Okay so I went with a couple of friends to see The Hulk last night. I went into the movie with low expectations considering everything I’ve heard and considering how poorly it’s doing at the box office. The theatre was busier for a Monday night than I thought it would be, maybe due to the holiday on Tuesday.

What can I say about the movie? It’s not your typical comic book adaptation movie. It is very much character driven. There seems to be two halves or acts to this movie. Now some people might find the first half boring, slow and unnecessary. I am not one of these people. I welcomed the fact that Ang Lee wanted to try and develop these characters and the fact that he spent so much time laying the foundation and showing us how Bruce became the big green machine. The second half of the movie is probably more of what people were expecting when going to see this movie. This is when we get to see the Hulk do his thing. The action sequences are a lot of fun. The only thing I did not like about the movie was the final confrontation. It was way too dark and just something about it bugs me.

The performances are all good in this movie. The two standouts for me however aren’t Bana and Connelly but Elliott and Notle. I don’t normally like Nick Nolte at all but I really enjoyed his performance as the older Banner.

Finally, the CGI Hulk. When I first saw the Hulk in all his CGI glory in the trailers, I was disappointed and thought it looked horrible. Well now that I’ve seen the final product, I must say I was impressed. ILM has done a great job. I found that even though he was computer generated, he still had a human quality about him.

Now why is the Hulk a box office disappointment? Well people are going in expecting a typical comic book movie and that’s not what they are getting. My two friends let the world know what they though of the movie as they stormed out of the theatre going on about how much it sucked and how it was the worse movie of 2003 loud enough for everyone to hear. I wanted to slap them up side the head but I figured I’d let these Ebert and Roper wannabes continue. They even went so far as to say that not only was Godzilla a good movie, but that it was better than the Hulk. I couldn’t help myself but turn around and laugh my head off. They went on to say how they didn’t care for or wanted a plot, just action. That right there says it all.

Film, like all forms of art, is subjective and everyone sees and enjoys different things. It’s too bad that a movie isn’t always judged by how good it is, but by how much money it makes.