Hulk Smash

After a few summers of comic book movies I didn't want to see (X-Men and Spider Man), the summer of 2008 is offering up some tasty comic based morsels. Iron Man was the cat's ass, the bee's knees and hands down my favorite comic movie to date. So when we went to see Incredible Hulk on Saturday night it had some size fourteen wide shoes to fill.

I never saw the first modern attempt at a Hulk film, but I read and heard that it was a disaster. It tainted my view of a Hulk reboot until I saw Iron Man and a bit of my faith was restored. So I went into the film even handed not knowing what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised. Ed Norton is an amazing actor and the time the screenplay and director took to build to action and reveals was great. It was handled with tack and patience like good films should be. When they finally do get to the smashing and explosions it is not over the top.

Realistic CGI is hard to do with organic characters, which is a notch in Iron Man's armored belt over this film. It doesn't look bad though, you just know you are looking at 3D modeling through out the picture. Tim Roth's character is the scratch on the Ferrari, I don't think it was his acting, because I have seen him a number of good movies. His character was not explained enough. He shows up gets his ass beat by the Hulk and becomes a crazed power hungry monster. He has no motivation for his actions and almost feels like a cop out to create a rival to Hulk's power. Liv Tyler's character is a bit boring, but at least she fits the plot.

Incredible Hulk falls into my top five comic movies and got me excited for Iron Man 2, Incredible Hulk 2, Thor, Captain America and ultimately The Avengers. I have no doubt that Dark Knight will top it later this summer though.

The Spirit
Sin City and 300 were both crazy good adaptations of Frank Miller's comics (see Batman: Year One the origin for Batman Begins as well). So when I saw that Frank Miller was writing and directing The Spirit (a Will Eisner comic) I got excited. After seeing the trailer before Hulk Saturday my head almost exploded. The actor playing the Spirit is also in Whiteout this fall, yet another comic to film adaptation. Good times.