Forget the television show. Forget Lou and his green muscleman look. But most importantly, forget the trailers to this film. Why? Because Hulk is actually one of the best comic book films to come along in a long time. It has more depth than Spider-Man, more intensity than X-Men 2, and it doesn’t have Ben Affleck. Ang Lee, who brought us some serious dramas like The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has taken a big-budget Hollywood film and delivered the most non-conformist big-budget film I’ve ever seen. It looks like a comic book. It moves like a comic book. It is a comic book. It’s required that you check your brain at the door, but only for certain stuff. This film blew my mind. It was just unlike anything I expected.
It’s dark. Dark as all hell. It’s psychological. It’s deep. It’s emotionally conflicted. And it’s fun. Sure, the CGI is mixed, some things look amazing, and others look “okay”. But the sequences are great, and the transitions – holy crap. It’s truly a comic book come to life. Forget the “24” references, or the Flash Gordon comparisons. This is like NOTHING I’ve ever seen on film, and it works incredibly well.
Elfman’s score, which I really enjoyed for the past week or so, took on brand new life when merged with the images. From the very very cool opening title sequence, to the dramatic conclusion, this score ROCKS. It’s better than Spider-Man. Dare I even suggest, it has more depth than Batman, although not as fun. It’s seriously a kickass presentation all around.
I’m not gonna go into it much more than that – if you want to see this movie, then by all means – GO see it! If you were on the fence, I recommend you check it out. If you had NO interest in seeing it, well, then do what you wanna do. But I will certainly be getting this one on DVD…. no doubt about that.
On a more “localized” level… went to see this at the Arclight with John, and bumped into Mark who was coming to the screening with Kurt Wimmer. Kurt seemed like a cool guy – after all, he invented the premise of “gun kata”, and Equilibrium was pretty snazzy…. so that was cool to meet him. After the film, we went to Wendy’s (mmmmmmm!) and then I headed over to meet (finally!) with Rob Burnett and give him the scoring session footage I shot at X2 back in March.