'Hulk' a let down

Much like the title character, film is big, loud, dumb

Big Green Monster destroys things. Non-descriptive military types chase after with guns and tanks. Man wants to control monstrous rage for a girl with father complex. Déjà vu? You are not the only one.
The above synopsis not only described “Hulk”, the 2005 misfire, but also “The Incredible Hulk,” which came out over the weekend.
I don’t blame Marvel Studios revisiting The Hulk after only five years after Ang Lee’s misfire. The movie didn’t start the world on fire. Lee, now best known for “Brokeback Mountain,” tried to show the cerebral side of a superhero but you don’t do that with a big green guy who doesn’t talk and shows his emotions by smashing everything in sight. I don’t get the appeal of the Hulk but I’m not a comic book guy and something tells me neither is Lee. But the group I went with to see the Hulk were and liked the movie a lot more than I did.
So with Hulk ’03 scrubbed from history, the newly minted Marvel Studios (which is still counting its money from “Iron man”) set out to do right with Hulk. They brought in Edward Norton, swapped out Jennifer Connelly for Liv Tyler and added the definite article “the” and the adjective “incredible” and hoped to do the Hulk right with this new outing.
I don’t remember much from Hulk ’03 (which probably doesn’t help its case) but in watching Hulk ’08, I don’t remember much being very different.
Edward Norton, who contributed to the script, does his best as Bruce Banner on the run from those military dudes (the main one played by the usually-better-than-average William Hurt) but he ultimately fails and the second half of the movie is just loud ruckus.
So much of this movie doesn’t make since. When the military is after Banner, they only go as far as chasing him and shooting with darts but when he turns into the Hulk, they go at him with every missile, bomb and bullet they have. Why don’t they just shoot him dead when he is 5-foot, 8-inches Norton? That is just one example.
The final battle, and I’m not giving anything since the scene is heavily played in every ad I’ve seen for this movie, is between big, bad Hulk and whatever Tim Roth turned into when he took some Hulk potion. This is the point where the movie’s actors completely exit the movie and leave it to big cartoon character to fill the screen. This was too true of Iron man,” but at least that movie was exciting and enticing to watch prior and had this thing called “character development.”
Ultimately, Hulk ’08 proved to be unnecessary and trite. Which is too bad because with its premier film, “Ironman,” Marvel Studios was poised to become the Pixar of superhero movies. So let’s hope “Hulk” was a misstep.
Go see it if you liked: “Transformers,” “Iron Man”
Grade: C