Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 14: The Incredible Hulk

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or potentially toxic serum injections.

First thing’s first: I like The Incredible Hulk quite a bit. It’s a fine film that excels even beyond the heights of the earlier, and vastly underrated, Ang Lee version. However, I get the sense that this year’s model will still go down in history as the weak link in an otherwise stellar comic book summer. Iron Man was stellar, and I even find myself violating my “no expectations” policy when it comes to The Dark Knight, which I’ve been anticipating for the past year, and have fallen prey to the mountain of hype surrounding it. And if it’s even half as good as Batman Begins, its predecessor, I’ll be well justified in doing so. If you’ll pardon a silly metaphor, I see The Incredible Hulk as I see The Kinks, as a workmanlike and often brilliant counterpart to The Dark Knight’s Beatles and Iron Man’s Rolling Stones. Still great, and probably worth a critical reappraisal in the future, but not as undisputedly great as the heavy hitters. But, of course, I’m speculating (I haven’t even seen Knight yet), and speculation isn’t supposed to be part of my game.

That all being said, Hulk can come off a little shallow in the middle, but when it hits its heights, it hits them with a huge bang. As with Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man, Marvel has done a remarkable bit of casting, resurrecting another fine actor from the cinematic dregs, this time Edward Norton. Norton had built himself a fine reputation early in his career (The People vs. Larry Flynt, American History X, Primal Fear), but has been off the map in recent years. It’s not a groundbreaking role, but Norton delivers a fine take on Bruce Banner, while Tim Roth was an excellent choice for villain Emil Blonsky, bringing his rough-around-the-edges competence to the role. Liv Tyler and William Hurt show up and do a decent enough job, but their roles are mostly forgettable, which isn’t a bad thing. This movie is an origin story for Norton, setting up the climactic battle between the Hulk (in a nice touch, voiced by Lou Ferrigno, who also has an on screen cameo) and the mutated Blonsky.

The Hulk is a character with a great deal of emotional depth, which can get overlooked in a huge blockbuster action film. In fact, a leading theory on the relative failure of Ang Lee’s Hulk was that it was shrouded in too much emotional nuance to please a mass audience, who just wanted to see some good Hulk smashin’ action. But Bruce Banner is an alter ego who constantly resents his power, who just wants to be normal. He uses his physical strength only when he is threatened, or when he loses control. At least in his origins, Hulk is not so much a hero as a tragic figure, trapped in his own form. Director Louis Leterrier does a nice job harnessing the weight of the story, while still finding space for Hulk to wreak some fine havoc.

This is also a movie that looks good all around, and plays a bit with other versions of the story. I give a lot of credit to whoever performed location scouting on this film. The story opens with Banner living in an impoverished hillside village in Brazil, and Leterrier takes great effort to show wide shots of the densely oriented shanties in the town. It’s a breathtaking shot that serves to establish how far Banner has run, and also sets up a riveting chase scene that takes place in the town, where Banner flees the U.S. military and makes his first appearance as the Hulk. Later, as Banner makes his way through South America on his way back to the States, the famous piano cue from the 1970s television series provides the score.

The climactic battle takes place in Upper Manhattan, with iconic backdrops like Columbia University and the Apollo Theater dotting the scene. Leterrier provides a realistic portrait of Manhattan under duress, paying great attention to detail to legitimize the situation.

It seems as if Marvel Studios is really trying to legitimize the whole superhero genre, in fact. Like Iron Man, Hulk seems like a character study that uses its comic book inspiration almost as an afterthought. The characters feel like real people in extraordinary situations, not like cartoons. Sure they give you the explosions, but they provide a real explanation for why they occur. Their filmmakers seem to remember that you can’t be superhuman without being human first.

Film: The Incredible Hulk
Director: Louis Leterrier
Stars: Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt, Lou Ferrigno, Tim Blake Nelson

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, half full; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 68%
My Grade (Out of 10): 7

Next Up: WALL-E

Summer Movie Suicide Mission No. 13: Get Smart

In which one man attempts to view every summer blockbuster for the entire season, regardless of taste, genre, or a series of staples to the forehead.

