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Thursday, April 17, 2008
BOX OFFICE SMASH HULK!!!!
Never mind Kermit the Frog, the Hulk has found it’s not easy bein’ green - and that it’s not easy to make much green at the box office. Now I’m getting the impression that Hulk 2008 (The Incredible Hulk) will be like Hulk 2003 (The Hulk) all over again.
The 2003 Ang Lee film with Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly and a zany Nick Nolte was met with yawns if not outright anger - and only $132 million at the box office, which doesn’t help when the film costs about that much. Marvel decided to make a “do-over,” casting Edward Norton as the tormented Bruce Banner - a decision Marvel might now regret.
Stories have run rampant that Norton, who rewrote the script, battled Marvel on the tone of the film. According to Entertainment Weekly, Norton wanted “a longer, more detailed film.” Marvel, probably mindful of where longer and detailed got them in 2003, wanted a movie that was leaner and faster. Marvel has supposedly won. The film will be out June 13.
Norton released a statement to EW that said, in part: “I’ve never had a better partner, and the collaboration with all the rest of the creative team has been terrific. Every good movie gets forged through collaboration, and different ideas among people who are all committed and respect the validity of each other’s opinions is the heart of filmmaking. Regrettably, our healthy process, which is and should be a private matter, was misrepresented publicly as a ‘dispute,’ seized on by people looking for a good story, and has been distorted to such a degree that it risks distracting from the film itself, which Marvel, Universal and I refuse to let happen. It has always been my firm conviction that films should speak for themselves and that knowing too much about how they are made diminishes the magic of watching them. All of us believe The Incredible Hulk will excite old fans and create new ones and be a huge hit …”
I dunno about you, but to me, that smacks of “Let me talk to my lawyer before I say anything.” It certainly doesn’t make me feel confident about the film, which is already generating negative buzz and new complaints that the Hulk “looks fake!”
Now, a little background is in order here. I am a member of that small minority that was pleased with Ang Lee’s movie. And I am also a member of an even smaller subset of that minority that loved The Hulk. I put it on my runners-up ten best list that year, and I stand by that.
I will allow that the Hulk dogs were silly, and that the pacing was a lttle too meditative at first. Once the movie got going, however, I thought it was fantastic, and I LOVED the ingenious multi-panel editing of the film that made it look like a live comic book. The Hulk got a bum rap.
That said, I’m not angry about it. I understand people probably wanted something closer to the Bill Bixby TV show, where David (Bruce) Banner repeatedly got smacked around by low-lifes, Hulked out, and thrashed people who deserved it. Maybe it would have helped if the Hulk talked like he did in the comic books. At least one “HULK SMASH!” might have netted the movie an extra $30 million.
Will this new movie succeed? I doubt it. It might be more “action-packed,” but I have this gut feeling that a dearth of imagination will sink it. I really wish Marvel had hired a more promising director than Louis Leterrier, who made the Transporter movies and Unleashed. Even if I didn’t like the Ang Lee movie, I would still rather see a noble failure by an artist than a mid-level movie by a competent action technician. But I hope Leterrier proves me wrong.
So what do you think of the new Hulk’s prosepcts? Will you see it? What does a Hulk movie need to be good? Maybe it should have lines from the 80s cartoon like “VOICE IN HULK’S HEAD MAKES HULK WANT TO SMASH” or my personal favorite, “EVERYWHERE HULK GO, PEOPLE SCREAM!!!”
Will you scream for The Incredible Hulk?
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What’s opening Friday, April 18? 1 out of 3?
It’s still April, meaning that the movie selection is still a bit iffy at the moment, but there is at least one very promising movie this week - and at least one candidate for next year’s Razzie awards.
88 Minutes: Can a thriller fronted by Al Pacino really be THAT bad? Well, the movie has been sitting on the shelf for more than a year. And the critics’ quotes go like this:
“The picture easily snatches from Revolution the prize as Al Pacino’s career worst.” - Variety.
“For sheer silliness, nothing in 88 Minutes tops the fact that (Alicia) Witt’s English ex-con husband boasts the ridiculously fanciful name Guy LaForge, presumably because ‘Fakey McMake-Believe’ was already taken.” - Slant Magazine.
“88 Minutes plays like a script Tom Cruise rejected back in the ’90s” - New York Press
But hey, the revered critic Andrew Sarris liked it, saying “88 Minutes will add a little more luster to a career that has not been adequately appreciated perhaps because of the suspiciously seductive power of a little man with an outsize talent.”
Is Sarris crazy? Or is everyone else? You can be the judge if you wish.
The Forbidden Kingdom: From that peerless director of martial arts flicks, Rob Minkoff, who brought us Haunted Mansion and the Stuart Little movies. Jet Li and Jackie Chan team up for the first time, but the picture is geared toward the younger set. Whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall: The consensus was that the Judd Apatow factory had a screw loose with Drillbit Taylor, but things seem a little tighter this time around, with some very positive reviews for this comedy about a guy having a hard time getting over a breakup with his girl. Since the girl looks an awful lot like Kristen Bell, I sympathize. This is the movie I’m most looking forward to seeing.
Unfortunately, conflicts with my other duties prevented me from screening any of these this week. On Friday, I will instead preview the highlight of the moviegoing year for me: The classic film series at Victoria Theatre in Dayton.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: In Area Theaters
