After an early childhood of being abused and experimented upon by his mad scientist father, David (Nick Nolte), Bruce Banner (Eric Bana) has grown up to be a mild-mannered scientist who represses his anger. However, when he gets exposed to elevated gamma radiation, a change comes over Bruce and, whenever he gets angry, he turns into the Hulk, a green-skinned creature who cannot contain his rage. Banner finds himself on the run while his father, who has returned to Bruce’s life, tries to manipulate his son’s condition to get revenge on everyone whom he feels has betrayed him. Eventually, David takes a dose himself and transforms into the Absorbing Man, leaving comic book readers to wonder why, out of the Hulk’s wonderful rogue’s gallery of villains, a film would feature one of the least interesting.
It’s easy to forget just how surprised people were when it was announced that Ang Lee was going to be directing a film based on a comic book. “Really?” people said. “But Ang Lee’s an Oscar-winning filmmaker. Why would he make a movie about the Hulk?” A lot of people were even more surprised when the film came out and was more concerned with Bruce’s dysfunctional relationship with his father than with the usual comic book action (though it did have plenty of that). Lee’s use of a forgettable villain like Absorbing Man made more sense once it became clear that Bruce and David were meant to have absorbed their anger from their dysfunctional backgrounds. When Hulk came out in 2003, most critics dismissed it as being an interesting failure.
Today, even though I’m more aware than ever of the film’s flaws, I prefer Ang Lee’s Hulk to the subsequent Marvel versions. In Ang Lee’s Hulk, not every problem can be solved by a CGI battle and not every line is delivered with a wink and a nod. I even prefer Eric Bana to both Edward Norton and Mark Ruffalo because Bana doesn’t shy away from portraying Bruce as being someone who is actually pretty boring when he’s not the Hulk. For most of the movie, Bana’s version of Bruce Banner has no desire to become a superhero or to fight evildoers. He just wants to get through the day without turning into an uncontrollable monster and destroying things. Bana’s Hulk is out of control in a way that Marvel’s Hulk rarely is. Also, Sam Elliott and Jennifer Connelly are both better choices for Thaddeus Ross and his daughter Betty than either William Hurt or Liv Tyler. From the minute you see him, Sam Elliott just is Thunderbolt Ross.
Dismissed when it was first released, Hulk is a film that gets better with each viewing.
