I don't need every Marvel protagonist to be a quip machine, but I do need the movies to make some kind of statement about their protagonist. First off, Norton's Banner remains a cipher throughout the entire movie. This is especially true when it comes to the characters. Here, in the place of unsettling animal experimentation, we only get flashes of the failed experiment that turned Bruce Banner ( Edward Norton) into the Hulk a bruised Betty Ross ( Liv Tyler) in a hospital bed recovering from Banner's first monstrous transformation Bruce fleeing for his life because her father, mean military man Thaddeus Ross ( William Hurt), is obsessed with turning Bruce's body into a weapon and documents that feature Easter Egg words like "Stark Industries" and "Nick Fury" and "S.H.I.E.L.D," all of which are meant to remind us that this was indeed connected to that other superhero movie that came out a month ago. It crams all of that information into a self-serious opening credits sequence that feels like a complete rejection of Ang Lee's The Hulk from 2003 (which began with a nightmarish Danny Elfman-scored sequence that unfolded with the maniacal energy of a mad scientist). Directed by Louis Leterrier, The Incredible Hulk isn't an origin story, which is fairly surprising given that most of the Phase One movies were.
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