The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The Hulk is Bruce Banner, a scientist that had one of his experiments backfire on him, resulting in him turning into a large green monster with incredible size and strength. Banner would only turn into The Hulk by being angered and having his pulse rate heightened. This film is a reboot to the 2003 film Hulk, starring Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly, and was one of Marvels lowest achievements. For this rebooted version, they have replaced Bana with Edward Norton and Connelly with Liv Tyler. Personally I like Bana and Connelly, but they did take a step up with Norton and Tyler. One question still remains…Will we like Ed Norton when he is angry?

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Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)

Watching the first Hellboy the other night, I felt very underwhelmed. Sure, its a fun piece of popcorn entertainment but in terms of scope, especially when taking other del Toro projects into consideration, it feels very restrained. As far as adaptations go, it’s a fairly accurate and entertaining exploration of Red’s origins and while it does give us some classic villains (more specifically, Kroenen), it never gave me the vast array of creatures I expected. If anything, it’s a lesser del Toro but, when you realize that other mainstream director’s wish their filmography was half as good, that’s not exactly an insult.

When it underperformed at the box office, Columbia dropped the rights since they didn’t want to fund Revolution Studios anymore. Even as del Toro was receiving worldwide acclaim for Pan’s Labyrinth and comic book films had reached new record highs, the original was still not a “box office draw”. Luckily, Universal saw the potential and has given del Toro the budget he needed to create what will, no doubt, be the surprise hit of the summer.

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