The Incredible Hulk: What Happens When Writers Give Up Halfway Through

★★☆☆☆

The Incredible Hulk is a Marvel movie released in 2008, just a year before being fully acquired by the Walt Disney Company. The film follows Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) as he searches for an antidote to the Hulk. The opening credits show a montage of Banner’s gamma radiation poisoning, injuring his colleague/love interest Betty (Liv Tyler), and his being on the run from General Ross (William Hurt), who considers his body US Army property.

The film is technically the second in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), out in cinemas only a month after Iron Man. It was produced by Marvel Studios and Valhalla Motion Pictures, and distributed by Universal. The Incredible Hulk was directed by Louis Leterrier, who is most known for his work on Transporter 2 (2005). Leterrier does quite a good job; the actual quality of the filmmaking is to the standard usually expected from a Marvel film, it’s the writing that is the real problem.

The first thirty-or-so minutes does a good job building the story and introducing us to all of the main characters. We see Banner’s online interactions with “Mr. Blue” who is allegedly trying to help him find a cure; we also follow his return to the United States and consequent run-ins with General Ross and the military. It is in this time that we are introduced to out other main antagonist: Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth). On loan to the US Army from the Royal Marines, Blonsky becomes the second test subject (the first being Banner himself) in the military’s trial to create “super soldiers” which ends up having similar results as Banner.

The rest of the film isn’t anything to write home about. It follows your typical superhero/action film format, with a (rather anticlimactic) final fight scene with Banner (as the Hulk) and Blonsky (by now dubbed “Abomination”). Looking back, the CGI is questionable, making the two green giants look fake and out-of-place. For 2008 standards, it’s not that bad. But it definitely doesn’t hold up fifteen years later.

The acting, though, is still good. The script was quite weak, which limits the quality of the performances throughout the film, but each actor managed to make the Incredible Hulk a lot better than it could have been. However, when the film could have turned out to be a train-wreck, the bar is pretty much on the floor for improvements. The main cast had alraedy established themselves as top actors; it’s not every day that three of the main characters’ actors combined resumes include Fight Club, Lord of the Rings, and Pulp Fiction. Edward Norton brings a different touch to the character of Bruce Banner, making him seem all the more hellbent on finding an antidote, as well as creating even more of a contrast between Banner and his Hulk alter-ego. Liv Tyler, whilst not fully convincing us that Betty is a real biologist, helps add a sense of tenderness to her scenes with Bruce Banner/the Hulk. There are fwe actors that would have been able to play the role of Emil Blonsky as well as Tim Roth, who has become known for taking on the “bad guy” roles in almost all of his films. Whilst it does feel like the writers almost bent over backwards for his casting to even somewhat make sense for his character, his abilities to help bring Blonsky to life is a lot more than the script is capable of. He also makes the scene where Emil squares up to the Hulk a lot funnier than it necessarily should have been; at a mere 5’7”, it really does make him look that much smaller in comparison and, therefore, plays into the character’s love of danger (or perhaps masochism, depending on how you look at it).

The Incredible Hulk is only really worth a watch if you are trying to make your way through the entire MCU, or if you’re running out of material to watch one of the above actors in. Even then, try and find something else first. It’s quite disappointing how the film as a whole turned out, especially since it seems to have so much potential at the start to be something better. It just lacks the depth it needed to make a film truly good.

The Incredible Hulk is available to stream on Disney+, and bought on the Sky Store.