The Hulk dammit...some one tell me about the Hulk. I won't get to see it until after Amersfoort. How did the CGI look? How were the rage scenes? Details, I need details.

My mouth was agape for the last 30 minutes of the movie because it looked so farking amazing. i'll just say that much. Way better than Spiderman, and some of the best CG work ever done. There's always shots that don't look that great, but the ones that worked worked so well as to "step it up a notch" in the CG arena.

Arrgh, I got to see it. It opens next Wed in Paris.

I've been following the project for the past few years. Coming Attractions had a some great pictures of the early effects work. The test make-up they were doing, even before Ang Lee signed on, was amazing.

Everyone is bithing about the poor CGI, mainly of the far away shots. I think I agree from what I've seen in the commercials, but I'm not going to this one for the special effects. I'm going for the superhero movie. It really is a different type of movie and I feel the need to watch it in a different way. I don't expect it to be the best cinema, but I love the stories that are told. That is how I've approached all these movies.

Batman had pretty lame effects, but I always liked the story.

Anyway, I can't wait to see it. I also like the actors a lot.

How did it compare to the previews? I saw the previews and wrote it off as CG so fake looking it wasn't worth seeing. It really seemed like The-Jolly-Green-Giant-Gets-Angry to me. I've never read the comic books or anything, so I was really judging it as a stand alone piece which I'm sure most people here aren't. So, are the previews representative and the movie just isn't for me, or should I see it anyways?

Matthew

The far away shots are the only ones that i would call poor... mostly because of the coloring. But the close up shots are unfuckingbelievable. A lot of the preview shots were cleaned up.

Whoever criticized the effects for being fake looking must not have seen the same shots i did. MOST of them were highly impressive.

I'd say see it if you are an effects nut. I'm usually highly critical of effects, and like i said, the ones that were good were SO good that i quickly forgot about the few bad ones. Just see it, and watch the subtle details in the full shots of the hulk... there are muscles and veins pumping EVERYWHERE. It's insane. The close ups are equally insane. The facial acting and body movements are nuts.

I could have done without the jumping around everwhere, but the good stuff still outweighs the bad for me.

Ignore the critics, who the hell listens to them anyway, just go see it without any preconcieved notions and you'll be impressed.

just go see it without any preconcieved notions...

IMO, that's the only way to see a movie. Good suggestion.

yeah, i've made a concerted effort to not read reviews or even listen to friends critiques until i see the movie myself. Even then, my mood often determines whether or not i'll like a movie. I can guarantee if i'd have seen the hulk on a Saturday night instead of during lunch break on Friday, i would have felt different about it.

I thought that "The Hulk" was fantastic. It had some depth in the plot, the acting was decent, the characters well developed, and the effects - as everyone else has said - were absolutely breathtaking!!!

See this on the big screen. It demands and deserves it.

I'm compelled to give this last pugnacious parting shot: Compare this summer blockbuster to something like "Independence Day" and you can see what crap that flick was.

- Jon

Independance Day
Everyone dig out those dinky apple laptops and start hack, hack, hacking!

Sorry I am a little late on this thread, but I saw it tonight and had to vent.

The Hulk is quite possibly the biggest turd of a movie I have ever seen. I was appalled that they fed this to us. The characters were insipid, the dialogue beyond banal, the pacing pure drudgery, and the editing pathetic. I walked out. I have only once before in my life walked out of a movie. I frigging walked out. It must have been like 80% done, but I just could not take anymore. I did not care what happened to these characters anymore and it was getting more stupid by the second. I can not imagine a worse piece of crap than this thing. Worse than Starship Troopers, worse than Soldier, worse than frigging Waterworld for god's sake. I feel personally insulted by this movie, I am massively angry that I wasted 2 hours of my life on it, and I will never EVER watch anything that Ang Lee ever puts out again. Ever.

Ever.

Argh!

I quite liked Starship Troopers. Take it for what it is, and don't expect any depth.

If you want depth and meaning watch french films.

I quite liked Starship Troopers.

Did You read the book? Because I was mildly entertained by the movie until I read the book. Then it just killed it for me because it could have been so much better (and they just destroyed the theme of the book).

Worse than Waterworld? I thought that movie was pretty effen killer!

I think Waterworld is a movie that evokes strong feelings, either negative or positive. I've never met someone that "kinda liked it."

Starship Troopers is a fun movie especially the plays on propaganda, but it should really be considered separately form the book which is very, very good.

Indeed! Starship Troopers was the very first DVD that I bought when I purchased my surround sound system and dvd player many years ago and I actually found it enjoyable; the wife didn't care for it but the sound was most excellent.

You are so right, the book was SOOO much better. I mean, what happened to the skinny's? What happened to the ape suits? What happened to the bulkhead that the non-com's weren't allowed to go through that separated the men from the women? That was a cool freakin' book. Then again, I liked Stranger in a Strange Land, so...

For those that haven't read the book, the ape suits are basically small mech-warrior suits, complete with jump jets and rocket launchers. They call them ape suits because, wel, they look like apes. A very good read, especially if you even somewhat like Sci-Fi.

