The Hulk

A few disjointed thoughts:

The Hulk's appeal lies in our own impotent rage. While we may pound our fists against immovable objects, he can tear through them. The thrill in watching him is the vicarious feeling of power, of a total surrender to it.

Jennifer Connelly needs to gain about 20 pounds. What has she done to herself? How do you go from this to this?

I'm gonna stay away from the sexual subtext in this movie. But I want you to know that it's there. (See "impotence" vs. "potency" - so THATS why she dumped him.)

Yes, it's slow. Maybe even too slow. But those expecting a regular "comic book movie" have never probably thought through the needs of a project like this. Spider-Man could be funny and sweet because it's about adolescence. Batman could be weird and gothic because that is what it represents. And so on. The Hulk, on the other hand, deals with profoundly adult issues. To treat these themes with anything less that the utmost seriousness would be to fatally misunderstand the subject matter. I like even more that the film doesn't go for an easy reconciliation, and it shows true courage in making the father the ultimate villian, rather than the misunderstood misfit.

Some beautiful transitions, and some great editing as well. I need to see it again to gauges whether the comic book style multi-angle approach works for the story or is simply a pretention. It's neat though, and not something I've seen in this type of film before. Lee manages to achieve some genuine visual poetry in the desert and especially the space scene.

The action is far more successful than I expected. It's genuinely exhilirating at times, and it shows great imagination. I just wish there was more of it. Interesting that the film goes to great pains to show the price of these outbursts. The fight with the dogs has a tenacity to it, a kind of horrific violence, that is unsettling.

The father's Nietzchean outburst towards the end shows the allure of what the Hulk represents: the impulse to nihilistic destruction. What the Hulk doesn't do is rebuild, and I almost wish there were greater consequences for Danner in the film, since as it is he somehow manages to kill not a single person on screen. The final scene is nice because it shows that Danner has harnessed this power within all of us, the dark pit of rage and nihilism, to a useful purpose. It's no accident that he is delivering medicine to needy third-worlders, and that the desctruction of some local thugs is immanent. It's a nice way to end the film.