The Incredible Hulk

Scott Hardie: “It was ok.”

I decided to go back and see the only Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that I had missed, and it turns out that I was right to skip it the first time. Sandwiched between the much better Iron Man and The Dark Knight in the summer of 2008, this film's mediocrity and lack of ambition are striking, especially since it deliberately avoids being anything like its better predecessor, Ang Lee's underappreciated Hulk, which actually considered the effect of its hero's condition on his psyche. This film just wants to hurry up and get to the smashy-smashy, which might be acceptable if it were able to bring anything new or exciting to the action scenes, but they're fairly rote and unimaginative. On the bright side, Rio de Janiero makes for a fantastic location in the movie's first act, I appreciated that the film didn't bother to re-tell an origin story that we all know already, and there's a playful inclusion of many in-jokes and references. (What, Lou Ferrigno and Bill Bixby get cameos, but Eric Bana doesn't?) Studio in-fighting between Disney and Universal kept there from being a sequel to this, and maybe it's for the best that the MCU moved on without one.

− February 20, 2016 • more by Scott • log in or create an account to reply