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.

At a table strewn with lead figurines and hex-graph paper sit FOUR PLAYERS and a DUNGEON MASTER, behind his dragon-emblazed standing folder.

DUNGEON MASTER: Did you hear about Gygax?

JAPHETH BLIGH (8th-level warrior): What’s that? A troll? I’m taking out my +5 Longsword–

HELVETICA the MEDIUM (6th-level Cleric) –I’m reaching into my robe for a scroll–

DM: No. Gary Gygax.

DELINDIR The ELFMASTER (7th-level Paladin) Gary? That’s a dumb name for a Troll.

MIGHTY MOGENKELLER (2nd-level dwarf) I have a +1 pointed stick! I’m jabbing him!

MogenKeller rolls twelve-sided dice. It comes up 1.

DM: That doesn’t count, Mogenkeller. Gary Gygax is a real person. He just passed away. He had a influence that far exceeded his own creations. He co-developed “Dungeons and Dragons,” which was sort of a phenomena in itself– But the genius of his legacy lies in the details. The role-playing game, where one inhabits a character and is guided on adventures by the Dungeon Master, a sort of movie director, was unique enough. But he added quantifiable elements such as ability scores: each character has an admixture of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, all mediated by Experience and Hit points. Run out of too many of these attributes or hit points, and your character is toast. This gaming system, initially kept pencil-on-paper, translated easily into computer-based attribute scoring. First-person shooter games like Half-Life, Doom, and Halo are merely computer-based applications of this basic system, first codified in 1974.

H. the M.: I knew that.

J.B.: Geek.

DM: The immersive, interactive world of D&D could also be considered a real-world dry run for virtual-community online games like The Sims and Second Life. In tone, details and type of play, the universe of D&D is virtually indistinguishable from World of Warcraft, the world’s most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

H. the M.: Hey, why aren’t we playing that?

J.B.: Perhaps because there is something more intrinsically creative and imaginative about a role-playing game that is played face-to-face, and largely occurs inside the players heads, not on a computer screen.

D. the E.: Maybe you’re too cheap to afford $20 a month to subscribe to Warcraft.

J.B.(quietly): Let’s talk about this at home, okay?

M.M.: I have a pointed stick!

H. the M.: Hush, now.

DM: As stigmatized as D&D seems to be in popular culture (”geek!”) it’s mythical lexicon, culled from the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, has though it’s direct and indirect influences kept open a popular-culture window to fantasy entertainment. Would the Lord of the Rings trilogy have taken in nearly $3 billion if the core audience were strictly Tolkien fans– aging 60s college students– rather than the generations of people familiar with the strongly Tolkien-like D&D universe?

J.B.: That dude must have had total wealth points!

DM: You’d think so. It’s somewhat illustrative that Gary Gygax never got really, really rich off his fecund co-invention. Wizards of the Coast, a bunch of RPG publishers who got rich off of Magic: The Gathering (a very D&D-like collectible-card game) bought Gygax’s company outright in 1997, a case of the imitators acquiring the original.

D.the E.: Still, an impressive legacy nonetheless.

H. the M.: Quite the visionary.

M.M. I have a pointed stick!

J.B. (in character): I’m turning rouge… And I’m turning and stabbing Mogenkeller with my +5 Longsword!

Japheth rolls a 12.

DM: You killed him.

J.B.: Hah! Now you have to go out and get more Dr. Pepper. We’re all out.

–Skot C.

In the world of motion pictures, they love “pre-sold” properties. In other words, movie people will gladly throw money at a story if you already know it. Especially if the project is cinematic to begin with, and has already made more on it’s opening day than either Spiderman 3 (presold with two other movies) or the last Harry Potter book (5 movies, 6 books). But the movie based on Halo is in, as they say in the biz, turnaround. It ain’t movin.

Reader Uh asks “if it made that much money then why wouldn’t they make a movie on it.” Good question, Uh.  Do something about the name. Anyway, the project was rumored on the fast track, with Peter Jackson attached to produce.  It seemed like a more done deal than most, but the studios involved apparently got cold feet. Notice I say studios. Both Universal and 20th Century Fox were putting money into this movie, and that’s a clue to what’s making the trouble. You see, the movies was budgeted at over $300 million dollars.

Jackson insisted on that budget, and if he can’t get that he’s walking. The studios, on the other hand, are looking at the history of computer games that have been made into movies. Resident Evil? It did okay. Tomb Raider? Good business. Doom? Even with Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, not that big. Bloodrayne, Alone In the Dark, Silent Hill? Non-starters. Super Mario Brothers? Industry joke. The mysterious Alchemy does work the other way - games based movies often are profitable. But games almost always cost less than movies. I have a feeling that wasn’t true of Bloodrayne, but I’m not backing that up.

Anyway, by an industry rule of thumb a movie has to pull in twice its production costs to make a profit. You have to have an awful lot of confidence in a property to assume it will pull in $600 million dollars. For example, Titanic made a little over $600 million domestically, and the number two all-time box office champ, Star Wars Episode 4 to date has made $461 million. Both of these movies at least had a love interest.

Come to think of it, both of these movies at least had WOMEN. Resident Evil and Tomb Raider also featured women as main characters. I have never played Halo because I don’t own an Xbox. I also haven’t had botox nor do I do Tai Bo. Sorry, tangent. But I’m guessing that there aren’t a lot of chicks in the Halo universe. Women are probably playing the game (with those sales numbers, they MUST be) but when you’re an active participant in entertainment, you’re forced to identify with the protagonist. When it’s passive, like in a movie, well I guess if they’re not planning on recasting the lead in Halo as Mistress Chief, then it might be Super Mario Time all over again.

So maybe when 2009 rolls around, we will see a Halo movie. But unless there is some kind of sea change in the box office trends, it will either not be very Halo-ish or it will not be very expensive. My advice, Uh, is to motion-capture a few marathon sessions and cut ‘em together yourself. Add a little dialog et voila! The Halo movie you always wanted to see. And nobody has to give a dime to The Rock.

-daniel k.

Touting “the biggest entertainment launch in history,” Microsoft Wednesday announced that sales of the video game “Halo 3″ brought in an estimated $170 million during its first 24 hours on store shelves, making it the biggest one-day launch ever in the U.S. marketplace.

Remember the opening of SPIDERMAN 3? This is bigger. Plus, if I’m not mistaken, HALO 3 cost less to produce and distribute. Marketing, I’m guessing from observation, may have been at similar levels. Actually the Spiderman campaign was a little stingy by blockbuster standards, piggybacking most of its advertising on the tie-ins.

Well the important thing to take away from this is Bill Gates isn’t going broke THIS week.

-daniel k.

That’s right, it’s the hand-made Master Chief armor you’ve always wanted! There’s only one (you’re lookin’ at it) and once it’s gone, you’ll have to kill whomever outbid you to get it. From the eBay description:

You can have this suit in time for the halo (sic) launch! Wait until people see you walk in the door with this thing on! People will love you. Then, you can win all sorts of costume contests when Halloween comes around.

“People will love you?” Arguable. I wouldn’t count on sex resulting from this purchase.

There is good news in that for a while, the helmet wasn’t included, then a substitute helmet was included, but now the helmet you see in the picture is back. Also the seller is going to provide a complete gun instead of the half-gun mockup he had originally planned. And he says if you’d prefer green, you are welcome to paint it. It was green once and “it looked pretty good.”

Remember if you win: it’s great to wear if you’re fighting a boss, but DO NOT wear it to fight with YOUR boss. That’ll just get you a meeting with security.

(hat tip okfuture.net)

-daniel k.