There's a very interesting essay comparing Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Verhoeven's Starship Troopers, including some material about potential misconceptions about the novel.

Thoughts on Starship Troopers

I'm using it as a basis for my similar comparison of Dick's The Minority Report and Spielberg's Minority Report, complete with excoriation of the latter. One of these days I'll finish.

For folks like me:

ex·co·ri·ate ( P ) (k-skôr-t, -skr-)
tr.v. ex·co·ri·at·ed, ex·co·ri·at·ing, ex·co·ri·ates
1- To tear or wear off the skin of; abrade.
2- To censure strongly; denounce: an editorial that excoriated the administration for its inaction.


So I have to ask: does Spielberg's skin fit nicely?

Neat article and clearly written with a solid understanding of the book. Anyone who has questions about the noveI would do good to read it. He also does a good job of constrasting the movie from the book. I especially like the line

Paul Verhoeven, Jon Davison, and Ed Neumeier's Twisted Parody of a Book They Claim They Liked But Have Done Everything to Befoul is simply too long for casual use.

Have you actually read Starship Troopers? It’s really an excellent book, though as I said, reading it made the movie very irritating.

I'm interested to read your comparison of The Minority Report as it's another movie that completely disregarded the themes of the original work. I don’t know why movie makers do this sort of thing. Getting facts wrong is understandable for a different medium, but changing the themes of a work is just plain wrong even if you don’t agree with the original vision. It'd sort of be like making Atlas Shrugged with John Galt as a Communist. I'm not a big Rand fan, but I wouldn't be the one making that movie.

Have you actually read Starship Troopers? It’s really an excellent book, though as I said, reading it made the movie very irritating.

To be honest, no. But I had a friend years ago who was obsessed with Heinlein, and I feel like I've read it all. Another friend who was a Heinlein fan was put out by the movie when it came out for the exact reasons that the author of that article was, and I thought it was interesting that they had nearly identical views of it.

> I'm using it as a basis for my similar comparison of Dick's The Minority Report and Spielberg's Minority Report

I would like to read it as well. I actually liked the movie quite a bit, more than Dick's story. No doubt the movie had very little to do with the original though, other than idea of precogs and the main character's name there was almost no similiarity. It should not have even been called Minority Report since the "Minority report" was absolutly irrelevant in the movie. But taking the movie on purely its own merits, I thought the movie dealt with a lot of really interesting issues and was a good little whodunnit story to boot.

As for Troopers, I have never read the book (not a big Heinlein fan) so I have to take the movie purely on its own merits, of which it has very few. Sub-par special effects, 2 dimensional characters and trite dialogue, laughable fight scenes (that were not MEANT to be laughed at), and just over the top campiness.

If MST3K was still on the air, I would expect Starship Troopers to make it on there eventually. It has that kind of quality.

I thought the movie dealt with a lot of really interesting issues and was a good little whodunnit story to boot.

To spoil my own essay, the basic theme is that the story brings up hard morla issues and forces you to deal with them while the movie brings them up and then dismisses them because, basically, ``well, it didn't work anyway''.

That being said, the whodunnit was not half bad and the crux of it was actually reasonably clever. There was a lot of the rest of it that was just laughable, though.

The main thing that struck me at the end of the movie (having not read the book) is that if you take the intro to the movie seriously, the end can’t be as “happy” as it seemed to make out. Sure we have a victory for personal freedom, but at the expense of now going back to a system where murder was an almost unstoppable crime that was debilitating society. But hey, Tom Cruise is ok, right? That means everything’s going to be all right.

This is fine for Hollywood, which glosses over issues all the time, but good Sci-Fi is deeper than that. My initial thought after seeing the movie was “that was a semi-good time” and my thoughts after reading the short story were “why didn’t they make this movie?”

The short story wasn’t really a “whodunit”, and I’ll admit (along with Bitt apparently) that that aspect of the movie was kind of neat. However, they had to give us something after totally destroying the story and I don’t feel the tradeoff was worth it.

I think the "happy ending" syndrome is a particularly Hollywood deal. I much prefer the "Das Boot" or "Crouching Tiger" type ending (how is that for two radically different movies!).
At least they make you think at the end, but that is more common in non-hollywood type movies, less suger even in a fantasy movie.

I like happy endings (depending on the genre); I just don't like the movie telling me something is a happy ending when it really isn't. There's still a major issue to be dealt with at the end of MR (rampant murder), and they have no plan of how to deal with it. I suppose the argument could be that culture has changed so that murder is less of an issue, but I have a hard time buying that when they're about to release thousands of "murderers" onto the streets.

I had today off because of Bastille day so I finally got to see the Hulk. Awww yeah

It was great. The jet and tank scenes were excellent. Especially the scene where the hulk is walking around with the turret club.

IMHO, the only downside was the back story slowed the action down initially but afterward, it was a very fun roller coaster ride. I will need a second viewing I am sure.

Makes me want to dig out my comics.