Oh, I guess because I actually liked the last two Hulk movies that I didn't really notice anything remarkable about the new Hulk except that the green "other guy" looked better than previous incarnations, and Ruffalo gave my favorite performance as Bruce Banner. But hardly the first soul-tortured Banner on screen.
Thanks, though, for clearing something up for me. I had wondered why - since it was touted throughout the movie that Banner could not control the "other guy" if he got angry, he was suddenly able to do just that for the Big Transformers Battle.
But the Hulk as comic relief, the Hulk endangering a character we care about instead of a villain, and - as I just said - soulful tortured Bruce Banner - sorry, but these things were hardly invented by Joss Whedon. There have been two movies, two hundred television episodes and two thousand comic books stories about the Hulk. Nothing can be invented at this point, I would hazard to guess.
And I didn't mean "complete misfire" as thoughtful criticism, but rather as a sum-up phrase for my expanded criticism found previously.
Your comparison to the previous films is interesting, though. Ruffalo was a stand-out here, and he wasn't in any of the previous films. Johannsen was noticeably better than her brief appearance in one of those. But everyone else seemed less effective to me than they did in those previous incarnations. Maybe that was part of my let-down. But only part.
I'm willing to grant that a comic-book story with this many characters is going to be a bit convoluted and editorially difficult, and I'm willing to grant that a comic-book story with this many characters is going to be short on plot. But -though I'm also willing to grant it's all a matter of taste, absolutely nothing grabbed me during two-and-a-half hours. I was stupendously bored. It's not a movie I'm gonna give a second chance to. So that's my final answer. Bad Movie.
