Film and Comics: Ang Lee's Hulk

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Doc MacDougal
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Film and Comics: Ang Lee's Hulk

Post by Doc MacDougal »

A film theory essay I wrote in the fall about the Hulk movie is on-line at my department's web site (forgive the slow load time; it drives us nuts, too, if that's any consolation). This essay sort of served as a starting point for the thesis I'm writing now, though if I were writing it again now, I probably wouldn't say a lot of the things I did. But it was a useful exercise to start working out some of the relations between the two media.

Because it was written for a film theory class, it's kind of heavy on the film jargon and the comics theory is sketched rather broadly. So, I apologize in advance for that and would be happy to clarify any vocabulary if it's needed.

I thought it might also generate some discussion here. I'd be interested in other people's takes, whether on Hulk itself, anything in the essay, or the general topic of comics and film.

Thanks.

Ben.
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sorry for kidnapping your subject

Post by kaos_de_moria »

i was just intrested how many

comic -> real people (no animation) movies

exist...

the ones i can think of:
-hulk (know some of the comics, but haven't seen the movie yet)
-other super heroes as spiderman, superman, batman, hellboy, etc. (i personally do not like the batman or superman movies, but i thaught the spiderman movie I was pretty good)
-the cat in the hat (haven't seen the movie, nor read the comic)
-from hell (very good, comic and movie)

and which of the movies you can think of do the same as hulk? panelling, etc. another example of comic aestetics would be the 'sound effects' in batman, when it says slam, when he hits someone etc.

kaos
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Post by Doc MacDougal »

Yeah. Basically, I think there are two broad approached to creating a film based on a comic (and, perhaps, vice versa): adaptation and translation.

Most of the films you mentioned are straight-up adaptations of content. Perhaps we might suggest the colour palette used in Spider-Man moves it slightly in a different direction. But, by and large, these films are conventional realist films.

The sound effect screens in Batman, the panels in Hulk, and also much of the text of American Splendor put these films in a category that attempt to translate the experience, to greater and lesser degrees, of comics into the film. For example, in American Splendor, there are moments where some animation is included, both bringing the Comics-Harvey into the diegetic realm of Paul Giamatti-Harvey, and putting Paul Giamatti-Harvey into a comics environment. On another level, the multiplicity of Harvies in the film is, I think, an attempt at echoing the multiple versions of Harvey that exist in the comics as drawn by various artists.

Ben.
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Re: sorry for kidnapping your subject

Post by Greg Stephens »

kaos_de_moria wrote:i was just intrested how many comic -> real people (no animation) movies exist...
Well.... Quite a few. That link attempts to filter out all the TV-movies and direct-to-video movies, but can't filter out video games (huh? Why not?) and can't filter out animation. Even so, with the various inaccuracies (There may have been "Mars Attacks!" comics, but the original source were trading cards, so they don't really count; there may have been "Lone Ranger" comics, but the original source was a radio series, so those don't count), the list is extensive enough to give you an idea that there have been quite a few.

I haven't read all of Doc's essay, yet, but it looks pretty interesting. As far as Ang Lee's version of the Hulk goes, I had heard so much about the various split-screening effects, I wanted a whole lot more of them in the actual movie that we were given.
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Post by losttoy »

So very odd how this item pops up ... The following has nothing to do with the previous text, except for it deals with the Hulk.

Friday night/Saturday morning. I have a dream. "We" are setting up a trap for the Hulk. Some sports athlete is recruited to attack the Hulk once he is stunned. Damage is done, but the Hulk moves on and is now mad. There is variuos stages including Spawn, Spiderman and a group of other heroes. People are dying left and right, but willing doing it as it is their duty in the line that they must stop the Hulk. One stage a steel gurter is dropped down from a tall hieght and pierces his hide. It comes very apparent, the more you hurt the more he gets mad ... and the more he gets mad the stronger he gets. "We" can not kill him, but "our" only hope is to stop him. Lured to the middle of the ground floor of a skyscraper, we detinate the charges and thousands of tons of steel and concrete is dropped down on him like 9/11. If he was not squashed like a bug, "we" knew that the tons of weight would at least pin him down until "we" found a better way. Then I woke up.
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Post by Doc MacDougal »

I've just posted two more essays on-line. They're not directly related to the topic of this thread, but I thought they might be of some interest to board readers and I didn't want to start a bunch of new vanity threads to put them up.

Ghost World as Dialectic is about the Ghost World movie, but has very little to do with the comics.

Images of the North: "Borealism" and Identity in Canadian Comic Books is a very brief critical analysis of some superhero characters from both the 1940s and 1970s periods of Canadian comics.

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Post by Guest »

One thing that has been a positive with adaptations of comics properties has been the trend in recent years towards hiring director/producer teams that really care about the characters.

Though they don't reflect what I think Batman should be I liked Tim Burton's Batman films (let us not speak of Joel Schumacher's abominations Batman Forver & Batman and Robin!). I really like what Bryan Singer has done with X-Men...that would have been a very easy property to mess up. Ditto for Sam Raimi's Spiderman and my hopes are high for Chris Nolan's "Batman Begins" (despite the lame title) that starts production next week in Iceland, especially with a cast that now includes Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Jim Gordon) and Ken Watanabe (Ra's al Ghul).

It's also nice to see adaptations of more unconventional fare like "Ghost World" and "American Splendor" becoming more common too, but I don't think any movie adaptation will ever please all of a comic property's fans precise because it is an adaptation.
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xmen

Post by kaos_de_moria »

Anonymous wrote:I really like what Bryan Singer has done with X-Men...that would have been a very easy property to mess up.
which was basically proven with he second part, which in my opinion sucks.

kaos
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Post by Amerigo »

Very good stuff Doc although I thought your essay on the Hulk was too gentle on the movie. I felt very strongly that the split screen animation for the movie, while an interesting idea with great potential, did not translate well at all to the screen. You end up trying to watch too many things at once. In comics the split cells can be examined at leisure but in a movie you miss things.
Other than that, I felt that the directing, screenplay, and acting for the Hulk were all atrocious - It was a huge waste of a great idea and money.

I agree with anonymous that for these sorts of media to be translated to the screen properly, you need truly talented acting and directing by people who actually care very much about the work and characters they are basing their story on.
Think how easy it would have been for the 'Rings' trilogy to really suck without a true lifetime fantasy fan like Peter Jackson at the helm.
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Post by William G »

Re: The Lord Of The Rings

When I was taking a film-lit class in university, the prof said something about why Casablanca was and always will be a beloved film.

"It was a collection of all the right cliches"

I feel this applies to LOTR. Peter Jackson knew what were the right movie cliches provided by the books, added a couple of his own, and we have a classic of our generation.

As for the Hulk. I found it to be an interesting piece of film like most of what Ang Lee does. But the problem is that Ang Lee is too much of an art-fag to be able to make the slam bang movie everyone was expecting. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon worked so well because the dream of a forgotten age was perfect for his style.

Ang Lee tried to take "Duhhhh" type material and turn it into a somewhat introspective movie.
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