Another encouraging aspect of the trailer is the question of Thor's godhood (apparently early on in the movie) by the supporting cast. Seems like he's (at least temporarily) put into a loony bin, so at least there's a little bit of the story evoking The Ultimates approach.
Well... no it doesn't.
At all.
The supporting cast asking "is Thor a god" is a generic, stock reaction that makes sense and is nothing more than an impediment to the narrative as nothing can happen until they get back into 'god' mode.
What made THE ULTIMATES work was that
we genuinely didn't know. This will not be the case here. It will be painfully obvious from the first scenes that Thor is the real, proper Norse God of thunder and every time someone goes "Is he really a god" we'll sigh and go "YES NOW PLEASE HAVE THE DESTROYER SHOW UP".
Now, it could work very well. THE X-FILES did this every week (and it solved the problem by having the characters trying to
prove the weirdness, which is different to just coming to accept it), and it seems there's some comedy in this Asgardian braggard encountering 21st century Earth
but it just will not evoke, in any way, THE ULTIMATES because it will be concretely evident he is from Asgard.
Unless the trailers have been flat-out lying to us.
They've also all been the exact same. Safe, serviceable, shallow popcorn movies.
I completely agree. While IRON MAN is probably the best movie Marvel's made, THE INCREDIBLE HULK is of the "better than mediocre" quality of SPIDER-MAN 2, but they've also made IRON MAN 2 which is as bad as SPIDER-MAN 3 or any of the FANTASTIC FOUR or X-MEN movies. Though, on the other hand, IRON MAN 2 wasn't as bad as GHOST RIDER, ELEKTRA or either of THE PUNISHER movies. And they've not made perfectly average films like DAREDEVIL or BLADE. It's too early to tell how much better they're doing. We'll know once THE AVENGERS, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, and THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN are out whether in-house or out-house Marvel movies are of a consistent higher quality.
At least Ang Lee's Hulk tried to be more than it was.
Indeed.
Trying and doing are two different things.
You say that, but it didn't fail as bad as GHOST RIDER or ELEKTRA or WOLVERINE, which not only failed, but didn't even try.
That said, I'd prefer to try and fail than to not try and be merely passable. At least you can respect the former for its ambition.
And almost everyone hated that movie. I think a well done pop corn film is always better then bad pretentious would be art films. I didn't think Iron Man was shallow, I thought it had heart, least it had a good character arc.
I prefer HULK to THE INCREDIBLE HULK and maintain that it was almost a big success. But as much as I like I know it didn't work. Both HULK and THE INCREDIBLE HULK are boring. HULK is boring for the first hour (and never really recovers), and THE INCREDIBLE HULK is boring for the last 30 minutes (but is thankfully entertaining for the rest). Neither really worked. It's just that THE INCREDIBLE HULK is bad in the ways one expects it to be, and HULK is bad for completely different reasons.
It wasn't and it isn't a good film, but it almost really was. The problems lied in the chronological structure of the screenplay (it ended 20 minutes before it finished and started 40 minutes too late) but the major problem is this: Ang Lee's repertoire is LUST, CAUTION and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN and CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON. This is a man whose movies are solely about how the
passion for love destroys you. These are not action movies, these are movies where the story is in the subtext and the hidden inner conflict of their lives. He is a sensitive director who has made some wonderful movies.
However, these sensibilities are not what people expect from a movie called HULK (especially when it's marketed to look like GODZILLA, even down to the similar fonts, colour schemes, and posters). The popcorn crowd is
not the crowd that queued to see BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, and they were equally unfulfilled by CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (which people also call an 'art movie' - though they expected as much because it's 'foreign' and foreign movies are considered to be more highbrow than American ones for some reason). What's more, passion tragedies in which love destroys the romance are not particularly popular which is why only three people saw LUST, CAUTION.
And yet... that is why he's perfect to do the Hulk. Because Hulk
is about the destructive nature of emotions, because the story is about a CGI monster and you
need sensitivity to create the audience's empathy with it. He is a brilliant choice.
It just didn't work. Not because it was a pretentious art film, and certainly not because the audience was too stupid to get it. It didn't work because the screenplay was messy, and the producers, advertisers, editors, and Ang Lee himself couldn't entirely work out how to balance the popcorn action with emotional sensitivity.
The lesson of HULK isn't "you shouldn't try to something more than pop corn" but rather "it's really hard to balance action adventure with inner conflict even if you've done it before". Which isn't something new. As much as I love THE INCREDIBLES and THE DARK KNIGHT, neither attempt the level of inner complexity as HULK. THE DARK KNIGHT did try more than THE INCREDIBLES and succeeded where it tried much better than HULK did, that's for sure. And THE INCREDIBLES instead used great personal conflict within the family to heighten the drama, and did so more beautifully than HULK did with it's inner conflict.
Shame, really. I'd love to see if he could fix his mistakes with a sequel.