Back again with another blog. Just discovered that Blogger, the folks behind this blog that I write every so often, has changed their look. Not bad, takes some getting used to.

Before I get into my entry, I want to give a shout out to my newest online bud Matt. It's been very cool getting to know you the past few days and I'm glad to add you to my growing list of friends.

Now, I've seen the Hulk movie. Checked it out June 20th on opening night. What do I think of it?
It's OK. That's all. It's OK.
Let me get to the bad part about the movie first. Topping the list is that it took too long to get the movie going. When I heard that it would be a two hour, 20 minute film, I thought great. It'll be a fast paced, jam packed picture. Little did I know that it would plod along very slowly for almost an hour until we saw the big fella in action. I was disappointed with that, especially after the well crafted opening sequence that started it off.
Next, WAY too much melodrama. The conflict between Banner and his dad had it's moments but there were times that it got too much. The conflict between Betty Ross and her dad seem too rushed and out of place. They should've trimmed it down or gotten rid of it. My friend Kevin brought up a good point that they never say exactly what Banner's dad did to him. And I totally agree. And that climatic scene between Banner and his dad left me scratching my head. You would think if they spent all that time building it up that it would have some kind of payoff. It didn't. A total letdown that still makes no sense to me.
As for the transformation scenes. I liked it fair enough, but I wished that they would've showed more of Banner changing into the Hulk. They did it once but it should've been longer and better paced. I liked some of the others, especially the first one where you could see him growing out of his clothes and shoes. Being a die hard fan of the TV show, I wished they showed more of that instead of having him in that expanded swimtrunk he was wearing. But I'm nitpick.
Now comes the good parts. I LOVED the CGI Hulk. The one thing I kept hearing from the so called skeptics was how bad the green goliath looked. I think it looked great, surprisingly, in the daylight, where CGI effects would be a dead giveaway. The closeups where you could see the Hulk's face and eyes were very believable.
My favorite part of the film had to be the scene where the Hulk is just kicking ass as he takes on the military in the desert. Me and several other people in the audience were in complete awe over that scene as the Hulk puts a major beatdown on the troops. If it were up to me, that should've been the way it ended instead of that so called confrontation between Banner and his dad.
I also liked the battle the Hulk had with the Hulk dogs. My beef with it was that it was too short. They should have several encounters back and forth to lengthen the scene. Plus, from where I saw it, it appeared a bit dark and you couldn't see the dogs too much. Nevertheless, a great scene.
I like Eric Bana's performance as Bruce Banner. He was quite believeable as the tortured scientist and truly grasped what the comics were all about. Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliott were good too as Betty and her dad. Nick Nolte had some good over-the-top moments as David Banner, Bruce's dad especially when he tells him to stop whining at one point of the film. The guy who stole the movie for me was Josh Lucas as Glenn Talbot. He plays the heck out being the extremely slimy bad guy and the moments where he got beat up by the Hulk were priceless.
All in all, I liked how the film looked, the seamless edits and use of multiple panels were well done and speeded the pace of the film along, although not enough as I told you earlier. And Danny Elfman's score was very good, an interesting change of pace that kept in step with the film. So when you put it all together, it was OK. I had hoped the Hulk would live up to my high, high expectations going in. But it didn't. Not by a long shot. I still call Spider Man the best comic-to-film adaptation I've seen and I would rank the Hulk film right behind Superman, Spider Man, Batman X2, and Daredevil as far as comic book movies that I have seen.
Saying that, I still have high hopes for the green guy. Especially after reading the plans they have in mind for the sequel, with the Grey Hulk, the Leader and the Abdomination as possible villians. Hopefully they will take what was good from this film and make a worthy second movie that will live up to the hype.
That's it for now. Blog at you later.