I saw HULK before everyone! neener neener (review inside)

[sperry]

IGT put on its annual "movie day" this morning (they rent out two theaters for all of Engineering to go see a movie), and we got to see HULK.

With all the bitching about how "bad" the animated Hulk guy was supposed to look, I went in with low expectations. It actually wasn't bad. In fact, I'll say it may have been the best integration bewteen a CG character and live action to date. Sure, the Hulk looked a little "rubbery", but he really did look "there" in the scene, even with the camera moving around. Plus he went about busting up all kinds of stuff in a convincing fassion Maybe it was just the fact that I was sitting in the 3rd row, so I was a little too close, but it still looked pretty impressive. Those ILM boys know what they're doing. their only big screw up IMO was when the Hulk is busting up some tanks, and the tank barrels aren't bending right... you can't lift a tank by its barrel w/o deforming the gun barrel (or more likely, you'd just break the barrel off..... M1A2's weigh almost 70 tons!)

The plot was decent... very comic book, with everyone related to everyone else... you know, small world syndrome. (Sure the chick Bruce works with also happens to be the daughter of the guy that put his dad in jail... only in the comics.) The big helicopter chase scene was very "animated" looking, but also pretty cool.

Jennifer Connelly looks so much like Demi Moore, that I thought it *was* Demi... just with real boobs. I guess that's neither here, nor there.

By far, the coolest part of the movie was the art direction... the movie flows pretty well, and there's awesome comic book like cuts and sweeps, and neat-o slam zooms all the way down to a microscopic level. It's just fun to watch. There's a real long bit of exposition at the start of the movie to tell the story of Bruce Bannor's childhood and his father's deal, but it's not so bad simply because the way it's pieced together was interesting. Big kudos to Ang Lee for turing what could have been a boring-ass intro to the movie into something cool.

So, if you're into comic books at all, definately go see this in the theaters... in fact, the big screen really adds to the movie, so even if you're not a big comic fan, catch a matinee, it's a fun flick.

[STIwish]

I think I shall go see it tonight.. i think it looks tight as hell

[tysonK]

ang lee, you can count on him for good films every time.

[MattR]

Originally Posted by tysonK

ang lee, you can count on him for good films every time.

agreed.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by tysonK

ang lee, you can count on him for good films every time.

Um, didn't he do Sense and Sensability? I'm under the impression that that movie sucked, but I'm not gay, so I didn't see it.


























No I'm not kidding.... I really didn't see it.

[tysonK]

Sense and Sensability

well i liked it.
as well as ice storm, ride with the devil, croutching tiger

[BOO]

Originally Posted by sperry

Um, didn't he do Sense and Sensability? I'm under the impression that that movie sucked, but I'm not gay, so I didn't see it.






OK Scott !!! Now you are really scarring me :shock: :? as long as you dont start checking out buns out .. its all good ... lmao just kidding man !!!!



















No I'm not kidding.... I really didn't see it.

[STIwish]

The Hulk was one of the worst movies I've seen so far this year... what a piece of shit.. watching the trailer had all of the decent scenes from the movie in it... better watching it than sitting through the dungbomb that was the movie.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by STIwish

The Hulk was one of the worst movies I've seen so far this year... what a piece of shit.. watching the trailer had all of the decent scenes from the movie in it... better watching it than sitting through the dungbomb that was the movie.

Um, if you're gonna say it's crap, at least tell us why you think so. As far as I can tell, you think the movie sucked because the trailer had too many decent scenes in it.

[STIwish]

Hmm.. as to why I didn't like it.. It was incredibly slow.. I couldn't stand the attempt at comic book cinematography... The acting was absolutely atrocious... Everything seemed like it was built on a horribly low budget with sub par special effects, horrid screenplay that bordered on 'horror movie horrible'.. and I mean come on... a giant raging poodle!? please... an absolutely wasted opportunity. It simply didn't come out as 'comic book cool' like Spiderman, Blade and even DareDevil were able to pull off nicely.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by STIwish

Hmm.. as to why I didn't like it.. It was incredibly slow.. I couldn't stand the attempt at comic book cinematography... The acting was absolutely atrocious... Everything seemed like it was built on a horribly low budget with sub par special effects, horrid screenplay that bordered on 'horror movie horrible'.. and I mean come on... a giant raging poodle!? please... an absolutely wasted opportunity.

I can agree a bit with the "slow" part... but I figured it was just cuz I drank a liter of cola during the previews and had to pee throughout most the movie.

