems to have been more about the effects than the characters.

And what a sad story it was. Even treated seriously, this should have been a "fun" film, yet there was no sense of fun in this soap opera (except for Banner's last line, and that was delivered in Spanish).

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the Norton version will suffer from the same problems.

We'll see......

Comment posted on Mon. Apr 28, 2008 at 03:04 PM

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