I get why this is somewhat disliked but it has this indescribable emotional depth that I find so affecting. I was shocked by this on the rewatch.
I have weird, vague memories of news stories about a phenomenon where kids en masse around the world needed to see child psychologists after watching this movie. Real or not, it wouldn’t shock me. This movie had a profound effect on me when I was young and surprisingly still did today.
This was one of the first movies I saw that really explored the ideas of abuse and trauma and I found it deeply confronting as a child. I didn't understand a lot of it but I certainly felt the emotional weight. Even as an adult there's something chilling about how much is left un-shown and unsaid. These are heavy concepts to include in a mass market blockbuster.
The stylistic choices are incredibly offbeat and bold as well, almost as much as the content. It's easy to watch excerpts online and laugh at the weird comic book editing but when watching the film properly it becomes this really unique and adept rhythm. It's not a clumsy attempt to just make it look like a comic book, Lee is really doing something. The flashes of past trauma contextualise the present day rage and emotion in a really striking way. It's blunt but also genuinely heartfelt and human, much like the Hulk himself.
The presentation the Hulk here is really intense too. He's not the gag machine or audience applause button he's is in the MCU, he's a man with genuine issues. Becoming the Hulk isn't a fun thing that happens when he gets mad, it's a manifestation of trauma and rage. The Hulk is what happens when someone completely loses control of themselves emotionally. It asks the question is he not acting like himself or is it who he truly is underneath? And importantly it's a film about what are the fundamental reasons someone would lose control of themselves emotionally. Where does that come from? What sort of person does it make you? Bruce isn't a quiet nerd because he lacks social skills, it's because he's spent his whole life suppressing his emotions and not grappling with his trauma. He seems a completely blank slate because that's what he's had to forge himself into to live with his life experiences. It's more distressing than exciting when you see him start to transform.
While I love comic book media and sci-fi movies I do often have sympathy for actors trying to give earnest performances inside such goofy premises, but I didn't feel that once here. All these roles have genuine meat to them. Aside from the fact it's based on a comic book and has a really poppy style it could be an Oscar drama. Eric Bana and Nick Nolte are brilliant and terrifying.
I'd say this is one of the most thematically rich and honestly one of the best comic book films ever made.
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Your right, currently the way hulk is portrayed is that shit is about to go down when hulk shows up, and its exciting.
But in that movie, you genuinely empathize with the anger part, like pretty much everyone regrets their actions from when they were raging and you feel that when Bruce turns into hulk.
Marvel movies characters don't feel relatable since they are so super and what not.
I remember having this movie and the 98 version of Godzilla on VHS and watching them over and over as a kid. They weren't critically acclaimed but I fucking loved them and years later I'm starting to see why they stuck with me and others for so long.
One of the main things in this hulk version is that he wasn't very vocal when he was angry. One of the main things I clearly remember this hulk saying is "take it, take it all!" When dealing with his father and it being the height of his suppressed rage. Very powerful scene.
I really think this is problem with Super Hero movies now, they're just so absurdly powerful that it's unrelatable in anyway. I feel like the best marvel fight scenes is in the Dare Devil show in the apartment hallway - because it felt like there were actual stakes.
And I get it, really. This is sorta the path of all action hero movies (MCU, aliens, predator, terminator, even Mission Impossible). The hero can punch really really hard, harder than anyone. But uh oh...here's the bad guy and he can punch even harder. So the hero does some stuff until he can punch the hardest again and he punches the bad guy until he gives up. But wait...in the next movie there is another bad guy that can punch even harder than that!
and we do this for 17 movies and by then both the heros and the bad guys are just world destroying monstrosities that can punch nuclear bombs.
I totally agree. Daredevil show was prob the best marvel related thing released. And it wasn't even "really" marvel.
It's 100% Marvel, but Daredevil is more of a street hero, whereas a lot of what the main heroes featured fight are cosmic threats, but even then, the problems they face are pretty grand and relatable even.
I think that comment above
is hogwash because the Marvel may not be churning out deeply complex film full of literary storytelling, but the substantial storytelling is there. The films do get deep every now and then and they do have wonderful complex moments.
