This movie isn't particularly well-liked, that much is no secret. People seem to dislike how odd and bizarrely subdued it is, especially considering the explosive nature of its titular superhero. In a nutshell, people find this movie boring. The criticism I most often hear is that it is essentially a very pretentious take on the Incredible Hulk, an ego-driven attempt to come up with some deep psychological meaning behind a green giant who smashes things. And it's tempting to agree, in a sense it's tempting to brush it off as pretentious and conclude that a film about the Hulk that fails to deliver two action-packed hours is an automatic failure. But of course, I disagree. Even when I was a kid and went into the cinema with my limited knowledge, but great appreciation, of the comics, I never saw the Hulk as a jolly green giant. At one point, the character was seen as a mere physical manifestation of Bruce Banner's repressed anger awakened by gamma radiation, but eventually he became much more than that. Indeed, the Hulk became his own being, he became a creature who never asked to be born, an almost child-like monster who only wanted to be left alone. And when the world hated him, he hated the world in return, though in truth, the one he always despised the most was Banner... My thesis for this article is thus that the movie's goal of depicting a psychologically-driven interpretation of the Hulk not only makes sense but was also successful. I hope you'll see what I mean.
The movie opens with a credit sequence interspersed with David Banner's scientific experiments, namely his attempts to harness the power of gamma radiation, all of them failing until, without the possibility of experimenting on human subjects, he experiments on himself, forever altering his DNA. Thus, the sequences we see, perhaps more than mere eyecandy or filler, are a representation of Bruce's conception through a weird blend of nature and science, and for that reason, David considers himself to be the creator of both Bruce and the Hulk. This then sets the theme for Bruce's journey, and in many ways, the Hulk serves as a metaphor for Bruce's repressed memories and fears, bursting out of him with absolute violence. The Hulk was always there, waiting, lurking, and that kind of psychological pain can manifest itself in the most destructive ways, even within the kindest people.
I suppose this opening sequence then ending with David coming home in great distress as a nuclear alarm sounds off in the distance, and then watching him dragging his silent wife into a bedroom as a very young Bruce watches and hears the screams unexpected to say the least. It must have been quite alienating to most fans who were definitely not expecting such a thing in a superhero movie. Oddly enough, to me it wasn't alienating at all, even as a kid. It makes a whole lot of sense that Bruce would have been shaped by his madman of a father and his kind mother. And from their tribulation, from their own troubled bedroom, from behind a locked room, the Hulk was born.
Bruce's mother as a symbol of his kind nature
Bruce's mother witnessing a gamma explosion as a symbol of innocence lost
Throughout his life, Bruce was always a quiet man, fairly meek and ineffectual. Yet he was always dangerous, carrying within himself enough trauma to make any man go crazy. But not him, he would never even harm a fly. Thing is though, that hatred has to go somewhere, it doesn't simply vanish. So all his life Bruce turned it on himself, his repressed memories and trauma were continuously fed with repressed emotions, he became distant from people, capable only of acting in the world through his work. It reminds me of Jennifer Melfi when she said depression is rage turned inward... So if Bruce's anger is completely turned against himself, the Hulk's anger is a total decompression, an all-out war against the world. And through it all, only one person saw through both of their facades, and that was Betty Ross. She could always see right through Bruce, his shy and nervous demeanor being almost charming to her, and if he wouldn't take the first step, then she would. And it almost proved to be a tougher chase than it might seem. Bruce had constructed a wall around him, an almost mighty edifice but it actually collapsed with a single knock. And the Hulk wasn't all that different. Behind his massive and imposing figure, behind all that rage and destruction, he's almost a child. He hates Banner for being weak and tiny, he resents him for his own past, for being incapable of defending his mother and for being hated by his father... Bruce's sadness is so great it even hates itself.
Excerpts from Betty Ross Banner's autobiography
But Betty saw through all of that. She knew Bruce's calm demeanor and obsessive focus on his work were only strategies to keep people at bay, and she saw the Hulk as a child throwing a temper tantrum. She reached out to both and understood them better than any other person ever had. And in essence, though the Hulk so greatly despised Banner, he too loved Betty. That is why throughout the film it is her who decides that the best for both would be to take Bruce to that old house, to have him confront his fears, to open his repressed memories... Transforming into the Hulk and going on a rampage only happens when the inward rage is so much that it just has to come out, and it obviously does in very destructive ways... Yeah, well... that's depression for ya... But Betty fully understood that, she accepted Bruce exactly how he was and thus became the only person who loved him, as well as the only person immune to the Hulk's strength. In fact, she's the Hulk's only weakness.
