retro review: The Incredible Hulk

These days, it seems that nearly half of the movies entering theaters are somehow tied in with the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (and that's coming from someone who likes those movies!). So, by convoluted reasoning that makes complete sense in my mind but is not  quite logical enough to be coherently stated out loud, it seems only fitting to take some time to take a look back at a much earlier cinematic interpretation, Kenneth Johnson's 1977 TV movie and television series pilot, The Incredible Hulk. Depending on your age and your range of interests, the mere mention of the show will spark fond nostalgia, vague memories, or, for the millennials, the exclamation, "they had TV back in the seventies?!!?"

As a character -- whether in the comics, on TV, or in the movies -- the Incredible Hulk has always been an odd fit in the comics canon, the proverbial square peg in the round holes reserved for the roster of superheroes. His most commonly depicted interpretation is that of a mindless beast, "driven by rage," as the TV show narrator tells us in the intro of every episode. As the involuntary alter ego of brilliant scientist David Banner*, the Hulk is, in many ways, less like a traditional superhero, and much more like a werewolf -- a comparison that at first may seem wonky, but seems more apt the more you think about it. (Stephen King assumes the comparison as axiomatic in his non-fiction book Danse Macabre.)

*Usually "Bruce Banner," but "David Banner" in the 70s TV movies and television program

Thus, you didn't have to be a comic book or superhero fan to enjoy the 70s Incredible Hulk, whose format was brilliantly simple in its appeal to hook viewers: Each episode of the series devotes most of its screen time to the adventures of Banner, a brilliant man who never lets the genius go to his head, a man who is charming and kind-hearted, but nevertheless forced by circumstance into desperate loneliness. Give Banner just enough story in each episode to establish that maybe, just maybe, he can find happiness in his new life (whether that happiness is friendship, romance, a cure for his illness, whatever) before circumstances beyond his control trigger his transformation into the Hulk, and chaos ensues, forcing him to abandon his latest "new life" in search of another. Ya got your serious drama for viewers who like an intelligent story, and ya got your action adventure scenes for people who enjoy watching mindless mayhem, and just want to see the Hulk smash. If you're like me, the kind of person who enjoys both modes, then this show surpasses "kinda good I guess" to "pretty damn cool."

But back to the TV movie that started it all: The movie starts unpromisingly, with an introductory, silent montage depicting the happy marriage between David and Laura Banner. This scene effectively conveys its intended message, but goes on far too long, causing your attention to wander to what might be good for dinner tomorrow night. Not a good start.

Then the seemingly endless montage of marital bliss segues into a nightmarish scenario, depicting the first in a series of radically life-changing events in David Banner's life: a car accident in which David is flung from the car, but into a meadow of soft grass, and thus is unharmed. The car flips, severely injuring Laura and trapping her inside. David tries to get the door open, but to no avail, and Laura dies before help can arrive.

That's all the first scene, and at this point, not a single word of dialogue has been spoken. Once dialogue does begin, we quickly learn a lot about what David's been up to since his wife's death: He's now studying human biological reaction to danger and stress, trying to figure out why some people in such situations temporarily exhibit extraordinary capabilities -- imperviousness to pain, increased strength, etc. -- while others don't. Meanwhile, David's got an interesting emotional dichotomy going on, still grieving for his wife, but also enjoying a healthy, semi-flirtatious friendship-bordering-on-romance with his research partner, Doctor Elaina Marks (Susan Sullivan). David and Elaina are equals in every way: brilliant, charming, good-humored, kind-hearted, and generally made for each other, if it wasn't for David's grief for his wife getting in the way.

The movie, directed and written by Kenneth Johnson, is impressively efficient in its ability to clearly and quickly convey all of this information without ever resorting to outright exposition. We never get a scene where somebody says something like, "that Dr. Marks, wow, she sure is a catch, too bad you're too blinded by grief to see it, Doc!" Johnson clearly agrees with famed screenwriting instructor Robert McKee, that drama is much more effective as "show the audience" rather than "tell the audience."

At this point, you're either already hooked into the story, or you're distracted by just how very seventies it all is. Bell bottom jeans abound, and at one point, you realize that "holy cow, even the science lab has red velvet carpeting on its Brady Bunch style stairs!"

Two separate incidents spur David's research to the next level: First, one of the interview subjects explains how her incident of temporarily superhuman strength was spurred on by a car accident not similar, but identical to the one in which David lost his wife. The only difference is that while David was unable to summon the strength to pull his wife from the wreckage, the woman being interviewed was able to somehow lift her car up just long enough for her young son to escape. David's wife died, the kid in the other accident lived, and at first, David and Elaina are baffled as to what the variable could be.