Inasmuch as cinema is the defining popular medium of the last century or more, the movies have never trafficked exclusively in originality. From its earliest days, the film industry has borrowed liberally from other media, from folk tales to theater to proper literature. In the 1950s, when the advent of television seemed to sound a death knell for the cinema business, the silver screen weathered the storm by virtue of sheer spectacle, presenting its stories with a size and clarity that television could never hope to achieve. It was only a matter of time before television narratives would be blown up and repurposed for the big screen. 

So, why does the Hollywood treatment work so well for novels and plays, but fail so spectacularly when adapting television series? In the past 15 years or so, when this trend has really taken off, I can’t immediately think of a single TV-to-film adaptation that has succeeded creatively. Sure, make a big screen version of Miami Vice with Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx, and it’s bound to be a huge hit, but it ends up kind of vacant, sucking all the fun out of the original.

Part of the problem, I think, is that amplifying small screen stories with new actors renders them almost recognizable from their originals, while still trying to shoehorn little elements of homage into the plot. The movies are intended to work for all audiences, not just those who are familiar with the source material. For the real fans, the callbacks are just a bonus, but the goal is to entertain even the younger moviegoers, who may have no knowledge of the TV show at all. It seems a bit unnecessary to brand a new movie with a familiar name if a huge chunk of the target audience doesn’t even know who the characters are.

More importantly, the transition to the big screen (and the big budget) takes the charm out of what the fans loved about the source. TV shows have episodic or serialized narratives; the movies need to be epic and bombastic to justify their funding and their running time. Filmmakers are dealing with characters and story arcs that were created to be revealed on screen in a vastly different way. By adapting a television series, Hollywood isn’t playing to its own strengths. It’s pretty telling that the most effective old school television adaptations tend to be parodies, like The Brady Bunch Movie or Starsky and Hutch, decent films good for some knowing laughs, but ultimately unfulfilling.

Which brings me to Get Smart, a well intentioned Steve Carell vehicle that’s fun (very) occasionally, but can’t overcome the problems outlined above. In fact, it adds some problems of its own — namely the fact that, while it’s intended to fall under the dubious pseudo-genre of “action comedy,” it fails terribly at the “comedy” end of that equation. Which is a shame, since Get Smart (the TV series) was one of the more riotous sitcoms of its era.

Carell takes over as secret agent Maxwell Smart, originated by the brilliant Don Adams, who had gotten a great deal of comedic mileage out of the role, even going so far as to parody it in the animated series Inspector Gadget. Anne Hathaway plays Agent 99, Carell’s partner and (totally untrue to the original story) love interest. The ever-likeable Alan Arkin does a fine take on The Chief, and Dwayne Johnson plays Agent 23, a role created exclusively for the movie. The group is charged with stopping an international terrorist organization from blowing up Los Angeles, with Carell, whose character is a newly minted field agent (not an experienced, albeit bumbling one, as in the series), leading the charge.

Without the familiar name, Get Smart would be a passable action film, as the actors work well with what little story they are given, and the stunt work is nice enough. But there are maybe five half decent jokes in the whole movie, and maybe four of them were in the trailer. This is an impotent comedy, which half the time seems to be mining for laughs that never come, and half the time not even trying at all. For those who have seen the original series, the Get Smart name works to the film’s detriment. The only thing true to the original were some character names and a few catch phrases. So why the branding? I found myself wondering how much more I would have enjoyed the movie if it had just had a different title.

I think I would have liked it much better, though it still would have missed the mark with me. If only by that much.

Film: Get Smart
Director: Peter Segal
Stars: Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson, Alan Arkin, Terence Stamp, James Caan

Viewing Situation: Weekday matinee, small crowd; digital projection
Rotten Tomatoes Average: 52%
My Grade (Out of 10): 3

Next Up: The Incredible Hulk