But yeah, the last season of Daredevil was really goodbecause all the good people died, they were good people caught up in and victims to crime.
I absolutely fucking loved the last season of daredevil. I loved bullseye, and kingpin was absolutely brilliant again. Such good characterization and cool plot.
The gritty "street level fighting" is a blessing to watch too.
I think the issue with marvel movies is they feel incredibly cheesy most of the time. They aim for mass appeal and try to be light hearted at all costs. They refuse to go toward any heavy moments. Imagine Fisk's backstory in season one where he is basically an abused child along with his mom and he has to kill his own father. They would never put a backstory like that in a marvel movie.
Winter Soldier was the closest with how fukt Winter Soldiers life was like as a tortured slave but even then they left most of the details up to implication. The rest of the movies were mostly silly with just a pinch of actually intense moments like guardians vol 2 when his adopted dad dies.
Meanwhile Batman Beings and TDK are serious as hell (with bits of humor) and better received. Why can't marvel do something like those?
A lot of the marvel movies were also just bad to mediocre in general. "LIGHT HEARTED CGI FUN HEHE". Fucking black widow which should have been extremely dark ends in such a stupid way its unbelievable. You have her basically jumping off a skyscraper and landing fine for no explanable reason and the villain just seems comically stupid. It makes it impossible to take anything seriously if characters are just given bullshit abilities randomly. A lot of marvel action feels like that. The entire guardians 1 movie is "somehow everyone else in this universe is incapable of even a little accuracy but the main characters are perfectly accurate" its so fucking stupid and takes away all tension.
A lot of the marvel movies feel like that. And even when a character dies like quicksilver its equally stupid lazy story telling "ah the speedster was too slow to dodge bullets this one time for no reason" what the fuck? Random depowering mid movie.
By "really marvel" I assume op meant MCU. Which it isn't.
It only takes a few movies for that to happen. That's when the reboot or prequel comes in so they can spin the yarn longer or start all over again.
The only movie that tried to portray Bruce Banner's trauma. As a comicbook fan I've enjoyed MCU quite a lot but knowing how much untapped potential there it is behind all these decades of writing, it's quite sad what we're missing.
“DONT MAKE ME ANG LEE”
The film is pretty good and I think it got too much bad press but it was an original piece of filmmaking, far removed from the sugary superhero films we get these days, and the joke will never get old.
It’s definitely not a film for kids.
Stewart Lee at his finest.
Classic - such a funny autobiography too
It's currently sat on my shelf gathering dust. One day I'll get round to reading it.
I mean this as a compliment to the book: throw it in the toilet (room) - it’s that kind of read lol
I haven’t seen it since it first came out but I think it’s still the most striking super hero film ever. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff in it; I think of the fight with the dogs, the weirdly peaceful long jumps, the sudden abrupt interruption of said long jumps, the bizarre comic book esque transitions. Somehow I feel like elements of it captured a different side of what ‘Becoming the Hulk’ would be like because it wasn’t caught in the trappings of your average action film.
I very much agree, especially about the long jumps. There's just something about them that feels offbeat in a way you wouldn't normally get in a superhero film. Simple stuff that gives the Hulk more personality than he has in any other film.
You can definitely tell it's an Ang Lee film. You can see his subtle, humanistic touch among all the bombastic action.
Jumping in long bounds like the Hulk does in this movie is discussed by Jung as an element of the collective unconscious that frequently manifests in dreams. Heck there’s someone in this very thread who mentions having that dream. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this movie, but I remember feeling like there was an intense focus/fascination with Jung and the collective unconscious being explored throughout. The quick shots of super high def lizard skin texture and things like that were another way to reference that we are a point on an evolutionary animal continuum, our animal ancestors remain in our genetic makeup. Also, Nick Nolte.
Super interested in reading whatever Jung had to say about long jumps
Comment checks out.
I’ve actually had those dreams in the past as well. I’m into Jung too— do you happen to remember where he discussed that in his work?
even in Gemini he dive into his father topic again. Maybe he have to take this dive time from time between works
Fun fact, one of the best dreams I ever had was when I had the ability to jump in the same way the Hulk does in this movie
Ang Lee is 100% one of my favorite directors and I think he nailed pretty much everything that was in his hands to nail... performances, mood, editing, look... but it was really the script and CGI that let him down.
