The Hulk

One of the greatest comic book characters ever created is The Hulk.  So, considering that Bruce Banner's story isn't very hard to transfer to the big screen, how is it that Hollywood is 0 for 2 on making a good Hulk movie?

The first movie (just called Hulk) had numerous flaws.  It was way too long.  Its plot was stupid and boring.  It only had one good fight scene.  And the climax (hehe) was dumb and made no sense.  However, this movie did have a couple of redeeming qualities.  The cast was great and I feel like Jennifer Connelly was born to play Betty Ross.  Other than Nick Nolte, I think everyone did a great job with such a terrible script and even then, I don't think it was Nolte's fault, it just wasn't the right role for him.  Also, I think the CG Hulk in this movie was very well done, he looked like what you would expect The Hulk to look like and wasn't too over the top (however, I did read somewhere that people thought he was too green, what?).  The only other thing this movie did well was the multiple screens look.  It actually resembled a real comic book and I thought that was a great feature and has actually been used in other movies since.  It's just too bad the movie as a whole was terrible.

As for the second movie (this time called The Incredible Hulk), I really can't think of one thing I truly liked about it.  I think Ed Norton is a great actor, but playing Bruce Banner just never made sense to me.  He would have made a good Spider-man ten years ago, but The Hulk/Banner just didn't mesh well.  And casting Liv Tyler in anything other than Empire Records is just a bad idea.  Otherwise, the plot was dumb, the action scenes were bad, and the CG Hulk was overly complicated looking.  Once again, as a whole, this movie was just as terrible as the first one.

Technically, The Hulk was in the blockbuster hit, The Avengers, but he wasn't the star of the movie and doesn't really count in this discussion.  But since we are talking about The Hulk, I feel like we should discuss this one, too.  Mark Ruffalo was an interesting choice to play Bruce Banner and while I don't think he made the best one to date (I'm sticking with Eric Bana as the best of the three), I can overlook that because of the "Hulk Smash Loki" scene.  Also, this movie had by far the best Hulk action scenes of the three movies, it's not even a contest.

In the end, I am just stunned that Hollywood can't make a good Hulk movie considering how awesome that character is and how hard it is to mess up.  Come on Hollywood, just make us one good Hulk movie, the upside is that a new one can't be as bad as the first two.

"Now that is a Hulk, he looks real and everything."