Today marks the 20th anniversary of Ang Lee’s “Hulk,” a movie widely dismissed at the time with mixed reviews – praised by critics for its ambition and style but criticised for its lack of action and some of its visual effects.
“Hulk” arrived just a year after Sam Raimi’s first “Spider-Man” swung into cinemas and to great success at the box office, and just a month after Bryan Singer’s “X2: X-Men United” drew rave reviews. The audience was primed and ready for a Hulk superhero film along the same lines.
What they got was something much more experimental, a dark and often introspective psychothriller of repressed trauma, bad dads, and dangerous genetics. The story mashed up Freudian tropes, Greek tragedy and a dash of PG-13 Cronenberg body horror – all packaged in a wild visual language of creative wipes, unusual transitions and effects-enhanced cuts.
With a $137 million budget, the movie ended up with a worldwide gross of just $245.4 million. Sandwiched in early June between Disney juggernauts “Finding Nemo” and the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” it was written off as just another misfire of that Summer alongside films like “Hollywood Homicide” and “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”.
Unlike those other films, “Hulk” has grown in estimation over the years – even seen as a misfire, it’s still an interesting one that’s trying to be something. Its outright defiance of crowd-pleasing superhero formula, once seen as its Achilles heel, is now deemed its greatest asset with the work these days better understood for what it is – a partly-oedipal tale in the vein of Universal’s classic monster movies.
A new feature piece in GQ today has looked back at the movie and sums up why it’s a more thrilling watch in modern times as:
“It reflects the brief window of time when filmmakers still had the freedom to approach an iconic superhero without narrative guardrails and style guides when they could make something personal, challenging, unsettling, and polarizing”
They add that it’s not a kid-friendly spectacle. It’s “messy and talky and scary”, and as Marvel “keeps sanding the edges of accomplished directors” to make them more assembly line friendly, this marks a rare superhero film that feels distinctly an auteur’s own.
Writer-producer James Schamus adds: “We were young and free from the multiverse. Ang prevailed with his vision.” At the very least, the film gives us a scene with Sam Elliott delivering the words “mutant French poodle” in his wonderful voice.
“Hulk” is currently available to stream on Peacock, Tubi and VOD platforms along with 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD.