And it is definitely worth mentioning that Jennifer Connelly not only strikingly resembles what Betty Ross ought to be but she also really understood the film, and by extension, she fully understood her character. She said – He [Ang Lee] wasn't talking about a glossy fun-filled kids' movie about a green guy running around in tights. He was talking along the lines of tragedy and psychodrama, the green monster of rage, greed, jealousy, and fear in all of us.
In the meantime we have a tug of war between science and the military, two major concepts within the superhero genre, but I rather focus on the underlying themes of repressed trauma. However, I still think the movie did very well in depicting the conflict of those two themes. Bruce is of course a scientist who, due to the revolutionary potential of his work, was gradually consumed by it and then hunted down by every branch of the military and then some. As a slight sidenote, I greatly admire the scientific experiments in this film, mostly in the beginning, and each time I rewatch it, I remember every detail, every color, every sensation – the starfish's texture and moisture, the amoeba bleeding white, the data on the computer screens, that miserable frog, and so on...
Then the military shift in the story serves to capture the essence of Bruce's own story. He was never good enough for Betty, he always felt out of his depth and was constantly reminded of it more bluntly by his father-in-law, the general Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross who in this film is depicted in a calm and collected manner, almost stoically, by the great Sam Elliott. That side of the general's nature is what allows Betty to convince him to try things her own way, taking Bruce on a heavily guarded walk through the now deserted military base of his childhood. And here is where I find that the movie's almost surreal imagery makes sense as we get to visit an abandoned base in the middle of nowhere, a place where people tried to live normal lives even though they were so distant from the real world, a place where something horrible happened...
Sadly, Betty's attempt isn't quite successful, and of course, the attempts to physically contain Bruce fail. No kind of scientific equipment is strong enough to contain his psychological state, and therefore, the Hulk is once again unleashed. The following rampage, which perhaps a lot of fans disliked, was to me very smartly done. It starts in an underground military lab, establishing the eternal connection of science with the nefarious branches of the military, not to mention the symbolic nature of the Hulk being unleashed in the deepest underbelly of the place he was created in. Though I wonder if fans would have preferred to see him just smashing his way through a city instead of a military base and then a desert, one of the movie's many tricks in order to secure a PG-13 rating, but didn't Man of Steel go for that kind of chaotic approach, much to the public's general distaste? You may say the difference is that Superman is supposed to be wholly good, whereas the Hulk not so much, but I really don't believe that to be the case. I believe that the scene in which he runs through the sand, admiring the desert flowers and enjoying the wind blowing in his face is a scene which shows us the real Hulk. Time and time again, the comics depict him as an overgrown child who just wants to be left alone. And were it not for Betty, he might have kept on running.
Betty Ross made flesh
At this point, science awoke the Hulk, and the military miserably failed to contain him. But there is one last try, one last showdown – Bruce has to confront his father as the Hulk has to confront his maker. It's in this moment that David Banner, in typical Nick Nolte fashion, is fully revealed as a madman, driven insane by his wife's death at this own hand, albeit somewhat accidentally, and by his own creation. He refuses to acknowledge Bruce as his son, he instead sees the Hulk as his true son, the son of his superior mind, but more than that, he sees him as his property. His misanthropy runs so high he sees the Hulk as his answer to humanity's weakness, almost echoing the weakness that the Hulk mocks in Banner.
Father and son inevitably fight and the ensuing clash of the titans is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. The Hulk is invulnerable and if he's not strong enough to defeat an adversary, his rage only makes him grow stronger, and he therefore becomes unstoppable. However, David Banner's true form is capable of absorbing all power unto himself, symbolically calling back to when he claimed to have been merged with the knife that killed Bruce's mother. So if the Hulk grows stronger, David grows stronger too. At such pace they will fight until they destroy the entire world... But both Bruce and the Hulk realize that the only way to win is to give David exactly what he wants. The true source of the Hulk's power, more so than the gamma radiation, is his own hatred, his repressed anger, his sadness... So if David wants it so badly, they let him have it.
– Sleep now, Bruce, and forget forever. Struggle no more... and give me all of your power.
– You think you can live with it? Take it! Take it all!
Bruce manages to accept the Hulk as a part of himself, thus his childhood trauma is fully accepted in the form of memories that, for good or bad, as a power or as a curse, are his to own, forever. If David thinks he can carry that power Bruce reveals it to him, but even just a taste of it is too much. As Betty previously said – Emotional damage can manifest physically. […] The thing that worries me is... a physical wound is finite, but with emotions what's to say that it won't just go on and on and start a chain reaction?... Bruce's anger is therefore infinite, the source of the Hulk's power, a power that, though greatly envied by many, cannot be carried by anyone except a martyr like Bruce.
