WILL 'HULK' BE INCREDIBLE?

Dark Horizons has long been a maverick film news and buzz web site and its webmaster Garth Franklin is often on the money with his reviews. Here is a brief excerpt of his take on this Friday's "The Incredible Hulk."

Not the home run that they hit the first time around with "Iron Man", this second effort of the new Marvel Studios is good enough that it fixes some of the key problems brought up by Ang Lee's generally dismissed first attempt at adapting Hulk for the big screen.

Despite a lot of outright hostility towards it these days, the 2003 "Hulk" remains a textbook example of a noble failure. Superhero movies are like the James Bond franchise - variations on the same formula. Those that truly succeed push the boundaries, but also stick to and make best use of certain pre-set structural rules. Lee's "Hulk" abandoned them altogether, crafting an odd blend of morose 'Jekyll and Hyde' melodrama and ridiculously flamboyant action-fantasy antics. Visually it was bold, even innovative, but in terms of storytelling it was a fascinating jumbled mess - distant, bloated, ambitious, arty and often impenetrable.

In contrast Louis Letterier and Edward Norton's new incarnation of the green meanie has no such lofty ideals or hidden depths. This 'Hulk' is designed purely for fast, formulaic mainstream thrills by mixing a chase thriller across the Americas with a few key set pieces of Hulk smashing up things. It's derivative to be sure, various scenes cribbing off better efforts of the genre along with other recent hits, but the script balances its disparate elements enough to likely satisfy fans.

To read the rest of the review, click HERE.