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Jun. 18th, 2008 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI won't apologize for it: I thought The Incredible Hulk was a lot of fun.
Is it great cinema? Probably not. Did it amuse and entertain me throughout it's length, sometimes surprisingly so? Absolutely! Entirely decent tribute to the character's ethos and pathos. Funny tributes that were not obnoxious to both comics and the old series. (For real, y'alls, Lou Ferrigno was also the VOICE of the Hulk in addition to having a cameo. That was...fucking brilliant!) They got laughs out of me, genuine ones. I dunno where else you can go with this as a series (you know that that is what they want, difficult star or no). I think its stands on its own, a little melodramatic, but cute. I'd love to see the Hulk be used in other movies (more on that below), but I don't think he can carry another picture by himself.
Edward Norton is still a weird choice. (Not as weird as James Spader in this fic I read this one time, but still). He's not bad--he's actually very good, as ever. He's just...weird. As a consequence, however, I'd say the Hulk was extremely sympathetic because the weird little dude that is Banner turns into this rather cuddly sort of giant green toddler with the same issues. It's less Jekyll-and-Hyde that way--Hulk isn't just rage on super steroids, he's actually the same guy who can, as the Hulk, only barely recognize himself. I like the integrative result even if Banner spent most of his conscious time going "Nope, totally not me when I turn into that thing. Just rage talking." He's totally wrong.
Speaking of integrative, I actually am really digging the crossover-ing. SHIELD came into play (in name only), and most people know about who showed up in the end. And it works! As I was ever-so-officiously telling![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ivy03 and feiran, crossing over storylines and heroes is entirely how Marvel succeeded in upstaging DC after some decades of always being the superhero comic stepchild. Stan Lee's characters weren't necessarily genius (as we noted last night, he threw everything at the wall, and we just think he's a genius because some things stuck, especially when other people wrote them), but the man himself had a keen eye for business and he understood how to sell his properties. Now that Marvel is its own studio, all those characters not already bought up by other studios are free to move between movies.
Best part: it feels seamless. That was the trick with the cross-over in the comics, too: you couldn't let the characters operate in a vacuum with respect to one another. It deepens the world to have Spider-Man have to deal with mutants. To have the X-Men consult and use the technology created by Reed Richards. It cuts down on the overlap--i.e. there aren't simultaneous creative geniuses working to produce superhero shortcuts in each comic. Well, okay, there's Stark and Richards and Banner's damned smart, too, but the overlap isn't as bad as it could be. Establish major players like the aforementioned men, and you don't need to create a Q character for everyone.
So, General Ross needs armored trucks. Who do you think he gets them from? But of course: Stark Industries. When we need international cooperation to track a fugitive, you don't call Interpol in the Marvel-verse. You get SHIELD. These things get recycled and they become as much a part of the story as the characters. Their world starts to make more and more sense because they have these things that they can all take for granted as existing. They have SHIELD, we have Homeland Security. Neither organization seems intimately known to the general public, but we have a vague idea of what it's supposed to do. Playing on that, you can have SHIELD do just about anything and we've got Homeland Security as a reference. "Oh, so that's what they do. Good on them for employing Samuel L. "Motherfucking" Jackson."
I think it's brilliant. :)
In other news, I hired cleaners for today who ended up being an hour late. So I can't stay the whole time they are here and I'm running back to work and then back home again to pay them and let them out. I'm not happy about it, but I'm more sanguine than I was this morning. They seem nice and didn't mind taking some direction from me. (I asked them to do the kitty room first so I could pen the cats up when I went to work.)
Being home meant I could let in the inspector, the manager, and the super. They looked at things. Asked me a couple of questions. Nothing serious. At one point, shortly after the inspector asked me about mice, I thought I caught the manager saying that "you should clean," re: our messy place, but I think what he said was that "we keep it clean" because the next thing he said was "there are no mice." I suppose he was talking about the building. I let it go only because I knew myself to be in a bad mood and didn't need to push it.
When the inspector asked if there were any problems, I mentioned the window in the living room that didn't open. (Sorry,feiran, but I wasn't sure if yours was okay or not.) The Super gave me some kind of look over his shoulder and the manager threw him at the problem. Clearly, they didn't want a bad review to go down or anything. I didn't intend to get anyone in trouble, but if he was trying to give me a panicked, kill-it-with-the-problems-why-don't-you? gesture, I didn't give it any attention. The window didn't open, and for the first time ever that he's been around, I was at leisure to insist he fix it. He did and dragged both the others back to look at it. I'm sorry if that makes him look poorly, but honestly, I don't think it was so bad a thing that it should have done. So there :P
And now the cleaning ladies are here, and I'm about to head out to work. Tra-la!
