There’s a funny moment in Japanese maverick filmmaker Takeshi Miike’s Full Metal Yakuza (‘Part man. Part machine. All yakuza”) that says a lot about superhero movies. The protagonist, who’s rather useless both as a gangster and romantically, is beaten to near-death by some assailants, then resuscitated and mechanically enhanced à la RoboCop by a mad scientist. When he comes to, he discovers that on top of his new superpowers he now has an enormous penis too!
This is amusing because in superhero movies mild-mannered reporters and researchers are transformed into superhuman figures with hyper-masculine, hyper-macho powers — great strength, mega-muscled bodies and so on. But somewhere behind all that mythic male enlargement there is a question about the quintessential masculine appendage — and it’s something traditional superhero movies tend to avoid addressing openly. A Freudian might say that the engorged superhero body is in fact the displaced image of another, hidden organ.
Certainly, the issue is finessed in the new movie of The Incredible Hulk. Apart from a scene in which the Hulk’s ordinary persona, Bruce Banner, has some sexual trouble because he can’t let his heart rate get too high (or he transforms), it’s a bit of a puzzle. There are jokes about his needing big stretchy pants in case he suddenly becomes the Hulk and quadruples in size, but even without them his usual jeans don’t actually fall off, ripped to shreds though they may be. Likewise, his equally Hulk-like opponent (Tim Roth) undergoes an even more dramatic transformation but, naturally, his broekies stay on.
This new Hulk replaces Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk. That was a somewhat ironic, pop-art view of the superhero and a box-office flop; I think we’re meant to forget it ever existed. The new movie starts again at the beginning, though thankfully it doesn’t waste much time on explaining how scientist Banner acquires the tendency to become a great big green ravening monster who looks like four or five Arnold Schwarzeneggers shrink-wrapped into one body.
We get that background (experiment goes wrong, of course) in a swift montage sequence practically before the credits have rolled. The story proper starts with Banner (Edward Norton) on the run in Brazil, keeping away from the American military-industrial complex and trying not to let his heart rate get too high. If that happens he pops his shorts and turns into the Hulk, who is pretty much the personification of rage. Why he’s green and not red, the usual colour of rage, is not clear.
At any rate, this Hulk is not the bright green of the comics or the TV series starring Lou Ferrigno (who gets an amusing nod in this movie). He’s closer in colour to a dirty sort of algae, which is rather more convincing, insofar as any of this is convincing. The style of the film is not comic-booky as in Ang Lee’s version, but reaches for a more hard-edged documentary effect: as far as the opening chase through the streets of a Third World city is concerned, someone certainly took notes while watching The Bourne Ultimatum.
Overall, The Incredible Hulk will, I think, appeal to longstanding superhero fans as well as updating the story efficiently for a new generation. It’s a lot of fun, despite its plot holes (how does Banner cross borders?), and Marvel has learned from Iron Man: it helps to hire real actors, or at least performers with personalities. Apart from Norton and Roth, both of whom can act, we have the estimable William Hurt in a key role. Liv Tyler as the love interest hasn’t the same range, but she looks right and has appropriately quivery eyes and lips — so all the bases are covered.