Everything I LOVE About Hulk (2003)

[Music] this week marks the 20th anniversary of angley's divisive superhero film Hulk I'm not sure that's an anniversary many people will be celebrating here on YouTube but the fact is that this movie made a huge impression on me as a kid and it remains one of my all-time favorite superhero movies to this day so of course I wanted to do something to Mark the occasion the only problem is I already made a super in-depth video essay a few years ago about Hulk in which I said pretty much everything I have to say about it if you haven't seen that video I go into some of the behind the scenes on the movie talk about how it handles the themes of masculinity trauma abuse anger and I'm not gonna lie it gets pretty emotional at times I don't want to turn you away from this video before it's even started but I would really recommend you go and check that other video out it's probably the one I'm most proud of here on panels pixels and I still get messages from people all the time who say that it affected them or resonated with them in a certain way which is really cool I appreciate that anyway suffice to say that's not what this video is going to be this is going to be a bit more of a casual thing where I go beat by beat through the movie and pick out some of my favorite details hey Heroes I'm Josh from panels to pixel and this is everything I love about Hulk foreign off the bat I really like the way these opening credits are done just the way it's shot the mix of CGI and real-life microbiology which we'll get to in a little bit I read that Angley wanted to use a lot of Natural Science imagery to kind of back up the the fantasy science of Marvel Comics and it was all based on attributes that the Hulk actually has so you see the starfish with regenerative Powers the the jellyfish that turn green and sea cucumbers that grow thick hard skin it's a cool detail I've also got to talk about the Danny Elfman score which you know it's not on the same level as is Batman or even a Spider-Man score but this is still a great superhero score here we get our first look at Bruce Banner's Father David Banner that's David not Brian as it is in the comics the film changes his name to David as a kind of tip of the cap to the 1970s Hulk TV show you see the makers of the TV show thought that Bruce Banner the illiterative comic book name was too goofy so Bill Bixby in that series plays David Banner instead of Bruce Banner I like that because not only does this film owe a lot to the 1970s TV show in terms of you know just the cultural impact of it and making the Hulk a multimedia a franchise but also there's kind of a meta narrative here because so much of this film is about Fathers and Sons and this film is The Offspring of the 70s Hulk series okay we've got to talk about some of these transitions because this is what this film is really known for people like to criticize these but um some of them work some of them don't I think Angley was really trying some stuff with this film I'll show some of my favorite ones as we keep going through the film but I do think they serve a narrative purpose and they they give a sense of forward momentum to the film as well as being obviously comic book inspired this transition is particularly wild I don't know if this one works to be honest because it's kind of heavy subject matter but it always gets a chuckle out of me here we get some more visualizations of genetics and this is real footage of kind of microbiology and this comes kirti of angley's wife who is a molecular biologist if you compare this to the CGI genetic representations in stuff like X-Men and other superhero films from the time you know these definitely have a much nicer aesthetic quality to them so throughout the film there's going to be this closed door Motif and I talked about it in my original Hulk video uh yeah it's just a really nice Motif and I really appreciate the way it's peppered in throughout the film evidently the door represents repression of trauma and and childhood experiences and Bruce's fear is ultimately realized when that door opens and the Hulk comes out here we have a double whammy of a cameo it doesn't get better than this Stan Lee co-creator of the Hulk and Lou Ferrigno who played the Hulk in the original TV series Lou Ferrigno would play a screw scarred again in the 2008 Incredible Hulk film so in my head Canon he's one of the linchpins of the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse we've got to talk about Eric Banner's performance as Bruce Banner his dynamic range in this film is incredible he goes from you know really small meek and Mild to some some pretty wild stuff later on but one of the things that I really like about him is he brings the pathos out of Bruce Banner he makes him a really sympathetic character in a way that I think it would be easy to take that Meek and Mild geek character and make him unlikable but that's not what's going on here you you like Bruce Banner and you really feel for him as it goes on speaking of Great Performances Jennifer Connolly as Betty Ross you know she's really good as well she isn't just the teary Damsel in Distress or love interest you know there's a lot of depth to her as well and she's a fully three-dimensional character I love this 2000s lab aesthetic lots of beige computers and CRT monitors this stands in stark contrast to the military kind of technology that we see later in the film and you know it makes you feel very grounded you know this is a real academic research lab just Lucas as Glenn Talbot is so unlikable in this film it's a great performance because you just hate him he's got such a slappable face he's a total douchebag and he makes his ultimate end all the more satisfying so in addition to the insane transitions throughout the film you get these comic book style multicam shots with lots of panels these were a real headache to film apparently and Eric Banner said that he hated how many takes of every scene they had to