M.M.M: Hulk... NOT THE POODLE

This is pretty much going to be a month of M's. All the movies have the M rating to them, but for right now, M means Marvel. Now that Avengers: Age of Ultron is upon us, its time to see just how the Marvel's Cinematic Universe started out. We're going to be looking at the first three phases of the MCU in what I call, the Marvel Movie Marathon, or M.M.M for short. Now before I begin, I will not be covering Guardians of the Galaxy in this marathon, I'll save it for when I review Phase 3 and 4. Also, unlike what was said in the last review, as it was changed after that review was recorded, I won't be covering Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D here either, I want to dedicate more time to it then what I have at the moment.

Now, the ones paying attention would noticed I wrote "first three phases", but referred to Phase 3 and 4 separately. The reason: unofficially, there's a phase 0. I'll get to why later, but for now, time to review the, unofficially, first film in the MCU: Hulk.

So what's the plot? Bruce Banner was born with a genetic modification that his father did to himself prior to birth. More science happens and the government pull the plug on his father's research, which was to create regenerating abilities for humans, akin to that of starfish. Years later, Bruce is trying the same thing, but using Gamma radiation. Something goes wrong, and The Hulk is released into the world. Army, led by General Ross, tries to take him down, father wants to take revenge on the government, which included a plan using gamma infused dogs, one dog being a Poodle... and that's it. Yeah... for a roughly two hour film, it doesn't do a lot as there's a lot of useless padding, nothing like Age of extinction where scenes could be cut completely and nothing would change, just a lot of padding that could have been trimmed with better writing.

I swear, this isn't edited, this is how it is in the movie

The problems don't just end with the writing though. I also have problems with the production. Most people speak in whispers, even at the very start of the movie before they've introduced the Hulk as anything other then blatant foreshadowing even a 2 year old could get. I had my volume, for both my computer and my DVD player software on max and I was still struggling to hear them at points. It gets better as the movie moves on, but its no excuse for the start. The other thing is that you can tell this was made with the mindset of Films in 1996-2001, when the focus was on the CGI. There's bad CG everywhere in this movie, even The Hulk, which looked better then he did, still doesn't look that good. They also love to use Multi cam, which is a editing tool, showing two camera feeds on screen at the same time, even for things like a man entering a room, something that could have easily been done in one take with one camera, they use multi cam. I get that it's to make it look more like a comic book, but it just looks stupid and redundant. At least on the plus side, they do acknowledge colour is a thing in the world. This was a time before Post production colour balancing was used. Even the music is bland, you're going to hear it because it becomes the loudest thing on screen, but even then, nothing about the songs are memorable. Just repetetive.

Gamma Radiation in 2003, again, I'm not editing these, these are directly from the movie

This is the first time I've ever seen this movie, and while it is better then what the stories I've herd say it is, its not by much. The movie's still not a great movie, just better then what I was expecting, even if it wasn't by much. It's better then some other Hulk interpretations before it, if that helps it at all... One last film left for phase 0, The Incredible Hulk. See ya Wednesday for that, but I've got something for you tomorrow, it won't work as well here, but it'll work for a more global audience.