Ang Lee's Grouchy Hulk, Sleeping Audience

Fox News Online ^ | 6/18/03 | Roger Friedman

[TheBigB]

Let's talk about the upside first: The computer-generated Hulk is indeed very realistic and convincing. In fact, all the special effects are good, very subtle and artfully done. There's rarely a time when the computer side of this movie doesn't pay off.

[jayef]

Hey sometimes it rains. When it rains people get wet. What's gratutious about that.

[jayef]

I meant to say gratitious . . . er . . . gratuitous.

[TheBigB]

What's with the Haiku-type format?

[martin_fierro]

I agree. Liked her looks much better BEFORE the breast reduction and anorexia.

[martin_fierro]

BAH!

You two beat me to it!

MARTIN_FIERRO SMASH!

<|:)~

[Ichneumon]

Or was until she joined the trend of emaciated actresses and lost the incredible curves she sported in films such as "the Rocketeer," "the Hot Spot" and "Career Opportunities."

She was also inhumanly beautiful in "Dark City", a great, underrated sci-fi film. Roger Ebert is on the wrong drugs more often than not these days, but his review of Dark City nails it.

[JoeSixPack1]

OK, I guess maybe I'm older than dirt, and comics taught me to read, but I remember the original HULK comics. He was boring, sobering and non-jovial. He was portrayed as the ultimate in one emotion. Rage. It took a while to warm up to a highly pissed-off super-hero that wasn't a hero, just some whimp doused by gamma rays and couldn't even talk until 3 or 4 years into the series.

What Roger Friedman described as a boring movie is the original legend. But Roger didn't even have the courtesy of showing up for the entire movie that was his to review. How do you do a review and not see the whole movie?

Like this: The Hulk is dark — soooo dark! And gloomy. It's also mind-blowingly slow for the first 40 minutes (I missed the first nine, but I'm assured nothing vital happened).

So, accepting the fact that this reviewer is not an "original hulk-fan" from the 60's, and his dedication to his job sucks, I figure this should be a cool movie for me to watch. :-)

The greatest Bruce Banner line ever: "You won't like me when I'm angry" :-)

[quark]

Damn. Someone hand that girl a sandwich.

Agree. She was so, uh, "juicy" in The Rocketeer. No doubt that now she's an anorexia nervosa or bullimia case. A shame...

[Ichneumon]

I would refer to that as genius mentality. Sam Raimi #1.

It's really hard to believe that Spiderman, A Simple Plan, and Army of Darkness all came from the same director. It's the mark of a great artist when he can produce works which bear so little resemblance to each other.

[weegee]

I guess that you won't be seeing the Bloom County live action film where Nick Nolte plays Bill the Cat:

[Arkie2]

Big Trouble in Little China is a cinematic masterpiece!

[Arthur McGowan]

They are the same sex. Words have gender.

[weegee]

Apart from some character names, the end sequence of the film is about the only thing that was faithfully adapted from the comic book (it combines elements from the origin story, some scattered Green Goblin comics, and the Green Goblin death story in Amazing Spider-Man #121, 122; these are from the 1970s there should be no need for a spoiler warning at this point in time).

In the comics, it was a different girl who Peter was seeing (Gwen Stacy) and she died when he tried to rescue her (the force of him catching her snapped her neck).

Take or leave some liberties in the tale but the dumbest thing about the Spider-Man movie was him shooting "real" webs out of his wrists. Ignoring the DNA trail that he would be leaving, wouldn't it come out somewhere near his tail area? Spiders don't ooze webbing from their legs.

I am unaware of any titilation sequences in the first 25 years of Spider-Man comics.

[weegee]

I seem to recall a low-rise jeans scene in Spider-Man, too (and the panties peaked over the top of her pants). Tacky.

[discostu]

But the shooting of real webs was taken from from the future spidey stuff (the 2099 series). I actually like it, yeah it doesn't come out the "right" place but it's better than him inventing it himself. There was always something wrong with the idea of him getting all these cool spider abilities, except the webbing he had to figure that one out later. Can we get spider DNA from their webs?

Does the first 25 years include the time he was dating the Cat chick? That was some definite titilation, and wierd too (she wouldn't call him by his name, didn't want him to take off the costume before being intimate... seriously wierd chick).

[Psycho_Bunny]

The Hulk is brought to us by Ang Lee and James Schamus, the wonderful team behind The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Great.  I never saw The Ice Storm but Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon flat-out sucked.

Other than Titanic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was probably the most over-rated film I ever saw.

[quark]

Next for the Ang'er, a Clinton biopic: "Crouching Intern, Hidden Cigar"

[LibWhacker]

No, I'll be staying away from that one, too! It is a good resemblance, isn't it? :-)

[strela]

I know you guys enjoy it though.

Yes'm, we did. Thanks for asking though ;)

[weegee]

Especially the kung fu. Hong Kong directors shot MUCH better action sequences in the 1990s leading up to the 1997 handover.