Hulk (film)

Producers Avi Arad and Gale Anne Hurd began developing Hulk in 1990,[17] the same year the final TV movie based on the 1970s TV series aired. They set the property up at Universal Pictures in 1992.[18] Michael France and Stan Lee were invited into Universal's offices in 1993, with France writing the script. Universal's concept was to have the Hulk battle terrorists, an idea France disliked. John Turman, a Hulk comic book fan, was brought to write the script in 1994, getting approval from Lee. Heavily influenced by the Tales to Astonish issues, Turman wrote ten drafts and pitted the Hulk against General Ross and the military and [19] the Leader, also including Rick Jones and the atomic explosion origin from the comics[20] along with Brian Banner as the explanation for Bruce's inner anger.[21] Universal had mixed feelings over Turman's script, but future screenwriters would use many elements.[19][22]

Hurd brought her husband Jonathan Hensleigh as co-producer the following year, and Universal hired Industrial Light & Magic to create the Hulk with computer-generated imagery. Universal was courting France once more to write the screenplay,[8] but changed their minds when Joe Johnston became the director in April 1997.[23] The studio wanted Hensleigh to rewrite the script due to his successful results on Johnston's Jumanji. Universal fired France before he wrote a single page but gave him a buy-off.[8] Johnston dropped out of directing in July 1997 in favor of October Sky, and Hensleigh convinced Universal to make the Hulk his directing debut. Universal brought Turman back a second time to write two more drafts. Zak Penn then rewrote it.[8][24] His script featured a fight between the Hulk and a school of sharks,[20] and two scenes he eventually used for the 2008 film: Banner realizing he cannot have sex and triggering a transformation by falling out of a helicopter.[25] Hensleigh rewrote from scratch, coming up with a brand new storyline[8] featuring Bruce Banner, who, before the accident which turns him into The Hulk, experiments with gamma-irradiated insect DNA on three convicts, transforming them into "insect men"[26] that cause havoc.[8][27]

Concept art for Jonathan Hensleigh's script

Filming was set to start in December 1997 in Arizona for a summer 1999 release date, but filming was pushed back for four months.[27][28] Hensleigh subsequently rewrote the script with J. J. Abrams. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski were also brought on board to rewrite, with Hensleigh still attached as director.[8] In October 1997, Hulk had entered pre-production with the creation of prosthetic makeup and computer animation already underway. Gregory Sporleder was cast as "Novak", Banner's archenemy, while Lynn "Red" Williams was cast as a convict who transforms into a combination of human, ant, and beetle.[28] In March 1998, Universal put Hulk on hiatus due to its escalating $100 million budget and worries of Hensleigh directing his first film. $20 million was already spent on script development, computer animation, and prosthetics work. Hensleigh immediately went to rewrite the script to lower the budget.[29]

Hensleigh found the rewriting process too complicated and dropped out, feeling he "wasted nine months in pre-production".[30] It took another eight months for France to convince Universal and the producers to let him try to write a script for the third time. France claimed, "Someone within the Universal hierarchy wasn't sure if this was a science fiction adventure, or a comedy, and I kept getting directions to write both. I think that at some point when I wasn't in the room, there may have been discussions about turning it into a Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler movie."[8] France was writing the script on the fast track from July—September 1999. Filming for Hulk was to start in April 2000.[31][32]

France stated his vision of the film was different from the other drafts, which based Bruce Banner on his "amiable, nerdy genius" incarnation in the 1960s. France cited inspiration from the 1980s Hulk stories, which introduced Brian Banner, Bruce's abusive father who killed his mother. His script had Banner trying to create cells with regenerative capabilities to convince himself that he is not like his father.[8] However, he has anger management issues before the Hulk is born, which makes everything worse. The "Don't make me angry..." line from the TV series became the dialogue that Banner's father would say before beating his son. Elements such as the "Gammasphere," Bruce and Betty's tragic romance, and the black ops made it to the final film. France turned in his final drafts in late 1999 – January 2000.[8]

