10 feet tall, 1500 pounds easily. Oh, and he's Green

First: this post contains spoilers concerning The Incredible Hulk film. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Wow. That movie didn't just deliver. It completely exceeded my expectations. Edward Norton portrayed Bruce Banner amazingly. William Hurt as General Ross... I didn't even recognize him. It was his voice that made me realize who it was. And it was good. Tim Roth played the power-hungry soldier who ultimately because The Abomination, well, he played it spot-f***ing-on. Liv Tyler... okay, well, let me get into that before I get into the plot.

Liv Tyler played Betty Ross, daughter of General Ross and basically the love interest of Bruce Banner. She did it pretty well... in the second half. In the first half of the film, she was the only character that I didn't give a sh*t about. But in the second half of the film, as things escalated and the plot thickened, her part became more important, and she did deliver in the end. Don't get me wrong, she's a decent actress, but in the beginning, I have to say that her performance felt sub-par to me.

The opening credits of this film were just beautiful. It was almost like a flash-back sequence, showing how Bruce Banner became the Hulk in a freak accident with a whole "experiment gone wrong" thing. The entire film takes place around five years after said accident, skipping the whole "having to retell the origins", but the opening credits filled the blanks for people who hadn't seen the Hulk (2003). Then Banner woke up, establishing that it was a dream, and not simply thrown in to fill the blanks. It's not the only flashback either, so it works well as part of the film.

No, I'm not doing a moment-per-moment review. I just felt that mentioning the opening credits (and how the whole movie takes place 5 years later) would help with the decision of seeing the film. I highly recommend it. I took my mother to see it. She came just to entertain me, but in the end, she really enjoyed the film. That's right folks; my mother enjoyed The Incredible Hulk.

Now for the comic book geek in me, and all the other geeks out there.

The Hulk speaks in this movie. He actually has a voice, other than just growling and snarling. They showed the human side of our not-so-jolly green giant. His lines include "Leave me alone," and "Betty." He even yelled out "Hulk Smash!" during his fight with The Abomination, which caught me off guard. I didn't think they'd do it, but they did it alright.

There's science in this movie too. There's about to be this huge explosion (mixing fire with fuel is a bad idea), and Betty's in the middle of it. Hulk's eyes goes wide, he jumps in the direction of the fire. After clearing half the distance, he claps his hands together. Most people in the audience went "wtf?", but I understood right away. You can ACTUALLY put out fires with sound. Sound waves take up space, you see? And these waves put up more of a fight for space than air does. So it pushes the air out. No air means no fire. So when the Hulk clapped his hands, he actually blew out the fire without feeding it more. It was really cool to see something smart like that happen.

You know how in Iron Man, SHIELD hadn't been truly established yet? How the government agency did exist but they didn't call it SHIELD until the very end? It's not like that in this movie. SHIELD is referenced a lot in this movie. There's no sight of Samuel L. Jackson anywhere as Nick Fury, but the name (Nick Fury) was seen on a document during the opening credits/flashback sequence. It worked well.

Also seen in the opening credits was "Stark Industries." It was the same logo that was seen for the company in Iron Man. Which means Marvel Studios is getting smart. They're not just establishing the characters to lead up to an Avengers flick. They're establishing the entire Marvel Universe. It was really well done, and made the geek in me get excited.

Rumors of a Captain America cameo circled the internet for a while. While someone who worked on the film confirmed that the (soon to be) leader of the Avengers was supposed to be seen, they cut it from the film in the end. Bruce Banner never went to the Arctic Circle in this film. And I have to say that I'm glad they didn't have that cameo. It wouldn't have been the same if we saw the Super Soldier frozen in ice.

But they did bring up the Super Soldier serum itself. The very thing that made Steve Rogers become Captain America in the comic books. They used it on Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth) and it was done very well. The first time we see him after his first dose of the serum (which was small), we watched him outrun a platoon of soldiers without breaking a sweat (while all the other soldiers were panting and out of breath). We watched him go toe-to-toe with the Hulk. The Hulk won, obviously, but Blonsky held his own with his newfound agility. In that first battle, Blonsky was kicked in the chest and was smashed against a tree. But he lived. His bones looked like gravel, but he lived. Low and behold, though, the next day he was fully recovered, and looked more buff than he did before. It wasn't overplayed, the Super Soldier thing. In fact, it was well done. His transformation into Abomination was done by combining Hulk's gamma radiation with the super soldier serum, and that too was well done. Not overplayed at all.

Now, back to cameos. It was established in a TV Spot for this movie that Tony Stark was going to be in this movie. Robert Downing Jr came in to film the one scene, which is good. However [SPOILER WARNING], this scene didn't show up until the end. He came into a bar to find general Ross drinking a lot, and they shared a bit of a conversation.

Ross: Stark!
Stark: I hear you have an interesting problem. The super soldier serum was put on ice for a reason. Besides, I always trusted hardware more.
Ross: You should talk.
Stark: You should listen. We're thinking of putting together a team.
Ross: "We"?

(I can't say that's it word-for-word, but it's close enough to get the idea.)

Tony Stark's appearance in The Incredible Hulk played the same role that Nick Fury's cameo in Iron Man did. It established that Marvel Studios is indeed planning on an Avengers movie later on down the line.

I like Marvel Studios. They're smart. Marvel was slowly taking over Hollywood with all of it's characters, but because different rights belong to different studios, these characters were destined to never meet. So Marvel made it's move to create Marvel Studios, to keep all their characters playing in the same sandbox. While other film studios (like those who own Spider-Man or the X-Men) don't want to let go of their rights, Marvel is setting up it's own line of blockbuster films. Shortly after Iron Man's release, they announced release dates for Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and The Avengers. And with that scene at the end of The Incredible Hulk, it's very obvious what they're leaning towards.

And the best part is that so far, they're doing a damn good job.

So this Hulk movie gets my thumbs up. Both of them.