As I sat through the amazingly indulged mediocrity that it The Incredible Hulk - and no, it's not like Iron Man where I was looking at the same ingredients and expressing different taste... this film is not even close to the quality of that other overrated summer Marvel - what suddenly struck me was...
Irwin Allen.
Producer of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost In Space, Land of The Giants, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno and inspiration for spectacular crap from Earthquake to Rollercoaster.
What struck me is that I need to buy some Marvel stock, because they are, indeed, about to go on a 2 or 3 year run of producing mediocre crap that appeals to a certain audience in much the same way Irwin Allen's stuff appealed to me. It was junk... but it was my junk. And really, there is nothing wrong with that, so long as you don't try to tell me that it's actually skilled work or remotely interesting in any way deeper than the first millionth of an inch of Giant Dill Pickle Man's skin.
The Incredible Hulk suddenly lit me up with the long line of how we got here… horrible movie after horrible movie doing over $100 million… from Daredevil to Fantastic Four to Ghost Rider to Iron Man to this… bad directors, talent having fallen from grace, lots of fake looking CG, and a solid core of ticket buyers.
Here’s another part of the phenomenon… the bigger suit.
Since Marvel took over their own productions, we are now 2-for-2 with first stories that include the hallmark of the first sequel… The Bigger Suit. Iron Man fought one. Hulk fights one. I sense a theme in development.
And this idea of stringing all the characters together, bit by bit. Genius.
Warner Bros has to step away from the bank vault and come to understand… no one in this demo much cares about whether the movie is actually good. Stop spending $200 million chasing ghosts of past successes. They want the pieces of film they are waiting for - the insider nods, the big fight, the overblown score - and they will not only come, but they will claim the work is GREAT.
The truth is, for all its flaws, there is not a single frame of The Incredible Hulk that contains a fragment of the artistry that Ang Lee brought to Hulk. Of course, the film was too long and the psychodrama too thick for most people. But there was true aesthetic beauty.
None here.
I hate to even pull this one out of the backpack, but Speed Racer? Genius in comparison. Every frame.
And Hellboy II is on the way. Can you imagine? Even if, somehow, there is a story problem, the magic of del Toro’s work… the f-ing trailer is more powerful than the entirety of TIH, squared.
And from the early look at Wall-E… neither Marvel entry even begins to aspire to a sliver of the magic that Pixar is chasing there.
Still, if the audience wants it, how can we be angry at it being handed to them? They wanted a Hulk movie where Hulk smashed and spoke words and destroyed two college campuses and New York City. Woo hoo!!!
It’s crap! I tell you. It’s crap!
But if you love crap – and I certainly have in my life – it’s what you might well want as you wait for the better movies of this summer to come.
And in a few years, Marvel will make the equivalent of The Swarm and this trend will be over. In the meanwhile, the stock price will soar!
So… how far can we be from Sensaround coming back?
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/06/marvel_at_a_new.html