Hulk

365 Films

Entry #119

Hulk (2003)

Directed by Ang Lee

“Do you really believe that I’m separate from you?”

This line of dialogue and the post-production technique known as split screen over which it plays is the key to understanding (at least) the intentions behind Ang Lee’s unjustly maligned adaptation of Hulk.  It’s a threat disguised as a statement of purpose, spoken over dual images of two characters that exist within the same shot, but are separated by a line down the middle of the screen.  It is a question for which an answer is at once painfully obvious and remarkably obscured at the same time.    Released in the summer of 2003; the film was instantly dismissed as sacrilege by admirers of the original text and as an interminable slog through a clearly wrong-headed attempt at infusing a comic book with pop-psycho analysis.  The film was a critical and commercial dud, resulting in not only a complete filmic re-do five years later (which only grossed about 18 million more than the original for those keeping track) but yet another re-introduction to the character with a new actor taking over the role for 2012’s The Avengers.  One gets the sense that if marvel had its druthers, they would simply eliminate Ang Lee’s film for all posterity and it would become the Armin Tamzarian of Hollywood lore (never to be spoken of again under penalty of torture).  I can’t say for certain whether the critical lashing it received in any way strengthened my resolve upon exiting the theater in 2003, but I can say that I’ve never understood it.  For my money, Hulk is the most ambitious and exciting comic book feature ever produced and at the time, it heralded a new golden age of vision-oriented directors being given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak.  This was coming off of Raimi’s glorious Spiderman introduction (at least the first two, more the second actually) and virtually mirroring his progress was Bryan Singer’s X-Men efforts (again emphasis on the sequel).  I can’t say for certain if Hulk was the beginning of the end of this comic book film hey day but aside from Spiderman 2 and the Nolan Batman series, everything since then has had a depressing uniformity to it.  In Marvel’s case in particular, each film feels less and less like a singular vision and more like something constructed in a board room by people more interested in growing a brand than delivering adventurous entertainment.  Then again, clearly, nobody should be listening to my advice on this matter.  All one has to do is look at the box office receipts to realize those board room meetings were not in vain.  But this also sort of speaks entirely to my point.  The argument can and should be made that comic books were and always will be a popular art form meant to be accessible to the masses and appreciated as such.  I have no qualms with that whatsoever, and not being an avid reader of any comic series, I also offer the admission that I am terribly out of my depth there.  As a filmgoer on the other hand, part of me yearns for the day when a comic book movie divided rather than united an audience.  When it was something to argue about, as opposed to joyously walking out of the theater and collectively ticking off the “epic” moments that were systematically designed to appear that way many years in advance.  When was the last time you remember a comic book movie pissing you off as much as Hulk did?  Do you ever miss that?  Half-assed cultural assessments aside (I really do apologize for them but since nobody reads this I can’t imagine it will be too much of a problem), the reason I selected that quote from the film to lead off this blog is to suggest a new way of looking at this particular iteration of the character.  One must put aside all traditional notions of what comic book movies are supposed to be and do for us, and I mean foundationally traditional things like “be fun and entertaining.”  This Hulk isn’t interested in any of that but what it is interested in doing is exploring the inner workings of the human mind and specifically how sub-conscious, psychic wounds can be manifested through painfully visible means.  The entire identity of Bruce Banner and his Hulk counterpart in this film is designed as such.  As a result, we are left with a film without a visible antagonist and a protagonist who spends most of the film either unconscious, as a Hulk, or avoiding the true nature of his self.  What I mean to suggest with all this is, the film is not supposed to satisfy us in the same way that Iron Man does, and it is therefore not mean to gratify us in any way.  This is not the say the film is flawless or that it is inconceivable for one not to enjoy it the same way I do, but merely that it is an imperfect film stacked with audaciously beautiful moments and a completely visionary attempt at injecting the comic book movie with something truly new and daring.  It would be one thing if the film were an ambitious misfire but it is entirely something else considering how unlike it any other film of its nature was before it or has been since.