Ang Lee’s Hulk is a $245.3 million experiment that never decides what it wants to be. Universal released it on June 20, 2003, and it runs 138 minutes — long enough for a tragedy, and long enough for the audience to feel every minute of it. Eric Bana plays Bruce Banner, a Berkeley Lab scientist who survives a gammasphere accident and walks out of a hospital bed feeling better than ever. The radiation merged with his altered DNA. When he is stressed or provoked, he becomes a green humanoid with superhuman strength.
Trailer, via Universal Pictures.
Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, and the Cast That Holds It Up
The performances are the reason to sit through the pace. Bana was cast in October 2001 after Lee saw Chopper, and he signed for two additional sequels. He said of the role: “I was obsessed with the TV show. I was never a huge comic book reader when I was a kid, but I was completely obsessed with the television show.”
Jennifer Connelly plays Betty Ross, Bruce’s girlfriend, General Ross’s estranged daughter, and the one person who can pull him back. Connelly said Lee pitched her “tragedy and psychodrama” rather than “a guy running around in green tights.” Sam Elliott is Ross, Josh Lucas is the shady Atheon operative Glenn Talbot, and Nick Nolte is David Banner, the father who experimented on his own DNA in the 1960s and murdered Bruce’s mother, Edith.
The Hulk’s size scales with his anger in this film: 9 ft at the low end, 12 ft in the middle, 15 ft at the top.
What the 2003 Hulk Gets Wrong
The origin story is overbuilt. Development started in 1990, and the script passed through Joe Johnston, Jonathan Hensleigh, Zak Penn, J. J. Abrams, Michael Tolkin, David Hayter, and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski before Lee and James Schamus landed it. You can feel that pile-up. The film spends its first act on David Banner’s 1960s experiments and Bruce’s suppressed childhood, then asks the audience to care about a monster it has barely let loose.
| Element | Hulk (2003) |
|---|---|
| Director | Ang Lee |
| Runtime | 138 minutes |
| Release date | June 20, 2003 |
| Worldwide gross | $245.3 million |
| Hulk height range | 9 ft to 15 ft |
The Numbers Behind Hulk
- Release date: June 20, 2003
- Runtime: 138 minutes
- Worldwide gross: $245.3 million
- Metacritic: 54/100
- Director: Ang Lee
- Lead: Eric Bana as Bruce Banner
Filmed mainly in the San Francisco Bay Area from March to August 2002, Hulk looks better than most of its contemporaries. Lee’s panel-style cutting is the one formal gamble that pays off. But the film’s real problem is that it treats rage as a subject for therapy rather than a force, and the result is a superhero movie that keeps apologizing for being one.
Reviews at release were mixed-to-positive, praising the cast and Lee’s directing while faulting the slow pace and length. That split has held up. The retrospective praise and cult following are real, and they are also a little generous. A movie can depart from conventional superhero tropes and still be a slog; Hulk does both.
The sequel that Bana’s contract set up never happened, which is the most honest verdict on the whole project. There is a good film somewhere in the 138 minutes — Bana’s quiet panic, Connelly’s steadiness, the Hulk’s escalating scale. Lee just never found the cut that gets there.
5.4 of 10.
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