I've Seen More Incredible

Just watched "The Incredible Hulk" and, while I liked the use of the music from the television series, and I do think Norton was well cast, the rest of it - eh, *meh* ...

The casting of this flick versus Ang Lee's version was embarrassing. The casting of Liv Tyler's new upper lip looks like it was supposed to yield a giant plastic dolphin. And ... can we talk about William Hurt? Cast as a general, and an aggresive one at that? ... Really? Wasn't that guy in "Beaches" or some other (every other?) chick flick? I'm pretty sure he's starred opposite Streisand, is what I am saying here.

So. I'm going to make "The Incredible Hulk" and when it's time to replace Sam Elliott - I come up with ... William HURT?

In any movie in which the term "hulk" is even used as a word, he doesn't make sense. It his one, he's cognitive dissonance cranked to eleven. *Blink*

Worse, for me, was the incredibly disappointing stone-age machismo and the gender roles out of 1962 which apparently somehow couldn't be avoided.

"It's just the rain," Liv Tyler coos. "It'll be okay," she Marilyns. At least Marilyn knew that schtick was just an act, and played it for one, patently.

The scene where she attempts anger ... let's not even discuss. Oh, Livvy. I'll remember "Crazy" fondly enough, if you'll just stop making movies now. 'kay?

Because if this is the sort of thing you want to perpetuate ... the woman limited to "look out behind you!" - whose "doctorate" is only represented by the fact that she carries a canon character's name, but whose role in any lab is limited to standing next to her man, alabaster and limpid-eyed ... Good grief, deliver me from your oevre, please, woman.

I might not have been passionately in love with Jennifer Connoly's turn, but compared to this dreck, at least she had a CHARACTER - and wasn't turned on a dime without reason nor grounding (see "anger" above) for an extremely weak joke. At least she was given, in addition to her *impeccable* hair and terrifyingly-thin figure, the semblance of LINES.

"Oh, Bruce," she obligingly did not coy, with some sort of cosmetic surgeon's nightmare occupying what once was the top half of a cute enough pout, if you like that sort of (natural) thing. Connoly, chic and skinny as she is, at least provided a performance.

And she did have better hair. (I say this as an OWNER of bangs: they make some women look like gamely scruffy nine-year-olds; frankly, this is a disturbing image, for a leading lady.)



Anyway - yeah. Finally saw it.

And I'm okay with the Lee version. Even the attempt to increase the grittiness failed here, with the most distracting and weird chest musculature ever animated, and the strangely long-hair/pretty-boy thing they were going for with the Hulk himself. Um. Odd.


And it is a pity about the revolving-door Banners, too. Bana (heh) and Norton were both pretty good, and now apparently the franchise is getting ANOTHER new lead (can we exchange the rest of the cast too ... ?). I guess if it ain't broke there's no reason not to "HULK SMASH" it.

Very nice, Hollywood.

Now I need a bath to stop shuddering at the feminist nightmare.