The Incredible Hulk

It's good. Lots of action, not much story or character development. But lots of action.

It is structured as follows: chase, battle, short pause for talk, chase, battle, short pause for talk, big battle, the end. So, they may have set the bar a bit low, but they have certainly achieved their target. And it must be said that the few short scenes of character development are very good and make me wish Norton had won his battle to make it a longer film. Roll on the DVD release! (The blu-ray version will have 70 minutes of extra footage, according to the director!)

But, missing scenes aside, what we do get is still good. Sure, it's not Iron Man, but then it's not trying to be. More than anything else, it's just trying hard to be different from the previous Hulk film (which I loved). This film wants to entertain you every step of the way, so it rarely pauses for breath. Somebody is always running, jumping and hitting someone else. And the producers are hoping you are invested enough in the characters as it is, without them stopping to talk very much about what is happening to them.

And it mostly works. We do know these characters, so we do care. And even if we don't know who they are we can see that Banner looks sad, keeps staring at a picture of pretty girl and has a nice dog, so we are going to like him. And Blonsky shows up and is mean to the dog, so we know to dislike him! (It's not rocket science, people. Pay attention!!)

The film also manages to tie itself to the superb Bill Bixby television series in a million different ways (something the previous film chose not to do). Which makes it seem like a very humble film, approaching us with head bowed offering gifts to please us. The first film is a favourite of mine, but it wasn't a crowd-pleaser. This one has a real air of "Hey, sorry about that. Look, there's more to the Hulk than that. He smashes stuff! Remember the old TV series? The Hulk can be fun!"

And...

It was. I hope there's a Hulk 3 and they keep everyone from this one on board. "B+"