![]() The Hulk has proved durable for 41 years, ever since Stan Lee and the late Jack Kirby concocted him in their frenzied Marvel Comics laboratory. The journey to humanity requires a detour through beastliness. It is only by tapping into his inner Hulk that Banner can uncover the secrets of his past and come out of his emotional shell. Eric Bana, as Banner, is emotionally repressed, a nerd with a goofy bike helmet, so focused on science that he barely notices that right next to him is the interesting biological phenomenon known to the world as Jennifer Connelly. The movie puts a clever spin on the importance of Hulkitude. The Hulk's code is simple: Time to smash things up! Even Superman is, fundamentally, a highly repressed individual, forced to adhere to a relentless save-the-world code that leaves no room for personal pleasures or even raw, naked aggression. ![]() ![]() Modern civilization is built around the legal and cultural codes that limit natural urges and punish social transgressions. ![]() He's the poster boy for male desocialization. The movies are filled with fables of boys who need to make sound decisions and behave better if they want to become a real man - the Pinocchio syndrome - but the Hulk is the antidote to all that. (Among the more skeptical Hulk aficionados, this is known as the "body-bag problem.") The movie Hulk is so tough he can fall from outer space into San Francisco Bay with no more worries than the guy in that old Nestea "Take the plunge" commercial. As in the comic book, the movie Hulk's mayhem is of the peculiar variety in which entire buildings can be demolished and yet no innocent bystanders perish. The Hulk is the same, only a lot bigger and perhaps even murkier of brain than Sylvester Stallone. The Charles Bronson of the "Death Wish" era, and Rambo, and Dirty Harry, and all the incarnations of Ah-nuld, were peace-loving simple fellows who were somehow wronged and had no choice but to unleash a massive amount of firepower in an orgiastic eruption of ultra-violence. Alan Ladd in "Shane" didn't really want to blow away Jack Palance, but he had no choice. He doesn't really want to smash things, but he's forced to do so by a cruel and unforgiving world. We've seen this character before in different guises. He just wants to look at thin sections through his microscope and find ways to keep his biotech frogs from exploding, but bad guys keep hassling him and by the end of the day he's tossing tanks around like Frisbees. He clearly has big-time anger management issues. The movie wisely sticks to the formula of the original comic book: Bruce Banner, mild-mannered scientist, has this nasty habit whenever he gets mad of turning into a 1,500-pound colossus. In Ang Lee's new movie, which opens Friday, the Hulk communicates with his fists, and there's poetry to his pounding. The Hulk's attitude is, "I have not yet begun to smash." Is there a maddest? No, because he can always dig a little deeper. The Hulk's emotional range goes from mad to madder. There is a certain emotional and behavioral purity to the man-monster who refers to himself simply as "Hulk" (as in, "Long after man in red underwear runs out of fancy words, Hulk will still be smashing him!" - The Incredible Hulk #155, September 1972), and who is known to society more formally as the Hulk, two words that serve as a proper name, a physiological description and a job title (e.g., the pope, the president, the Hulk). Hulk does not wake up on the wrong side of the bed.Īnd when Hulk gets mad. Hulk does not get difficult, dyspeptic or obstreperous. Hulk does not get teed off, perturbed or a little bit hot under the collar.
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