Bruce defeating Animus in a similar way he defeats David in the film
I believe that to be the basic meaning of the movie, and in many ways, Betty Ross is the key to all this. You might like it, you might not, but I think this version has enough going for it to warrant at the very least a second viewing, a viewing that tries to look past some of the pacing issues and the weird comicbook transitions, namely with Talbot's death. Having said that, maybe you see the Hulk in a lighter tone, more akin to the Norton and Ruffalo interpretations. Well, that's on you but I think you're missing out on knowing a more complete Hulk. Again, my knowledge of the comics is limited but here are a few I do know.
These three issues in particular, which I singled out mostly due to the cover art, tell a saga in which Bruce is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's and Stephen Hawking's disease, and begins an almost tepid search for the cure, tepid because Bruce in the comics is so deeply depressed he'd rather die, if only the Hulk would let him, but more on that later... So in this arc Bruce's searches for a cure lead him through a series of experiences in which he dives deeper and deeper into his own subconscious, discovering thousands of variations of the Hulk, some with very bizarre appearances indeed, but only the true one can fight off the Devil Hulk, the darkest and most violent representation of Bruce's depression and hatred. And along the way he is chased by a much more evil depiction of the general Ross, hellbent on punishing Bruce, whom he holds responsible for Betty's death, a chase which includes genetically modified war dogs, similar to those seen in the film, a failed attempt at a Hulk clone in the form of a troubled young man named Flux, and a whole series of sickening experiments that reveal some very dark secrets.
In this one, and the one that follows it, Bruce wakes up and goes to the kitchen to find Betty, alive and well, cooking breakfast and awaiting him like a perfect housewife. Bruce apparently lives in a nice suburban home with her and their two daughters. He's highly respected at work, he has a good relationship with his father, they often go fishing and Bruce always catches the biggest fish, he has gained his father-in-law's favor, they go golfing together and Bruce always scores a hole-in-one, and so on... And all that stuff happens every day because every day is the same day... Bruce finds himself living in a fantasy where his life is absolutely perfect. The whole thing is obviously an illusion, it's what the Devil can offer him if only Bruce agrees to trade places with him. Bruce will get to live the life he always wanted, forever, devoid of any and all suffering, and in return the Devil will be fully unleashed in the real world... However, and spoiler alert I guess, in the end Bruce painstakingly rejects this offer. He kisses Betty one last time and, as an earthquake ensues, he walks out in the street only for the sky to be ripped open by the Hulk who looks down on Banner like he's a toy in a doll house. The Hulk then furiously crushes him and Bruce awakes in bed, back in the real world, crying.
And who could forget this one? In this issue we find a world desolated by a nuclear apocalypse, a world in which the only inhabitant is a centenarian Bruce who has lost track of his exact age. He just walks aimlessly through an absolutely destroyed world where even the remnants of old civilization are fading. At times he is attacked by swarms of alien-like locusts who chase and threaten to devour him alive, but whenever he's in danger, the other inhabitant comes out... The Hulk emerges to fight off those locusts for as long as he can until he is overwhelmed and devoured, becoming a pile of guts, having even his eyes and liver plucked out as a kind of angry Prometheus, but still, he rages and curses the locusts. Eventually they leave for the day and the Hulk regenerates, forever angry.
And even worse, the Hulk also comes out when Bruce, so tired of that life, tries to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. The Hulk despises Banner more than anything but he simply will not let him die, indeed, he despises Banner precisely for because he wants to die, he hates him for being so weak, but he simply will not let him go, not even through a natural death of old age. That is until there is one final confrontation between the two, a desperate plea in which Bruce appeals to something that in the Hulk we'd be remiss to call mercy. Bruce sees a vision of all his friends, now long gone, and perhaps in a better place, beckoning him to join them, and after so much pleading, in what was maybe an act of kindness, the Hulk lets Banner go. Then he sits somewhere, in the dark, finally getting his wish of being left alone...
Notice how the word “cold” is written in a distinctly smaller font
The Hulk in these stories was the Hulk I always knew. In retrospect these comics weren't even that appropriate for me to be reading at that age, but oh well... I wouldn't argue that the movie is perfect but I would happily claim it is misunderstood precisely due to people neglecting these comics, or at least the movie's efforts are neglected in favor of a preconceived notion of what one expects the Hulk to be about. I'm sure there are plenty of comics more in line with an action-based story, and for that I suppose there is the Norton version. But the less said about the progression of Ruffalo's version into a comic relief character the better...
Now, you might tell me you already knew all of this, after all, this version isn't particularly subtle about the psychological aspects. But it's one thing to know and another to appreciate. As far as appreciation goes I might be partially blinded by nostalgia, but I'm still willing to bet that a lot of this movie's critics are fighting the losing struggle of wanting the movie to be something it's not.
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