Hulk

This is not an action comic, this is a deeply penetrating drama about the split personality and the consequences of one's own sins. And a little bit of a comic. What Ang Lee unleashes in the final half hour is a psychological bomb and the redeeming sacrifice from Betty helps cleanse the soul of the viewer. It's a shame that the majority of them were not yet prepared for such an experience at that time. (18/06/2005)

What, five stars? For the boredom? Are you able to see properly? You do! I think this Hulk is perfect. Ang Lee probably figured that since he was making a comic book film, he wanted it to look like one... So he turned the canvas into comic book pages. He divides the image into frames and boxes, with the characters missing only bubbles with written texts above their heads. Lee's next feat is to turn a comic book that is all about fighting on paper (90% of Hulk’s stories) into an almost psychological film, a father and son drama, a description of the tragedy of a family. The scenes, dialogues and so on are well thought out, you can think about them, it's not just a dull chewing of the text. And when it comes to the action, it's spectacular and imaginative (the tank throw and dogfight lead the way). What more do you want? Me personally, nothing. One of the best comic book adaptations. Why, you ask? Precisely because it's different. (18/06/2009)

In the confrontation with the flood of television and film production, it is necessary to weigh every minute, and one friend puts forward the theory that if the film does not interest him within five minutes, it is not worth watching. I broke this rule and gave the Hulk a whole thirty-five minutes, but he didn't offer me much for it. He simply didn't impress me with anything, maybe except for the charm of young Connelly, and that's a bit too little. Too slow start and dialogues overly psychologizing the comic story were not right for me. I cannot evaluate the whole movie, but from what I have seen, I wouldn't give the Hulk more than 40% for the overall impression... (06/05/2007)

A family drama and a comic book story – do they even go together? Yes, if a capable director takes it on, which Ang Lee undoubtedly is. Ironically, I enjoyed the much criticized first "action lacking" half the most. Thanks to the imaginative direction, the clever editing and the interesting division of the image into multiple windows, I was not bored for a moment. My enthusiasm waned a bit during the botched scene with the mutated dogs, but the subsequent moments in the Nevada desert satisfied my libido again. The tank demolition scene in particular was awesome. During the lengthy dialogue between father and son at the end, boredom began to take over, but certainly not fucking boredom, as one unnamed critic stupidly wrote. Oh, and one more thing, Hulk’s purple shorts were really nasty :) (11/10/2003)

Ang Lee went about this cleverly, constructing his Hulk as a psychological spectacle rather than an "action eye candy comic book romp". You can feel the unconventional qualities and the attempt at resonance, which deserve credit at the very least for its audacity. Some of the flashbacks may come across as unnecessarily drawn out, but by the end I felt that everything fell into place well and I fully appreciated the rather dense psychological part of the story. But I have to be honest and say that I can't imagine a similar take on a comic book movie today – given the flood of over-stylized and extremely successful Marvel movies (which I also enjoy a lot, but in a different way), it seems almost impossible. (25/07/2018)