Michael Tolkin and David Hayter rewrote the script afterward, despite the producers' positive response over France's script. Tolkin was brought in January 2000, while Universal brought Hayter in September of that year. Hayter's draft featured The Leader, Zzzax, and the Absorbing Man as the villains, who are depicted as colleagues of Banner and get caught in the same accident that creates the Hulk.[8][14][33] Director Ang Lee and his producing partner James Schamus became involved with the film on January 20, 2001.[34] Lee was dissatisfied with Hayter's script and commissioned Schamus for a rewrite, merging Banner's father with the Absorbing Man.[8][35] Lee cited influences from King Kong, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, Beauty and the Beast, Faust, and Greek mythology to interpret the story.[36] Schamus said he had found the storyline that introduced Brian Banner, allowing Lee to write a drama that again explored father-son themes.[37]

Schamus was still rewriting the script in October 2001.[5] In early 2002, as filming was underway, Michael France read all the scripts for the Writers Guild of America to determine who would get final credit. France criticized Schamus and Hayter for claiming they were aiming to make Banner a more in-depth character, saddened they had denigrated his and Turman's work in interviews. Schamus elected to get solo credit. France felt, "James Schamus did a significant amount of work on the screenplay. For example, he brought in the Hulk dogs from the comics and he made the decision to use Banner's father as a real character in the present. But he used quite a lot of elements from John Turman's scripts and quite a lot from mine, and that's why we were credited."[8][38][39] France, Turman, and Schamus received final credit. In December 2001, a theatrical release date was announced for June 20, 2003, with the film's title as The Hulk.[40]

Filming began on March 18, 2002, in Arizona and moved on April 19 to the San Francisco Bay Area. Locations included Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Oakland, Treasure Island military base, and the sequoia forests of Porterville, before several weeks in the Utah and California deserts. The penultimate battle scene between Hulk and his father used the real Pear Lake in Sequoia National Park as a backdrop. Filming then moved to the Universal backlot in Los Angeles, using Stage 12 for the water tank scene, before finishing in the first week of August. Filming of Hulk constituted hiring 3,000 local workers, generating over $10 million into the local economy.[41][42][43][44] Mychael Danna, who previously collaborated with Lee on Ride with the Devil and The Ice Storm, was set to compose the film score before dropping out. Then Danny Elfman was hired.[45]

Eric Bana commented that the shoot was "Ridiculously serious... a silent set, morbid in a lot of ways." Lee told him that he was shooting a Greek tragedy: he would be making a "whole other movie" about the Hulk at Industrial Light & Magic. An example of Lee's arthouse approach to the film was taking Bana to watch a bare-knuckle boxing match.[37] Computer animation supervisor Dennis Muren was on the set every day.[17] One of the many visual images in the film that presented an acting challenge for Bana was Lee's split-screen technique to mimic a comic book page panels cinematically. This technique required many more takes of individual scenes than usual.[46] Muren and other ILM animators used previous technology from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (for the Dobby character) to create the Hulk with computer-generated imagery. Additional software used included PowerAnimator, Softimage Creative Environment, Softimage XSI, and Pixar's RenderMan. ILM started computer animation work in 2001 and completed it in May 2003, just one month before the film's release.[47] Lee provided some motion capture work in post-production.[6] Gary Rydstrom handled sound design at Skywalker Sound.[48][49]

Danny Elfman composed the film score for Hulk after scoring Spider-Man the previous year. Frequent Ang Lee collaborator Mychael Danna was the film's original composer; however, studio executives rejected Danna's score for its non-traditional approach, which featured Japanese taiko, African drumming, and Arabic singing.[50] Then Elfman was approached by Universal's president of film music, Kathy Nelson. With 37 days to compose over two hours of music, Elfman agreed out of respect to Lee.[51] While instructing to retain much of the character of Danna's score, Lee pushed Elfman to write material that didn't sound like his previous superhero scores.[52] "They did leave some of my music in the movie," said Danna, "so the Arabic singing and some of the drumming is mine. What happened is that they panicked, they brought in Danny and he heard what I've been doing and I guess he liked it."[53]

A soundtrack album was released on June 17, 2003, by Decca Records.[54] It features the song "Set Me Free" by Velvet Revolver, which plays during the end credits.