I thought the comic book cinematography was well done. Other movies have tried it and failed. The use of the multiple angles and borders was cool IMO, Ang Lee should have used it more often, so it would have been less of a gimick and more of a method. The scene with Betty Ross and Talbott first seeing each other was awesome (the 2 perspective thing), and when Talbott gets flung at the camera by the explosion and freeze-framed and outlined was hilarious, looked just like it would have in a comic.

Acting... well, it wasn't great... but it wasn't any worse than other movies.
Everyone in Hulk was about 1000 times better than Keanu in either Matrix Movies, and noone bitches about how bad the acting in the Matrix was...

And frankly, regarding the special effects.... I didn't see a single thing cheap or sub-par anywhere. I did a VR and 3D Animation concentration in college... everything they did in the Hulk was tremendous. Granted the Hulk himself still looked CG, but I think it was somewhat intentional, considering the comic-book qualities of the movie. However, his interaction with the live action elements was damn near flawless. The sight-lines of all the other actors matched up with the CG elements (even Star Wars episode 2 messes that one up.. watch Duku fight Yoda), the quality of the smashing of real elements mixed with the CG is unprecidented (watch him wreck the lab... I can't understand how ILM did it so well), the matching of real world and CG lighting was very well done. Other movies have done pretty good in the CG/live action integration, but they all have to use pre-recorded, computer controlled camera movements, resulting in a mechanical feel to the camera movement. I'm assuming Hulk filmed the live action w/ a real camera operator and some sort of high resolution camera tracking mixed with a great job of scene to render matching, because the CG elements never seemed to "float" over the live scene, even with drastic and unpredictable camera movements. Check out the scene where Hulk is standing in the SF intersection being filmed from a helicopter. That scene would be impossilble w/o the invention of some new CG to live action mapping method. I thought the special effects were the crowning achievement of the movie.

As far as the plot elements like the giant poodle... I agree it was a bit comical, but this *is* a movie from a comic... and giant raging poodles are the kinda of foes that turn up in comics... I mean, there's gotta be a genre of movie where somthing like that turns up, and if it's not in the comicbook-movie genre, then I dunno where else! Besides, that fight scene was another good example of the CG/real world interaction.. it's gotta be pretty hard to smash a car with imaginary characters!

Perhaps it was because I had low expectations going in that I thought the movie was so good, but I was well entertained.

[STIwish]

The comic book cinematography led the movie to have a really REALLY choppy feel to it.. that was my biggest complaint... nothing felt fluid.. just choppy.

As for the acting, you're correct in saying that it was no worse than any of the other comic-like movies (IE; Matrix) but what they did different with those movies is that they didn't try and rely upon the acting of the characters to move the movie along, instead they had you concentrated on the plot twist, or the action scene but with The Hulk, they used the characters to try and draw you into the movie and make everything stick together, but the acting was so atrocious, as was the dialog and screenplay that it just didn't work.

Another huge complaint was that the movie took itself WAY too seriously... no cheesy one liners or over the top villians to laugh at... just a serious 'tragic' character that just didn't come to par. I honestly do no think this was what Stan Lee really had in mind in the original comics.. because at least they had some comic humor and flair that the movie just lacked.

[sperry]

Originally Posted by STIwish

The comic book cinematography led the movie to have a really REALLY choppy feel to it.. that was my biggest complaint... nothing felt fluid.. just choppy.

As for the acting, you're correct in saying that it was no worse than any of the other comic-like movies (IE; Matrix) but what they did different with those movies is that they didn't try and rely upon the acting of the characters to move the movie along, instead they had you concentrated on the plot twist, or the action scene but with The Hulk, they used the characters to try and draw you into the movie and make everything stick together, but the acting was so atrocious, as was the dialog and screenplay that it just didn't work.

Another huge complaint was that the movie took itself WAY too seriously... no cheesy one liners or over the top villians to laugh at... just a serious 'tragic' character that just didn't come to par. I honestly do no think this was what Stan Lee really had in mind in the original comics.. because at least they had some comic humor and flair that the movie just lacked.

I'll have to disagree with the choppyness part.. maybe later in the movie it was a bit choppy, but I felt the beginning (which was really a ton of information to get across in one long scene) flowed very well.

You're spot on with the lack of comedy. They really took the plot seriously, but then again, many comics are like that... the older Marvel comics not so much, but the newer stuff can be very hard-core. I guess they just decided to play it straight and not try to make it funny. On one hand, it lowered the quality of the film, on the other hand you have to respect them trying, since CG comedy is easy, while CG pain and tenderness (that they tried to give the Hulk when he was around Betty) is very difficult to pull off. And yes, the Hulk's acting was as good as the actual actors, which is really not saying much about the actors.