Is it great cinema? Probably not. Did it amuse and entertain me throughout it's length, sometimes surprisingly so? Absolutely! Entirely decent tribute to the character's ethos and pathos. Funny tributes that were not obnoxious to both comics and the old series. (For real, y'alls, Lou Ferrigno was also the VOICE of the Hulk in addition to having a cameo. That was...fucking brilliant!) They got laughs out of me, genuine ones. I dunno where else you can go with this as a series (you know that that is what they want, difficult star or no). I think its stands on its own, a little melodramatic, but cute. I'd love to see the Hulk be used in other movies (more on that below), but I don't think he can carry another picture by himself.
Edward Norton is still a weird choice. (Not as weird as James Spader in this fic I read this one time, but still). He's not bad--he's actually very good, as ever. He's just...weird. As a consequence, however, I'd say the Hulk was extremely sympathetic because the weird little dude that is Banner turns into this rather cuddly sort of giant green toddler with the same issues. It's less Jekyll-and-Hyde that way--Hulk isn't just rage on super steroids, he's actually the same guy who can, as the Hulk, only barely recognize himself. I like the integrative result even if Banner spent most of his conscious time going "Nope, totally not me when I turn into that thing. Just rage talking." He's totally wrong.
Speaking of integrative, I actually am really digging the crossover-ing. SHIELD came into play (in name only), and most people know about who showed up in the end. And it works! As I was ever-so-officiously telling
ivy03 and feiran, crossing over storylines and heroes is entirely how Marvel succeeded in upstaging DC after some decades of always being the superhero comic stepchild. Stan Lee's characters weren't necessarily genius (as we noted last night, he threw everything at the wall, and we just think he's a genius because some things stuck, especially when other people wrote them), but the man himself had a keen eye for business and he understood how to sell his properties. Now that Marvel is its own studio, all those characters not already bought up by other studios are free to move between movies. Best part: it feels seamless. That was the trick with the cross-over in the comics, too: you couldn't let the characters operate in a vacuum with respect to one another. It deepens the world to have Spider-Man have to deal with mutants. To have the X-Men consult and use the technology created by Reed Richards. It cuts down on the overlap--i.e. there aren't simultaneous creative geniuses working to produce superhero shortcuts in each comic. Well, okay, there's Stark and Richards and Banner's damned smart, too, but the overlap isn't as bad as it could be. Establish major players like the aforementioned men, and you don't need to create a Q character for everyone.
So, General Ross needs armored trucks. Who do you think he gets them from? But of course: Stark Industries. When we need international cooperation to track a fugitive, you don't call Interpol in the Marvel-verse. You get SHIELD. These things get recycled and they become as much a part of the story as the characters. Their world starts to make more and more sense because they have these things that they can all take for granted as existing. They have SHIELD, we have Homeland Security. Neither organization seems intimately known to the general public, but we have a vague idea of what it's supposed to do. Playing on that, you can have SHIELD do just about anything and we've got Homeland Security as a reference. "Oh, so that's what they do. Good on them for employing Samuel L. "Motherfucking" Jackson."
I think it's brilliant. :)
In other news, I hired cleaners for today who ended up being an hour late. So I can't stay the whole time they are here and I'm running back to work and then back home again to pay them and let them out. I'm not happy about it, but I'm more sanguine than I was this morning. They seem nice and didn't mind taking some direction from me. (I asked them to do the kitty room first so I could pen the cats up when I went to work.)
Being home meant I could let in the inspector, the manager, and the super. They looked at things. Asked me a couple of questions. Nothing serious. At one point, shortly after the inspector asked me about mice, I thought I caught the manager saying that "you should clean," re: our messy place, but I think what he said was that "we keep it clean" because the next thing he said was "there are no mice." I suppose he was talking about the building. I let it go only because I knew myself to be in a bad mood and didn't need to push it.
When the inspector asked if there were any problems, I mentioned the window in the living room that didn't open. (Sorry,
feiran, but I wasn't sure if yours was okay or not.) The Super gave me some kind of look over his shoulder and the manager threw him at the problem. Clearly, they didn't want a bad review to go down or anything. I didn't intend to get anyone in trouble, but if he was trying to give me a panicked, kill-it-with-the-problems-why-don't-you? gesture, I didn't give it any attention. The window didn't open, and for the first time ever that he's been around, I was at leisure to insist he fix it. He did and dragged both the others back to look at it. I'm sorry if that makes him look poorly, but honestly, I don't think it was so bad a thing that it should have done. So there :PAnd now the cleaning ladies are here, and I'm about to head out to work. Tra-la!
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 05:46 pm (UTC)