My father, the guy that introduced me to The Incredible Hulk, to this day thinks his alter ego is David Banner; he gets confused anytime someone refers to Banner as "Bruce". What I'm trying to say here is that my dad was never really big on comic books and both his and my introduction to Marvel's Jade Giant was the old Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno TV show from the 1980s. But while my old man could never quite shake the association with that televised adaptation from yesteryear, I made the shift really by reading comics by fellow half-Korean writer Greg Pak and not-Korean-at-all-I'm-pretty-sure Peter David. Everybody gets angry, everybody puts on a brave face and lets those more passionate emotions simmer to a boil under the surface. The Hulk is what happens when people stop being polite and start being real.
Real World 2008 takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I would actually watch the hell out of that.
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| Whoooo! Spring Break! |
Bruce Banner is a man very much at war with himself, this contradictory desire to be left alone yet be so monumentally lonely all the time with the constant fear of his own destructive potential. I never liked the idea of Bruce Banner/Hulk being a case study in multiple personality disorder. It works on a more superficial
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde kind of way but really, Hulk and Banner are the same; the powerful behemoth is just a viridescent extension of Banner's id when the meek scientist loses control; it is rage and raw emotion personified. And yet, somehow in 2003, they made a boring Hulk movie. That shouldn't be possible? When you read or watch a Hulk story, the audience is really there to see when the not-so-jolly Green Giant comes out to play. We feel for Banner because we all feel put upon and keep our frustrations bottled up but we really want to see the fantasy of how it all feels to finally let it all go and most people get that. In 2003, Ang Lee didn't. What we got there was a heavy-handed Freudian exploration into the relationship between fathers and sons and Nick Nolte very literally chewing the scenery.
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| This man has been nominated for an Academy Award. Three times. |
But we're not here to talk about that shitty flick [he typed with the traces of a frown realizing he just started off with two overlong paragraphs] but rather the 2008
The Incredible Hulk with Edward Norton stepping into the title role. Everybody kind of forgets this movie exists much less is part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe due to middling reviews, a box office overshadowed by
Iron Man the previous month and
The Dark Knight the subsequent month, and a recasting of the main role because Norton reportedly didn't play nice with the producers. For me, it's nowhere near the worst film in the MCU but you can definitely tell the studio is finding its own voice. As its sophomore effort made in conjunction with
Iron Man, that's understandable though it's still jarring that there's no mid/post credits scene; worried about poor initial tracking numbers, the producers opted to include Tony Stark in the film's marketing after the runaway success of that film.
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| I miss natural hair color Robert Downey, Jr. |
Norton's Bruce Banner is a man very much on the run, as much from himself as the authorities. Of course, the thing about running away from your problems is that they usually catch up to you at the most inopportune time; just as Banner is making a life for himself for Brazil, General Ross dispatches soldier of fortune Emil Blonsky to do just that. Banner resolves to return stateside in a final bid for a cure to his gamma-radiated alter ego, taking his issues head-on which pits him in a rematch with Ross and Blonsky who transforms into a bony dinosaur man for some reason. Also, Michael K. Williams from
The Wire shows up as an extra which seems like a completely egregious waste of Michael K. Williams.
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| Omar has nothing on this. |
I tend to look forward to the quiet moments in movies nowadays; I've been watching action flicks as long as I can remember so that's usually entertaining empty calories for me. The quiet moments here are really lost in the shuffle that comes from putting Banner on the run for the bulk of the film with a literal ticking clock on his wrist warning him (and the audience) of the potential for a Hulk appearance. It's the fan service that actually gets the grin on my face instead of feeling shoehorned in: General Ross with sound wave cannons just because, Hulk using cars as boxing gloves and performing a sonic handclap, and triumphant bellow of "Hulk smash!!" That all brings out the unapologetic fan boy in me even if I can't ever quite accept that Norton's Banner and Hulk have no similar features whatsoever; at least Eric Bana Hulk and Mark Ruffalo Hulk possess visible resemblances.
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| It's probably the bangs. |
I always wonder what it would've been like if Norton stayed on as Bruce Banner; would we get the Science Bro interplay with Tony Stark in
The Avengers? The buddies-on-the-road dynamic between Banner and Thor in
Thor: Ragnarok? Given how tortured Norton plays it, probably not but he does get some moments to have fun with what guys like Eric Bana made a super heavy role. The subtext under Bruce Banner is that he's always lonely because of that distance he puts between everyone with that green-eyed monster lurking under the surface which you get with Norton. Ruffalo's Hulk is always teaming up with someone by necessity of the narrative. I guess the real question is how do you prefer your Hulk served? Distant and solitary or as a loose cannon team player?