Interesting, I’ll have to watch this again. I barely remember it from when it first came out. But I do remember it feeling distinctly different from the slew of MCU moves that have come since.
I’ve been reading immortal hulk recently, which re-taps into the traumatic childhood and masking and willed-amnesia that makes Hulk who he is. And was thinking about this film and lamenting at the laughing stock it seemed to become on Reddit. I’ve been on here 10 years and I remember early on it was a common meme to make fun of ang lee’s version. I think if something like it came out today people would rave about it, being a superhero film as intensely emotional and ‘real’ as Logan or something. I think it came too early for comic book fans who perhaps wanted what we now are getting all the time, quippy competency porn (which I like don’t get me wrong). What makes it really ironic for me was that when it came out in cinemas I was about 9 or 10 and my father brought my younger brother and I to see it as a nice thing to do with his sons. He had a bit of an anger problem and we were sometimes scared of him, experiences I’m now processing in my adulthood. Being young I don’t think the themes really registered with me, just that he (the Hulk!) was chucking tanks around, but I wonder how my father felt while watching it.
Immortal Hulk is amazing
I haven't seen it since I was probably like 6 years old, but certain moments are burned into my brain, like Bruce as a child in that home in the desert (didn't they live near a military base as well?) Hiding under a table holding his stuffed animal while hearing his father scream. Something about the way it was presented and the peripheral details that the film refused to show seemed to capture trauma so well, even as a 6 year old I seemed to understand that.
I couldn’t agree more. Until this recent rewatch that scene was the only real part of the film I remembered and it was so vivid. You’re right, even the little details of him holding the stuffed animal and then living near a military base.
At the time I didn’t understand what was happening on an intellectual level but I definitely felt the emotion of the scene. Quite profoundly actually, enough that I remembered it well into adult life.
There’s really something unique about it. All my friends that I’ve spoken to about it have vague memories of the film but very strong ones of that scene and that imagery.
When I also was 6, our family had that film on a burned DVD on our shelf. If I was sick at home, I would watch it. The film is a weirdly striking part of my childhood memories, perhaps not long before I would experience my trauma.
Funny how a film can be received in such a niche way by so many people in these comments!
I was eight at the time and man same here, the desert scene, the mother being murdered. Those were just burned into my head for a long time and still are. I remember being terrified my mom would be stabbed after seeing this. Sleepovers as a kid man lol
It's funny how fresh this film feels now after the machine that has become Superhero films. I guess this is the effect of a true master taking on a project at their creative peak with (comparative to today any) little studio intervention. It really felt like a good story that used the character of Hulk as a lens to approach the subject rather than "we need a movie about Black Widow, that needs all this world building content and whatever room is left in the run time can be devoted to personal themes."
As a side note, I don't know how to confirm this but I may have seen Hulk 2003 more than anyone. I worked at a furniture store in the electronics department (tvs, dvds, etc...) this was the instore movie and was always on loop because the action scenes were a great way to sell the tvs. The viewings were all broken up into pieces but I still probably saw the whole thing 2 or 3 times a week for nearly a year.
Wow, given your second paragraph, it's amazing that you don't despise this movie.
Funny you mention that. For a long time I did, probably because of this but after like the 100th viewing I became endeared to it, like a cozy blanket. Now about 20 years later I understand the themes and motivations better. Along with seeing now the strict template the modern superhero film have to follow I've really grown an appreciation for Hulk that my 19 year old self never had.
It starts rather small and ends like a classical tragedy. A cycle of abuse resulting in massive destruction. It feels like elemental gods at war, which is pretty much what the Hulk represents. Man's rage unleashed. This is so often passed down generationally. I feel this may have been off-putting for many folks, and while it wasn't the movie I was hoping it would be (when it was released), I really loved what it was trying to do. I still find it powerful and effective; I'm glad I'm not the only one out there defending it.
