Warning: Stay away from “Family Establishments”. Like newly opened IMAX Theaters. Instead of watching a movie you’ve been desperately waiting for, you would be involved in hearing family quarrels erupt on adjacent rows (“Why can’t you take care of your kids?” “No, why don’t you take care of YOUR kids first?” “You do it! No, YOU do it.”) or hear kids scream or puke popcorn all over seats and their fathers talking to their secretaries and attending to their polyphonic-ringtone waala cellphones. Also the occasional loud belching, followed by a complaint to their wives about “too much gas”.
Jeez. I wish I were the Hulk. Heh heh heh. You wouldn’t like me when I get angry, puny movie-goers.
Hmm, the Hulk, eh? Mandatory rant – When big-shot directors have grandiose dreams about “interpretation”, they shouldn’t massacre 30 years of history to satisfy their creative urge. Ang Lee could have easily made a movie called “Jekyll/Hyde 2003” instead of this. Maybe the only things that resemble the comic book are :- The Hulk is green. Bruce Banner has a girlfriend named Betty Ross, whose father is the Hulk’s nemesis. And the Hulk smash!
Gamma-irradiated French poodles? Two generations of mad Scientists? Pah!
Once the action begins, it doesn’t matter whether it’s Shrek’s elder bro hurling tanks or swatting bullets or cracking open sidewalks, Kristina Lokken would suffice, or even Neo, if you give him “guns! lots of guns!”.
Neil Gaiman has this to say about the Hulk movie, and that’s IT. All that I wanted to say.
The fact that a lot of the journalists complaining about The Hulk movie were complaining about all of the things Ang Lee had done where he thought he knew better. All of the things Sam Rami did right I felt like Ang Lee did wrong. In the Rami film [Spiderman] the first thing that happens is that he gets bitten by a spider. Yes! Then stuff happens and then he’s Spiderman. You go to a Hulk film, you know that two minutes into the film Bruce Banner needs to be trying to rescue this kid out on the Gamma-ray testing field, get caught by the Gamma-ray bomb, and turn into the Hulk. That’s what has to happen a few minutes in, and it doesn’t. You just get this interminable movie, and he doesn’t turn into the Hulk until halfway through; even then you’re going “Why did I get all that plot and what the Hell was that about?” The places where they change things are the places where things tend not to work. Having said that, I think the biggest reason comic books are so successful in Hollywood is that studio execs do not have imaginations, and they’re not very good at extrapolating. So if they have pictures, they’re sortof like storyboards, and they can see things without having to imagine too hard, so they get very happy.
Yeah, I was quite impressed with Spiderman. For once, a movie followed the book (comicbook in this case) quite well… and the action was really impressive too… just as I had imagined it while reading the comicbooks. Do you remember the last spiderman movie that came out ( wayy back in the mid-80’s)… that was horrible.
Havent seen Hulk yet, waiting for the DVD/VCD. No enthu to go see it on the big screen.
Did u see Daredevil? I hadnt read too many of the comics, so I was not too interested in the movie, and I don’t know whether it followed the comic-plots properly.
For info about Daredevil , check this out. The title is “Why I hated Daredevil:The Movie”. Says a lot, non? :-)
*grin*
Nice.
Hey Beatzo! I’m back from my weekend trip and am planning to visit the Best bookstall today – can you make it there? I would be there at about 6:30…
Man, you should have seen the comic collection at Chennai Landmark – they have a bargain sale of about 1000 comics (mostly Superman and Factor X) and are selling it with almost 50% discount!
Aaaaa!!!!
How long will the sale be on? Will be going to Chennai (hopefully) this weekend for the Landmark quiz.
Will be at Best Book Stall at 6:30 today then. :-)
You go to a Hulk film, you know that two minutes into the film Bruce Banner needs to be trying to rescue this kid out on the Gamma-ray testing field, get caught by the Gamma-ray bomb, and turn into the Hulk. That’s what has to happen a few minutes in, and it doesn’t.
Like I said, this is precisely the reason why I was not enthusiastic about the movie. I was quite hooked to the original story in the very first comic book – Thanks for that link you provided me sometime back. But, I didn’t hate the movie, didn’t like it either.
The movie is pretty irritating at times. All those flashy edits and cuts and fadeouts.
I absolutely hated that multi-view “comic-book” style (that has been publicised so) :-) It looked so condescending towards the comic-book medium, as if the director is trying to say “Ha ha, this is how comic books would look if I had a say in publishing them.” Also, did u note the font used for the titles? Something like 60’s style lettering in comics.
I don’t know, maybe I am being too touchy.