do to get all the coverage but I think it's a really interesting technique and you take away the kind of comic book veneer over it all it just adds a different dimension to filmmaking and and radically changes the pacing of these kind of shots you know you're taking in so much information at once more Great Performances here Sam Elliot as general Thaddeus Ross and you know Sam Elliot just elevates everything he's he's incredible what a voicemail Ang Lee was on something else this kind of looks like something out of iMovie or something but you know I love it and I also love how 70s like all the costume designers and stuff you know those chunky sweaters and things it really feels like a love letter to those old comics and the 70s Hulk series so even though the Hulk's origin is is changed around slightly you still get this gamma blast at Desert base Incorporated and I'm glad they did that because it's super iconic of all the batshit transitions this is one of my favorites there's absolutely no need for it you know but clearly they were playing around with things in the editing room and you know they liked it so again we had this visual motif of Nature and natural science and and it's all around the desert as well so it's like The Greenery in the desert I think that's really cool to me this is supposed to represent you know Nature's fight through Evolution or whatever through biology uh against like such a cold desolate landscape kind of a ruined landscape of the desert hey a Halloween reference I'll take that in any movie I can't believe I haven't mentioned Nick Nolte yet there's a lot of stories around his participation in this film uh one of them is that he grew his hair out to be all wild like it is and um that ended up on his mug shot because he got arrested for a DUI so on Nick Nolte's mug shot he's got the wild David Banner her I love the way the gamma reactor looks in this scene it's it's so imposing and so like heavy duty I think that the prop and set design for this film you know they understood the assignment as the kids said did the kids still say that and you know in a movie with such groundbreaking VFX this accident shot could look cheesy but it's got a throwback quality to it that I really enjoy you know again it's hearkening back to the 70s I love how quiet and morose the aftermath of the incident is you know you have this big dramatic climax the first dramatic climax of the film and it's immediately followed by this really small quiet intimate scene you know you brought back to reality and the reality is trauma okay I don't want to get to First Year film studies here but if you're familiar with the 180 degree rule you know I'm not going to go into it if you're not but it doesn't really matter but the point is is that Angley breaks it a lot in this film and you know there could be many reasons from doing that but for me it's about Duality you know that's the main theme of this film is Duality and that's the Duality between Bruce and the Hulk but then lots of other characters we'll talk about that a bit more as we go on so whenever he breaks that 180 degree rule to me that represents the two sides you know the yin and the Yang I love this dream sequence shot of the the jellyfish in the desert it's just aesthetically it's beautiful but also it comes back to that Duality thing it's a juxtaposition you know jellyfish shouldn't be in the desert you know it's a perversion of nature or whatever the door has been opened a lot of the nighttime scenes in this film are particularly this this point in the in the hospital are lit with this purple cast and I really love the way this looks you know it nodged towards the Hulk's iconic color scheme in the in the comics with the purple pants but it also adds a sense of surreality or or like heightened reality so like I mentioned earlier one of the strengths of the transitions is it keeps this forward momentum and and you get all these like little expository scenes weaving in and out that I think if they were cutaways from the main action without any of those quirky transitions I think it would feel very clunky and it really would you know bug the film down but it works here because it's weaved in and out in a more organic way I love all these science montages I I'm a big b-roll nerd and um and all these like like the microns and stuff it looks really cool and again we get purple and green which references the the Hulk's colors and you know there's a whole color theory around that in the comics as those being like morally ambiguous colors versus the primary blue and red and yellow colors that a lot of superheroes have but also purple and green are opposites on the color wheel so again we get this theme of juxtaposition and and kind of binary oppositions and as Ang Lee talked about wanting to incorporate into the film but when the film's being made the the Chinese philosophical concept of the yin and yang this film is all about Duality and it takes every opportunity to weave those themes in in the visual design Eric Banner does some great face acting here he really sells the transformation without any VFX so we're 40 minutes into the film at this point and we get our first look at the Hulk you know angley's doing the Hitchcock Spielberg thing of of the less you see the better and when we do eventually see the Jade Giant in all his glory he's kind of obscured by the lighting you know he's lit like an old monster movie which evokes Frankenstein and Jekyll and Hayden and all the old monster movies which were the original inspiration behind the character this Zoom cut has always made me laugh it's goofy but in the best way possible Hulk jumps nuff said I love a good Hulk jump looks great we also get the ripped purple pants you know we don't need a joke about how goofy they are it's just it's done Tastefully the way Betty looks at Bruce when he's eating the chicken he's very clearly giving her the ick but it tells us that he's transitioning into something wild something Savage Bruce