[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/QnBNTtgo2mY" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /] Ok, admittedly my secret nerd is currently undergoing a Renaissance Age unseen since 1999, that epic summer where The Matrix, the Star Wars prequel (as craptacular as it was), Fight Club and Princess Mononoke all came out to much nerd fanfare. But with Iron Man debuting this week, then the ever-awaited-yet-never-hoped-to-expect Indy sequel later this month, it’s like if my inner 10th Level Paladin was given a Veritech Fighter to fly to Hoth to watch the entire Starblazers series on a futuristic, football field-sized screen (non-nerds don’t even bother Googling this nonsense). And to top it all off, Edward Norton’s take on The Incredible Hulk is due to hit theaters June 13th.
It is Nerd Carnivale this summer.
[please note the above video is not 10 mins long – it only says that to keep up the HD quality]
Anyway, I’m not 100% sold on this yet, seeing as the usually untouchable Ang Lee and Eric Bana plopped such a massive celluloid stool sample last time around. But Edward Norton usually can be trusted (Italian Job and Death To Smoochy notwithstanding, and did you hear he’s directing the adaptation of Motherless Brooklyn?!), so who knows. Also, the usually discerning Harry Knowles of AICN read the script and says this of the screenplay:
“I love that he mined the original Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno television series for material. That classic series was pretty goddamn great…Now some folks tend to think of this as a remake, it isn’t. It’s a stylistic shift – and continuation from the first film. I love that Banner is trying to hide from the world – while trying to come to grips with what’s inside of him.”
Now my biggest complaint about the Lee/Bana interpretation was that there was simply no tension — Bana never really fought becoming the Hulk. He got a little surly and bam, next thing you know, shredded jeans. The thing that made the TV show so epic was Bill Bixby’s utter fear in turning into the Hulk. If he started getting mad, you could feel his desperation in trying anything to placate the mad beast within. As a viewer, you were torn: of course you wanted to see Lou Ferrigno unleashed, and Hulk smash!, but there a large part of you that felt Bixby’s pain, and didn’t want him to have to suffer all the repurcussions of his transformation. So every jolt, every agitation, was a cause of concern and dissonance in the viewer himself. There was real motivation to actually NOT see the Hulk manifest. With Bana’s Hulk, it was just like whatever — turn into the green guy and bust shit up already. (Plus, the effects were pretty gawdawful). It seems by what Knowles says that the filmmakers were much more cognizant of this apprehension, of Banner’s inner turmoil. Hopefully, that will translate into a better film. But who knows — the effects still look a bit iffy, but better. All I know is, come June 12th, you’ll probably know where to find me about midnight…
Oh, and one more clincher: the Hulkster dukes it out with the Abomination.
Nerds, prepare for light speed… Do yourselves a favor and go see the trailer in large format: http://www.apple.com/trailers/universal/theincrediblehulk/
