Earlier this week, the folks over at CinemaSins took aim at Hulk in their long-running "Everything Wrong With…" video series. It looks like they couldn’t stay away from the Green Goliath for long, as only two days later, they now have a video nitpicking and criticizing the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk in 13 minutes. Take a look!
After a five-year absence from the big screen, The Incredible Hulk was the cinematic return of Marvel’s green-skinned monster. However, rather than be a direct sequel to Hulk, this movie is a reboot set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - though the CinemaSins people are acting like it’s a follow-up to the 2003 film in the beginning of the video. Much of the video’s material rips into how coincidental many of the events are (which is a common problem for many films), such as Betty Ross just happening to find Bruce Banner hitchhiking in the rain. There’s also a few logic problems, like the multiple opportunities the government had to capture Bruce without incident or how the flash drive he swallows wasn’t rendered inoperable by his stomach acids.
In terms of action, most of the film’s soldiers are horrible shots (the common stormtrooper effect) or just not very bright. As far as main antagonist Emil Blonsky goes, once he has transformed into Abomination, they point out that with all this power, all he ends up doing is the same thing that the Cloverfield monster and Godzilla did: cause unnecessary destruction. Granted, he’s a bad guy, but having retained his intelligence, he’s capable of so much more. Oh, and he almost killed Michael K. Williams’ "Innocent Bystander" character. Yup, years after The Wire premiered, and Omar was reduced to nearly getting killed by flying wreckage without any lines. That’s messed up.
The video finishes by addressing the final minutes between General Ross and Tony Stark, which they commend for being one of Marvel’s standard post-credits scene that’s actually tacked to the end of the movie. However, they also state that because this scene is Marvel movie canon, that’s a bad thing – as it actually doesn’t wind up very much sense within the larger continuity. All together, the film racked up 122 sins, and they summarized the video with the description of the movie as "Marvel’s Blind Spot."
Although The Incredible Hulk earned decent reviews while in theaters, it didn’t pull in enough money to warrant ordering another sequel. Edward Norton subsequently departed the MCU, and Mark Ruffalo replaced him as Banner in The Avengers. Although Ruffalo’s performance has been lauded and he was brought back for Avengers: Age of Ultron, there won’t be another Hulk solo movie coming anytime soon, primarily due to Marvel’s Phase Three plans. So if you want to see CinemaSins address Hulk on the big screen again, you’ll either have to watch their video on The Avengers or wait until later this year for their Avengers: Age of Ultron commentary.