People hated on this movie and I have no freaking idea why. I still think it's the best adaptation of comics to film ever made. The way he has the screen broken into cells with the action moving from cell to cell, starting and stopping, and doors closing become the frame transition, man. It's the only film that truly attempts to adapt the comic art form to film. It wasn't a hugely popular movie and was considered a flip but I've always felt it's one of the best comic book movies ever made as well. I think he knocked it out of the park and no one realized it.
Glad this movie is beginning to be viewed more favorably in hindsight. I think ultimately it will be appreciated for the original piece of filmmaking that it is, despite some obvious flaws, and as you said the emotional depth that Ang Lee is known for. To me, it, like the first two Raimi Spider-Man movies, is like another glimpse at what superhero movies could have evolved into post-Batman and Robin if Marvel Studios had not discovered and stuck with their wildly successful movie-making formula. And I say that as a fan of the MCU. Could be that they are headed back in that direction with their upcoming slate and director like Chloe Zhao
I remember more images and feelings of this movie than half of the more recent Marvel movies. And I love the MCU movies. But Hulk is so weird and odd and yet so emotional that it stays with me. Watching Nick Nolte bite a power line, turn into lightning, and fight the Hulk in clouds is an insane thing that exists. We are all better because of this insane movie. Ed Norton’s Hulk movie? It just exists- and that’s fine. Ang Lee’s Hulk is a movie that is a reckoning of a movie- even though it’s, honestly, a failure in many ways (Jennifee Connelly and Eric Bana are just not jelling).
Also- Sam Elliot is General Ross.
I've seen shockingly few of her movies (not even Requiem For a Dream, which may be great, but I don't think I'll ever watch it), but does Jennifer Connelly ever have chemistry with her on-screen love interests? A Beautiful Mind, Pollock, Dark City, Little Children (which I guess it to be expected if her husband's having an affair with the neighbor), even The Rocketeer, and yeah, Hulk. I never buy the attraction between them. Does she just play the female in strained relationships?
Add Alita: Battle Angel to the list of strained relationships played by Jen Con. V interesting point about the roles she's casted in.
Don't forget labryinth! Also zero chemistry (understandably, she's what, fifteen? and he's a centuries-old goblin king)
You left out the best one, Career Opportunities (1991) with Frank Whaley. I'd have to watch it again to see if she has any chemistry with Frank (although I doubt it).
I was just listing the films she's been in that I've personally seen, and that wasn't one of them. I've also never seen Labyrinth, at least all the way though; I'm the perfect age for it, but my conservative parents never let me see it, and I didn't bother once I was an adult. My wife loves it, and she's shown me pieces. I left off Alita, which I have seen, because I didn't really think of there being a romantic relationship between her and either Christoph Waltz or Mahershala Ali.
No worries, I was being satirical. It's one of her first films, she's very young and very attractive, and the premise of the whole movie is rather dumb and probably aged like milk. The highlight of the film is Connelly seductively riding an animatronic hobby horse.
Naturally the plot requires romantic fliting between her and the nerdy Whaley, but I don't recall if I buy it.
I just saw her plots in r/watchitfortheplot last night, she definitely had an interest in that one (they're amazing btw)
I always rather enjoyed it, even when I was a pre-teen. I like the attempt at making a unique, abstract spin on Hulk, it's maybe too artsy for some though. Hulk is a pretty hard character to make solo adventures out of, so I appreciate them trying to counteract that with cool visuals and honestly some of the deeper aspects of being the Hulk that don't really get addressed anymore
I've always thought this film was severely underrated, and I'm happy to see all of the positive comments here. I agree with OP that it does a good job of exploring the nature of trauma. I actually found it moving when Hulk defeats the bad guy by giving him all of his power and trauma.
And of course, the performances were top notch. Sometimes I felt like I was the only person who enjoyed the comic book panels visual stunt.
I am a huge defender of this film, but ultimately I think I appreciate what it was trying to do more than I like the execution. It's an honourable effort by Ang Lee made during a period when comic book movies hadn't been nailed down to a formula and could truly take any form. It's thematically rich, yes, but some parts undeniably fall flat. This might be Eric Bana's worst performance, he just never found a rhythm to the character and spends the movie looking either blank or constipated. The dogs are inexcusable, the comic book editing is another "I can see what you're going for but no", and the pacing is terrible in the first act (he doesn't Hulk out until 40 minutes in). But I still love nearly everything once it kicks into high gear in the second half, it would just work a lot more if the groundwork was laid better in the first act and we had a lead character and performance we could truly connect with.
