The summer heat is beginning to be felt here in April: Comic-book movies are already jockeying for position. Next month sees the release of Iron Man, the Robert Downey Jr. starrer. And a few weeks later we get another Marvel comics release: The Incredible Hulk.

Everything about this new Hulk film seems to be in reaction to the last film– a negative reaction. New director, new locations, new shade of green for our humongous hero. Aussie heartthrob Eric Bana is out: Bring in complicated Yalie Edward Norton. It’s not even a sequel: It’s a cinematic mulligan, a do-over, a fresh chance to restart a valuable franchise.

This big repackaging effort has been tracked in an article in the New York Times a few days ago. As they said of the old film:

In 2003 “Hulk,” a pricey attempt to give the monster a Spidey-size movie career, flopped after the director Ang Lee’s artsy creature was ridiculed as Gumbyesque. That picture, which cost $150 million to make, sold a disappointing $132 million in tickets in North America and made less overseas.

(“Gumbyesque:” Remember that term.)

Universal has released the trailer for the new Hulk, and lo and behold new problems have already cropped up which are giving the studio fits:

The trailer, engineered to vanquish memories of the 2003 film, arrived last month and instantly polarized the comic book crowd. The look of the new Hulk — meaner and greener — won praise from some fans online, but several influential tastemakers held their noses.

Entertainment Weekly pronounced the computer-generated effects “totally fake-looking,” while obsessedwithfilm.com deemed the project “just hideous.”

If the studio chooses to panic, hey, that is their prerogative. But for me, this reaction is silliness on many levels.

1. What? The effects for The Hulk are “totally fake-looking?” Alright, not going to the foundation of the problem, in that giant green guys do not actually exist, which therefore obviates the charge of fakery: If the accusation is a qualitative criticism, well, “fake-looking” compared to what film? The closest cousin to The Incredible Hulk both as summer action films and comics, is the Spider-Man franchise. And the Spider-Man movies look as fake as hell. And I’m talking in comparison to other CG-dependent movies. When Spidey does his web-slinging thing he looks for all the world like an avatar in a first-person shooter. I remember being very disappointed and disengaged with the level of effects in the Spider-Man movies. I chalked it up to the comic-book genre: who cares if it’s not all that realistic? (Well, Peter Jackson cared, but his source was literary, and that probably focused him a bit better.) The first Hulk movie looked just about as fake. Isn’t this a genre thing?
2. I’ve read that “Gumbyesque” assessment of The Hulk more than once. This is just plain unimaginative. Anything that is anthropomorphic and green can be, and probably has been, called “Gumbyesque:” Kermit the Frog. Yoda. The Wicked Witch. Poison Ivy (from Batman and Robin). The Jolly Green Giant. Anyone with even vaguely decent vision can tell the difference: Gumby is eight inches tall with huge feet, and The Hulk has an all-access Gym membership. Gumby can go into any book, and The Hulk rips phone books in half (no, that’s Lou Ferrigno). If there were actual green-skinned people, I’d call the “Gumbyesque” charge bigoted. Certainly it is very lazy.

So Universal: Go ahead, release it. Nobody really cares about the finer nuances of CGI anymore. Besides, I’m sure you put a lot of extra effort into the script, and made sure the quality of storytelling is above reproach, right? Right?

–Skot C.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Computer Games, Digital Wonderland, General, Motion Pictures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.