The Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Underrated Hulk
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has dominated the contemporary world of pop culture for the last seventeen years, and while it’s had its ups and downs in terms of the quality of each film and series under the MCU umbrella, the overall quality of the franchise has been staggeringly consistent. However, one of the Marvel Universe’s most important heroes, and one of the MCU’s founding Avengers, has never quite gotten the recognition or respect that he deserves.
Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned Bruce Banner into one of the single most boring heroes in the entire franchise, director Ang Lee, best known for his incredible work on films like The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Lust, Caution, brought audiences one of the greatest comic book movies of all time with 2003’s Hulk. It might seem absurd to some people that Hulk might be considered one of the best comic book movies ever, as the film received generally mixed reviews on release, and has since been forgotten by casual moviegoers, but anyone willing to give Hulk another chance will absolutely see just how wrong the initial responses were.
Hulk Is One of Marvel’s Greatest Characters
Bruce Banner, aka the Incredible Hulk, is one of the single most iconic comic book characters ever created, and though his popularity has waned somewhat in the last decade or so, he remains one of the most recognizable Marvel Comics characters of all time. Before Avengers like Iron Man and Captain America became the faces of the Marvel brand, heroes like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the Hulk stood out as the definitive mascots for Marvel Comics.
The Hulk even headlined his very own acclaimed live-action television series in the 1970s and ’80s, making him one of the first Marvel heroes to make the jump to live-action. Over the years, casual fans of Marvel Comics and the Marvel movies have mostly only seen Hulk as a one-note monster — a brutish, simple-minded behemoth that acts as the Avengers’ muscle. That, however, could not be further from the truth.
The Hulk is one of the single most emotionally complex, genuinely compelling comic book characters of all time, and he has single-handedly carried some of the finest comic book runs of the modern era with ease. Books like Al Ewing’s masterful The Immortal Hulk showcase just how excellent the character can be, and the fifty-issue series is perhaps the single best Marvel comic in the last twenty-five years.
Ang Lee’s Hulk Is The Definitive Love Letter To The Character
Hulk is a bold, beautiful, and somewhat messy ode to the Marvel character, and it takes full advantage of the depth and gravitas of the source material’s finest stories. The Hulk is so much more than just a one-dimensional monster. He’s one of the most damaged, mentally broken characters that Stan Lee ever created, and that allows for so much thematic and tonal depth to be achieved.
Hulk is at his most interesting when he’s not just punching aliens or running from the Avengers. The interiority of the character is what makes his tales so powerful, and that’s what Ang Lee captures in Hulk. Hulk is a genuinely emotional journey into the psyche of a broken man, and the flashy editing, bombastic special effects, and kooky villain don’t in any way detract from that core concept.
Lee and company clearly understand the character in ways that no other creatives in live-action adaptations have since, and that’s a real shame. Generational trauma manifests itself as a literal monster of rage, bubbling to the surface and taking hold of everything and anything it can get its hands on. It’s a powerful metaphor, and one of the film’s most affecting.
Though the movie takes some liberties with the comic book source material’s origin stories for the titular character, as well as with several supporting characters (the villain, in particular), Hulk never feels as though it’s leaving the core of the character’s history behind. It’s always as though Ang Lee is just as interested in the kinds of things that the comics had explored as he is with jumping down new avenues of thought.
Hulk Has Never Felt More Grounded Or Human
Mark Ruffalo is an excellent choice for the character of Bruce Banner on paper, but ever since his first appearance in 2012’s The Avengers, he’s never really gotten a chance to truly showcase the depths of what can be achieved with the iconic character. He’s constantly relegated to a supporting player in an ensemble cast, and rarely with any kind of dramatic weight or psychological depth. That is not the case with 2003’s Hulk, as Eric Bana is wonderfully suited to the title role, and his dueling personas play off of each other expertly.
The simplicity of the character of Bruce Banner grappling with his own interior rage and his repressed, subconscious traumas is far more interesting on a narrative level than anything that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has attempted to half-bake with their version of the character. Hulk suddenly becoming “Smart Hulk” in between movies is about as interesting or thematically potent as being hit in the head with a wrench, and Ang Lee’s Hulk outshines what came in its wake at basically every turn.
A story about fathers and sons makes way for something far thornier, far more complex, and far more interesting to audiences in Hulk. That’s not even taking into consideration the utterly staggering spectacle of the film. The special effects are still, to this day, utterly astounding, with the Hulk’s mannerisms and expressions feeling more tangible than anything the MCU has conjured up.
Comic Book Movies Should Be More Like Hulk
One of the biggest reasons that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is still struggling to reconnect with audiences in the wake of films like Avengers: Endgame is the fact that viewers are starting to realize that just about every single one of the MCU’s latest films is exactly the same. Generic, lackluster output has made the MCU a lumbering beast moving towards a slow death, and there’s a truly easy way around that: start making unique films again.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe needs to slow down, stop pumping out a million projects each year, and really dedicate itself to allowing creatives to really sink their teeth into projects that they care about. Mediocre filmmakers like Shawn Levy or Peyton Reed shouldn’t be prioritized, and actual filmmakers with actual visions should be allowed to do what they want with the characters they feel compelled by. This has already occasionally happened, with directors like James Gunn and his obvious admiration for the characters and stories in his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, but it should become the MCU’s focus.
That’s the beauty of Hulk. Ang Lee clearly loved the character, and that comes across in every single frame. The MCU, and the world of comic book movies at large, has lost that, and it’s time to try and get it back. Ang Lee’s Hulk is a miracle in comic book movie form, and while it still has a reputation for being a somewhat lackluster adaptation with goofy editing, it deserves far more respect and admiration from fans of the source material.
It’s really the only Hulk adaptation that’s gotten even any part of the character right, and for that reason, it will always be one of the very best live-action Marvel movies ever made.
