The Incredible Hulk is not a remake or a sequel - it's a "reboot," according to Marvel Studios.
In 2003, Ang Lee's The Hulk failed to create a big-screen franchise from Marvel's feared - and beloved - green giant, the crazy misunderstood monster of comic-book superheroes.
So Marvel installed a whole new team, replacing star Eric Bana with Maryland native Edward Norton and substituting The Transporter 2's Louis Leterrier for Lee. (Norton, without screen credit, also rewrote the script and served as a producer.)
In the super-expensive world of new-millennial fantasy filmmaking, this kind of delayed second launch is a risky business.
"I think Marvel felt the company had an extremely valuable property in the Hulk and that some of the sheen had come off it in the first movie," says San Francisco-based screenwriter Sam Hamm, revered among comic-book movie fans for masterminding the narrative for Tim Burton's Batman (1989). "Now Marvel wants to stick the sheen back on it."
Reports that Norton and Leterrier fought with Marvel over "the final rewrite" - that is, the final cut - have tarnished that effort. The star and director pushed for a 2 hour and 15 minute version that would be more contemplative and detailed, while Marvel fought for a higher action ratio and a two-hour running time.
In a statement to Entertainment Weekly, Norton (unavailable for interviews with EW or The Sun) downplayed the disagreement as part of the collaborative process. He concluded, "All of us believe The Incredible Hulk will excite old fans and create new ones ... our focus has always been to deliver the Hulk that people have been waiting for and keep the worldwide love affair with the big green guy going strong."
Hamm licked the Batman script when it was considered a problem project, too. He's not surprised that filmmakers have taken divergent approaches to the Hulk.
Marvel guru Stan Lee's early Hulk tales are elating and confusing. They mash up all manner of horror and fantasy paradigms from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein and Dracula to King Kong. Their one constant plot point is that gamma radiation turns mild-mannered, bespectacled scientist Bruce Banner into a split - or maybe alternating - personality.
He becomes a glowering green behemoth called the Hulk, a creature of pure id who, like the Fantastic Four's Thing, can escalate any fight into a demolition derby and leap entire deserts with a single bound.