Ah, but then a scientist from another part of the lab makes a passing reference to sun spots, and David has his "eureka" moment: gamma radiation! Sure enough, David learns that all of the events of seemingly superhuman ability coincided with spikes in gamma radiation in the atmosphere, while his own car accident occurred at a time of unusually low gamma activity.

At this point, David, an otherwise smart man, does perhaps the stupidest and certainly most regrettable thing in his entire life: Without telling anyone, he tests his theory by dosing himself with gamma radiation. Later dialogue repeatedly characterizes this decision as an "accident" because David, thinking that the maximum exposure was 300,000 units, cranked it to the max, not knowing until later that the machine had been upgraded, and he'd actually dosed himself with two million units. I understand the writer's intention here, attempting to re-frame the lab incident as an "accident" to mitigate David's culpability in his experiment gone awry, but come on! The misunderstanding over the machine's settings doesn't change the fact that the guy intentionally exposed himself to massive doses of radiation basically just out of curiosity.

But narratively, the point is that now, after being exposed to unprecedented levels of gamma radiation, David Banner has essentially become the Hulk. Under normal conditions, he's still a normal human being, but make him angry, and you trigger a fantastic transformation that turns David into a green, supernaturally strong, mindless muscle-man whose default setting is a loss of temper that results in pretty much everything in the vicinity getting smashed to pieces.

A couple of plot points to consider: In the series that followed this movie, David would routinely be victimized by bullies and criminals, triggering his transformation into the Hulk, but no matter how mad the Hulk got, he never hurt anybody too seriously. Inanimate objects would get smashed to smithereens, but any time the Hulk chose to take his considerable anger out on a person, the worst he'd ever do is pick 'em up by the collar and toss them to the other side of the room. Without this movie as a narrative back-drop, that tendency always comes across as self-censorship, as if the the producers wanted to avoid severe violence and thus keep the show family friendly, even at the expense of logical consistency with the constantly stated fact that "the creature is driven by rage."

But hold on! This pilot movie addresses that seeming inconsistency quite bluntly. When David expresses fear that he'll hurt or kill somebody next time he turns into the Hulk, Dr. Marks insists that he's wrong, that the altered mental state that is the Hulk is no different from similar altered mental states like hypnosis: You can't hypnotize somebody out of their moral framework. If a "normal" David Banner would never kill somebody, then neither would a hypnotized David Banner, and by extension, Dr. Marks argues, neither would the Hulk. Dr. Marks points out that the Hulk's very first confrontation with a human being confirms her theory: A hunter shoots the Hulk in the arm, and even though this only further angers the Hulk, all the Hulk does in response is throw the guy into a nearby lake.

Another plot point to consider: the character of Jack McGee (Jack Colvin), the reporter who quickly becomes obsessed with proving the existence of the Hulk. People who remember Mr. McGee from the TV series probably remember him as the recurring thorn in David's side. Much like Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, David wandered the nation, constantly coming up with new identities to live new lives, afraid that someone would find out his real identity. But David's transformations into the Hulk wasn't always the reason David kept having to move on; half the time, it's because McGee would show up.

Even before David's first transformation into the Hulk, McGee is established as annoying and persistent, and the movie adds a couple of scenes that make him seem even more slimy: First, when McGee accidentally knocks over a jug of chemicals, which directly leads to the fire that kills Elaina Marks (ironically, no one, not even McGee himself, ever learns that he's responsible for the tragedy), and later again, when the damn weasel has the audacity to show up for the funerals of Elaina and also David, whom everyone believes to have been killed in the explosion.

Here's my take on Jack McGee: He's not a bad guy. Yes, his intrepid search for the Hulk would later prove maddeningly inconvenient for David, but the story he's pursuing really is news of Pulitzer caliber. And the moment that really illustrates that his slimeball act is just a cover is at the exact moment of the explosion that kills Elaina Marks and, as far as everyone thinks, also kills David Banner: McGee calls out to David in obviously sincere concern. He wants to help; he just can't. That's a layer of characterization that makes Mr. McGee's later appearances more morally complex. If The Fugitive's Richard Kimble is a close analogue to The Hulk's David Banner, then Mr. McGee is surely analogous to Lt. Gerard. Gerard and McGee tend to make our heroes miserable, but in any other story, they'd be the good guys.

One final observation: the Hulk himself takes some getting used to if you've become accustomed to the CGI versions of the character featured in 21st century movies. CGI technology didn't exist back then, and even by 70s tech standards, The Incredible Hulk was relatively low budget. Simply put, the producers had to make do with the technology available at the time. As a result, the Hulk is basically a body-painted, lumbering body-builder of questionable acting merit. Within the context of the series and its era, it totally works, but if you can't get past comparing him with the slicker visuals of today's cinema, Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk will probably be laughable. There's no right or wrong reaction here, either one is understandable.