The Incredible Hulk

Between Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain lies his Hulk, a green, misunderstood golem, daringly Freudian. If The Incredible Hulk, a plastic, steroidally pumped reattempt, is what the fanboys really wanted, then they don’t deserve directors like Lee. Quickly, let’s exempt the actors from blame: Norton makes for a wiry, curious Bruce Banner. But you can tell from the film’s tedium-inducing smackdowns that a different philosophy prevailed: the artificial Zen of video-game playing. The camera jostles, and a fakey Harlem is summarily destroyed. But how many movies will it take for Hollywood to realize that this kind of virtual mayhem rarely translates for those of us not playing the game?