I never understood what the problem with the dogs was. Even before the film was released everyone on the internet was laughing at the concept and I didn't get it then either.
I don't mind the concept, they just don't look very good, more silly than intimidating. Whether that's the CGI or character design, one never believes that Jennifer Connelly's character is actually in danger. Plus Nick Nolte going full ham when he sics them on her, "And let nothing stand in your way muahahaha" is baaaad, just sets a horrible tone. I want to like the movie so I'm willing to meet it halfway with everything related to the dogs, but I really can't blame any viewers for checking out and thinking this is effin stupid.
I love every single over the top word that comes out Nolte's mouth in the film, so maybe I just don't have a problem with over the top silliness. Don't know.
The dogs are kind of silly looking I guess, but I still found them intimidating.
Pretty much how I feel except I'm not really much of a defender of the film. To your point, I really do see where Ang Lee was going and I appreciate the chances he took and the poetic nature he was trying to imbue into the film. I think some of it even works but ultimately a lot of it comes off as silly, bland and boring as opposed to thoughtful and artistic.
Bana really does look like he's holding in a turd the whole movie, I actually wasn't sure if they bothered to put any points into his charisma when they created him at birth based on this film. And then Liv Tyler, who I like, is not even in this movie and it's actually Jennifer Connelly (who we all love) and I didn't realize that until just now because the character is so wholly bland and uninteresting.
It was supposed to be this meditation on anger and pain and trauma and it instead became arthouse fart clouds and hilarious CG poodles.
Agreed! I watched it for the first time a couple years ago and realized, wow, this is an Ang Lee and James Schamus collaboration at some of its finest. Schamus is such a good writer. I saw much of it as being a kind of modern day interpretation of themes from Greek mythology, a clash of titans and the demi-god son fighting the Zeus-like father figure.
It also sucks that much of the criticism of the film devolved to low-brow, low-key racist jokes about Ang Lee's name.
You hit the nail on the head! I still love this movie and every time I watched it as a child felt this weird deep emotional pull but I couldn't fully understand it. It's a big part of my childhood and I still remember it to this day. In fact, because of this post I'm going to rewatch it soon! Appreciate your post.
I saw this film three times on the big screen. I don't really have anything of substance to add to the conversation, just always like to tell that to people.
In real life they always look at me in a bewildered way.
I started rewatching this last night (because of this post) and I so identified with the Bruce-Betty dynamic from the first half of the movie, I began to examine my own childhood to see if there was some trauma or other issues that I've overlooked. The dream sequence where Ross wordlessly abandoned toddler Betty was heartbreaking. We have two characters that share very obvious childhood attachment issues and trauma with their narcissistic fathers, two sides of the same coin. It's smart writing. There's a lot of callbacks and parallels in varying degrees of subtlety. It's a lot more affective than I remember, and I still have half of the movie to get through. It really drives home the vapidity of the modern superhero film.
The creative wipes and transitions/cuts/etc. make for a beautiful and fresh visual rythmn, but the biological/psychological thriller element keeps things grounded and tense. It hasn't aged poorly like similarly stylized editing from the 90s and early 00s. It's all so much better than the 5.6 IMDB rating lets on. Another entry in the "ahead of its time" book, I guess.
Thank you! I always had a soft spot for this movie but it seemed like I was the only one. I prefer this version to the Ed Norton version, even though Norton is one of my favorite actors. I always liked the comic book transitions, thought it made the movie feel unique. And I remember a lot of behind the scenes features about how they made the Hulk get bigger and stronger the angrier he got, which is something I am really missing from the current MCU version.
Excellent analysis. I've always thought it was not only a good movie, but an exceptionally well made film. Credits often given to Nolan's Batman for grounding comic characters firmly in reality but Lee had already succeeded. Its a deeply human story with comic set pieces