Track listing

Universal Pictures spent $2.1 million to market the film in a 30-second television spot during Super Bowl XXXVII on January 26, 2003.[55] And a 70-second teaser trailer was attached to Spider-Man on May 3, 2002. Just weeks before the film's release, several workprints leaked on the Internet. The public already criticized the visual and special effects, although it was not the film's final editing cut.[56] The film received a novelization written by Hulk comic writer Peter David.[57]

Hulk was released on VHS and DVD on October 28, 2003.[58] The DVD included behind-the-scenes footage, enhanced viewing options that allow users to manipulate a 3-D Hulk model, and cast and crew commentaries.[59] The film earned $61.2 million in DVD sales during 2003.[60] Hulk was released on HD DVD format on December 12, 2006, and it was later released on Blu-ray on September 16, 2008.[61] Hulk was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on July 9, 2019.[62]

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 62% approval rating based on 235 reviews and an average rating of 6.26/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "While Ang Lee's ambitious film earns marks for style and an attempt at dramatic depth, there's ultimately too much talking and not enough smashing."[63] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 54 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[64] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[65]

Roger Ebert gave a positive review, explaining, "Ang Lee is trying to actually deal with the issues in the story of the Hulk, instead of simply cutting to brainless visual effects." Ebert also liked how the Hulk's movements resembled King Kong.[66] Although Peter Travers of Rolling Stone felt Hulk should have been shorter, he heavily praised the action sequences, especially the climax and cliffhanger.[67] Paul Clinton of CNN believed the cast gave strong performances, but in an otherwise positive review, heavily criticized the computer-generated imagery, calling the Hulk "a ticked-off version of Shrek".[68]

Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle considered "the film is more thoughtful and pleasing to the eye than any blockbuster in recent memory, but its epic length comes without an epic reward."[69] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe felt "Jennifer Connelly reprises her stand-by-your-messed-up-scientist turn from A Beautiful Mind."[70] Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly stated, "a big-budget comic-book adaptation has rarely felt so humorless and intellectually defensive about its own pulpy roots."[71]

Hulk received retrospective praise from critics for its artistic difference from other superhero films by Marvel and DC comics, etc. In 2012, Matt Zoller Seitz cited the film as one of the few big-budget superhero films that "really departed from formula, in terms of subject matter or tone", writing that the film is "pretty bizarre... in its old-school Freudian psychology, but interesting for that reason".[72] In Scout Tafoya's 2016 video essay on another film directed by Ang Lee, Ride with the Devil, he mentioned Hulk as "Lee's ill-fated but quietly soulful and deeply sad adaptation of The Incredible Hulk comics".[73] In 2018, Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com wrote that the film is "a genuinely great example of cinematic pop art that deserves a reappraisal".[74]

Hulk was released on June 20, 2003, earning $62.1 million in its opening weekend, which made it the 16th highest ever opener at the time. With a second weekend drop of 70%, it was the first opener above $20 million to drop over 65%.[75] The film grossed $132.2 million in North America on a budget of $137 million. It made $113.2 million in foreign countries, coming to a worldwide total of $245.4 million.[4] With a final North American gross of $132.2 million, it became the largest opener not to earn $150 million.[76]

Connelly and Danny Elfman received nominations at the 30th Saturn Awards with Best Actress and Best Music. The film was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film but lost out to X2, another movie based on Marvel characters. Dennis Muren, Michael Lantieri, and the special effects crew were nominated for Best Special Effects.[77]

During filming, producer Avi Arad targeted a May 2005 theatrical release date for a sequel.[78] Upon the film's release, screenwriter James Schamus started to plan a sequel, featuring Hulk's Grey Hulk persona and considered to use The Leader and the Abomination as villains.[79] Marvel asked for Abomination's inclusion to be an actual threat to Hulk, unlike General Ross.[80] However, aside from Hulk's mixed reception, Universal didn't meet the established deadline for filming a sequel to Ang Lee's film.

In January 2006, Marvel Studios reacquired the film rights to the character, and writer Zak Penn began work on a sequel titled The Incredible Hulk.[81] However, Edward Norton rewrote Penn's script after he signed on to star, retelling the origin story in flashbacks and revelations, to establish the film as a reboot; director Louis Leterrier agreed with this approach.[82] Leterrier acknowledged that the only remaining similarity between the two films was Bruce hiding in South America.[83]