The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“What is it like? When it happens, what do you experience?”

“Remember those experiments we volunteered for at Harvard? Those induced hallucination? It's a lot like that, just a thousand times amplified. It's like someone poured a liter of acid into my brain.”

            The Incredible Hulk is an interesting character. A man, a calm moral man, turns into a giant green monster capable of killing and mass destruction. This monster and his destructiveness eats at the man who does not want to hurt anyone. I like that conflict of good versus… well in this story the Hulk is not necessarily evil he and he is not necessarily bad he is just destructive when he is angered.

            Scientist Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) in an experiment at the college he worked at, took a serum that would be used for the soldiers in the US army. The serum was radioactive to the extreme. It turned him into a giant aggressive green monster who rips apart the lab and seriously hurts his girlfriend and fellow scientist Betty Ross (Liv Tyler). The military wants Bruce in order to punish him for what he did and to also run a lot of tests on him.

            For a few years Bruce has been living in South America where he has been living a stress free life and working on staying as calm as possible. He works in a bottle plant where he one day cuts his finger and a drop of his blood gets into the soda. Bruce halts production to get to the bottle but it does not work. The military and its general Ross (Betty’s father) have been looking for Bruce in all those years and word reaches him that some old guy was just reported to have drank some soda and experienced some weird things. The military tracks down the soda to the South American plant where Bruce works and sends in a tactical team lead by Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth).

            The tactical team storms the plant which gets Bruce’s blood pressure going and thus turns the poor guy into the monster he hates. Of course Bruce manages to get away where he winds up in Guatemala. Emil for some reason I cannot remember gets super pissed with Bruce and the Hulk and now wants some of the same serum or a derivative of it that will turn him into a hulk-like creature as well.

            Bruce makes it back to the states to the college. He was trying not to be seen by Betty but she sees him and they get back together. General Ross has his team go to the college to get Bruce. Bruce then turns into the Hulk and fights everyone off.

            Betty and Bruce make their way to New York City where they are to meet up with a guy whose code name is Mr. Blue. They track him down to a college. Mr. Blue has been working on a serum to cure Bruce. It almost works until General Ross again tracks him down and literally crashes the party. Emile is there as well. He wants Mr. Blue to give him more of the serum. He looks like a junky searching for his next hit. Emile gets angry and he turns into this really gnarly monster. As much as Bruce does not want to turn into the Hulk he feels he has to in order to take that really weird monster-thing that I cannot remember the name of, down.

            I found The Incredible Hulk to be incredibly boring. There was no life in the characters whatsoever they were so blah.  I felt like there was nothing in them for me to really care about. The story did not move at a decent pace it was very slow and way too mushy. As much as I like Edward Norton and Liv Tyler as actors they did not fit very well in a superhero movie. The Incredible Hulk is not a superhero I would rush to see. I am sure it is ten time better than the Ang Lee version from 2003 but it is not an absolute must see unless you are a Marvel freak or really like superhero movies.