The way to do it is to simply NOT make a Hulk movie. Contrary to populous belief, not every comic book, or any book for that matter, makes for good movie making. Some stories really only work best in the theater of the mind. Sometimes a character screaming in fury on the page… is just a guy screaming loudly on the screen. And more to the point, a man is mentally coming to traumatic grips with his lifelong dire predicament on the page, plays like a silent guy sitting down in a chair. This is the hole most adaptions fall into. And as standard Hollywood logic goes, greenlighting a remake of a box office failure and a critica tragedy is simply a bad idea.
As for the CGI, the technology still isn’t there yet. Computer animated humans still move like they are made out of rubber. And Hulk still looks… well, rubbery. We are still a long ways off from true virtual human analogs. Animation is growing in leaps and bounds so we’ll get there eventually… but animators haven’t reached that level yet. The technology is cleary outpacing the animators ability… Motion capture is the quick fix to that lack, but that also doesn’t holding up translating to non-human elements.
But my complaint if you read what I wrote was hardly the CGI… it’s the Hulk story itself as a movie… You don’t get any character out of the Hulk. He doesn’t talk, and has one-note emotion (I believe it’s called SMASH) It isn’t graceful fighting or skilled fighting. It’s a big kid smashing stuff in a tantrum. Which is fine for comic book fare, but doesn’t work as movie, as the first movie proved. No one cares about Bruce Banner’s struggle to recover his lost humanity. Or the reckless scientific arrogance that created the monster from the man. They want to see stuff blow up. That’s just dumb movie making and a multi-million Saturday morning cartoon.
A story whose premise is about unleashing man’s most brutal inner id isn’t going work as a PG-13 movie to market toys (even the Star Wars prequels couldn’t do that right… ). Limiting violence for young viewers isn’t exactly the key ingredient of a winning Hulk recipe.
Nor has hulk made 100s of millions as you claim… it’s has only made 99 million. Which seems like a lot but when you consider it cost 150 million to make… it’s not looking good. Especially when you consider Iron Man has made 306 million in box office in almost 8 weeks now, and makes almost double per screen as the Hulk. Hulk is in less theaters and tracking indicates box office is falling at a much faster rate than Iron Man. Since it’s only been 11 days I assume you are hedging your bets and pulling numbers out your viper’s tailpipe. The movie will be lucky to make 200 million domestic, and with dropoff that bad, I see no evidence of a legion of repeat viewers you claim is making this movie. Hulk will probably make a meager profit, but it’s no definitely not the summer hit Iron Man is.
But do numbers mean your movie is good? or bad? It’s a poor justification and oversimplification. By that stretch, you would claim Britney Spears and the BackStreet boys are some of the best music of the past 10 years.
I know it’s hard to admit when you are a big fan of something, but sometimes Hollywood makes shitty movies from books.
And The Incredible Hulk is one of those shitty movies.
PS - One’s ability to finance and/or produce a motion picture has no bearing on the legitimacy of their movie criticism. That’s always the weakest of fanboy comebacks.