is an absolute nutcase at this point and this is what I'm saying about Eric Banner you know he goes big in this film he's he's full range of his acting he's on display so I've got to tell you this story about Nick Nolte and you might have heard it before but according to Eric Banner whenever Nick Nolte was on set he would have an oxygen mask and tank and he would be breathing from it and at one point he lent into Eric banner and said I don't really need this it just makes people think you're crazy and they pay attention if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about Nick Nolte's approach to this film I don't know what will there's a lot of these like extreme close-ups on the face you know angli gets really tight on on people's faces and to me that is to kind of obscure their scale and make them kind of monster like you know I think one of the things I read into in this film in my original video essay is that there is a Hulk in every character in this film and in and in all of us we get the classic don't make me angry scene and I read that they shot the whole iconic line where he says you won't like me when I'm angry uh but they cut it because you know maybe it was too silly or whatever but you know it's cool to get that line in in some capacity and this second transformation which is our first seeing it actually happen in you know unobscured is really cool I really like the idea that this movie puts forward that the Hulk gets bigger as he gets more Angry you know it's like a nuclear reaction getting out of control some more Monster movies style shots here and I love how early we get to see the tenderness of the Hulk you know he hasn't really been in the film much but we're already getting to see that side which is essential I think okay so the dog scene is a point of ridicule uh for a lot of people and yeah it's kind of goofy but I think it's essential and I think the purpose of the dogs is for him to go full Savage at this point you know he's becoming animal and kind of a full Monster it even ends with the Hulk kind of catching himself being so brutal and Savage in front of Betty and and kind of realizing what he's become and staggering away in shame and then we get more Frankenstein imagery looking down and the reflection the like and again Reflections are a motif throughout the film there are these moments where the line between Bruce and the Hulk is blurred and maybe that's at odds with the traditional idea of of Bruce hulker's distinctive personalities but I think it's paid off in the climax where you see a kind of Union of the two personalities in this film so mindless what are we some kind of Suicide Squad I both love and hate when films do that That's all folks so interestingly if you're a Hulk Comics fan like I am uh David Banner represents an amalgamation of a lot of classic Hulk villains you know there's elements of the leader and the absorbing man and and later on Zacks it's an interesting way of bringing in those comic book elements but still keeping the central theme of the Father and Son relationship and this stuff in the desert is really inspired in my opinion because it's a real physical space so it's grounded in reality but such an open space kind of doubles as a sort of cerebral plane on which to have these you know big whatever metaphysical musings again one of the themes in this film which I talked about a little bit in my original video is the military industrial complex and again there's a lot of nuance in that and and this film handles that very well and then I love this shop just because it reminds me of weapon x the the comics and also the X-Men movies you know I love Weapon X I love anything that's like body Horror in a military science uh setting so this is cool so the big Revelation and kind of innovation to the The Hulk Mythos is that the Hulk Persona is a result of an abusive childhood and specifically an abusive father but actually this has its roots in the comics first by writer Bill mantlow and later Peter David maybe this is a bit at odds with the mainstream perception of the Hulk which is just a regular guy having an accident and becoming a monster but I really like how Angley brought all these themes together and ultimately a much more emotionally complex film than what mainstream audiences were expecting I think that's why the responses to this film were kind of mixed to negative let's face it this breakout shot was I think at the end of the original trailer and it looks so good I love the color of it it's just a great shot the knockout gas making halt sneeze is a fun detail because it shows that the military's greatest defenses are merely an irritant to the Hulk in a very literal sense Talbot's death here is is super goofy in comic bookie but quite right you know he's such a pitiful character I'm glad he meets such a flipping end I think the multicam shots again are most effective when the scene is frantic because it really accelerates the pace you know you're taking in so many things at once on screen and so for this Hulk breakout scene you know you're seeing every perspective everybody running frantically and this breakout scene is probably my favorite scene in the movie you know seeing the Hulk Limitless in this environment but then immediately you get this moment of quiet reflection and again this comes back to the duality of Hulk you know is he this big aggressive monster or is he this quiet quite tender creature who just wants to be left alone and so in this movie about a big angry monster the military are the are the aggressors and this is nothing new for Hulk's storytelling of course but it's done very well here and I think that's a detail that easily could either be misunderstood or or misrepresented you really do sympathize with the Hulk in this film and I think that is absolutely critical but even in such a serious movie you can't pass up enough opportunity for some man getting hit by football style slapstick humor contest is over give that man a 10 000 a dollar I haven't really brought you up till now but the visual design of the Hulk is great it's aged really well considering that it's now you know 20 years old and this was groundbreaking CGI at the time and I I love the way he moves as well he moves in a very realistic way ever since I found out that Angeli himself did the motion capture for the Hulk movements I can't help but see his mannerisms in in the film because I've seen all that behind the scenes footage in him going around in the ping pong suits and leaping around hulking around speaking of Leaping around man I could watch the Hulk leaping around a desert all day I could watch a whole movie of that it's so Zen so calming you get a Good the Bad and the Ugly stare off between Hulk and Ross here there's extreme close-ups on the eyes and once again I'm going to talk about Duality because not only do you have The Duality between Bruce and the Hulk I.E man and monster you have Father and Son you have Nature and Science which is sometimes posed by David Banner as as The Duality between God and man you have masculinity and femininity and then there's the duality of Hulk and general Ross who are two sides of the same coin of aggression and there are quite a few moments throughout the film where their faces are paralleled with similar framing between the two characters to represent this this whole sequence in the Rocky Mountains is is so gorgeous the whole film is gorgeous honestly it's aged like a fine wine it's got that really gritty vibrant film texture to it that I really enjoy you can't have a superhero movie set in California without a threat to the Golden Gate Bridge Okay so Bruce shaving and looking at his reflection in the mirror it's kind of hinted at a few times throughout the film and his classic Hulk imagery this is referencing loads of stuff from the comics but we finally get to see it here with the Hulk smashing through and grabbing Bruce this shot was a huge part of the press for the film I remember seeing it on TV spots all the time back in 2003 and it's become an iconic part of Hulk imagery to me it's also the first time we hear the Hulk speak but obviously this is in Bruce's psyche it's like a dream sequence but that might be significant later you can't have a Hulk movie without any Inner City Rampage right this CGI is kind of hideous to look at this is one of the few VFX that has aged really poorly in my opinion but I do love the imagery of the Hulk shrinking into Betty's arms and becoming you know really fresh Roger and this is a real moment of grief for Betty as she realizes that Bruce is beyond help and you feel that as the audience even Ross's face shows a flash of compassion for Bruce so now we get to the final Face-Off between Bruce and David and I love how staged like this is just two chairs lit from above in a kind of infinite black space it's all very waiting for gutter this must have been a dream for these kind of intense actors you know they can just completely turn it up to 11 and do the big theatricals and Nick Nolte goes absolutely ham you know he's chewing scenery like you've never seen so yeah like I mentioned earlier David Banner becomes this being of pure electrical energy which is definitely riffing on Zacks from the comics so this big fight gets so big that it actually becomes kind of abstract it almost becomes so macro that it becomes micro in a way the environmental factors are removed and it just becomes a battle of these two psyches and it all culminates in the Hulk seeing his father reflected in him in the water which is a blink and you'll miss it detail but it really ties everything together and In This Moment he realizes that to give in to anger is to let his father win to become like him to take it all I love this shot of Hulk versus the big evil father Cloud you know the arching metaphor of this film couldn't be more literal in this moment and it's an interesting choice to end this scene with a flashback to a tender moment between Bruce and his father why show the main villain of the film being loving because he hasn't had a Redemption but I think it actually represents Bruce coming to terms with his relationship with his father and in turn his relationship with himself I think I think one year later epilogue also tells us a lot about Betty and Ross their relationship isn't fully healed but clearly Ross is remorseful in some way I think Ross's Arc ultimately sees him learning from David Banner's mistakes as a father and then we end with this scene of Bruce living off the grid as a medical doctor in the Amazon and this was probably tapped on as sequel Bay but I think it works as a pretty definitive ending for this version of the character clearly his perspective has shifted he's working altruistically as a doctor and he seems somewhat in control of the Hulk and the last thing I want to mention I can't play here but Set Me Free by Velvet Revolver plays over the end credits and it's such a banger what an absolute early 2000s commercial Rock Bop I Love It and that's everything I love about Hulk thanks for watching this video again I really would recommend going and checking out my original video and also go and watch this movie if you haven't for a long time clearly I can't say enough good things about it if you like this video let me know by leaving a like let me know down in the comments what you think about this movie and also don't forget to subscribe to panels to pixels give that Bell icon a little ringa ding ding so you never miss out on future uploads and hey until next time stay safe take care of yourselves and I'll see you in the next video bye foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Panels to Pixels

Views: 22,220

Keywords: everything i love about hulk, everything great about hulk, hulk movie, hulk 2003, ang lee hulk, eric bana hulk, hulk retrospective, hulk review, panels to pixels hulk, panels to pixels, panelstopixels

Id: _dfomR7jKBA

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 24 2023