Original Hulk Star Looks Back on the Film’s Frustrations

After the success of X-Men and Spider-Man, a number of superhero films were released in the 2000s, many of which fell short of expectations, including 2003’s Hulk. Years before the character went on to debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, director Ang Lee tapped Eric Bana to bring the complex character to life, delivering audiences a much more esoteric and existential exploration of the character as opposed to an action-packed adventure, though star Josh Lucas recently pointed out that the film’s limitations and shortcomings largely fell on the challenges of visual effects at the time.

“If people ask me who my favorite directors are, I almost invariably will tell you my number one is Ang,” Lucas recalled to The Playlist. “I don’t use this word genius, but I think he’s truly up there as a, if not brilliant, genius filmmaker. Like you say, he was swinging for the rafters on [Hulk]. I don’t think the technology was quite where his brain was. And if you look at what he did with Life of Pi, he was able to hit it out of the park.” 

He continued, “I think the technology evolved, and he’s one of the people who pushed the technology to evolve. I know he was pushing the team of people who were on the CGI of Hulk to make something that, technically, maybe wasn’t capable of being at the level he wanted it yet. And so I think he was very frustrated with that movie by not being able to get what he wanted and what was in his brain.” 

In the film, Lucas played Talbot, the antagonist who aimed to thwart Bana’s Bruce Banner. At the time the film was developed, there was no set structure or formula for how to successfully adapt a comic book character from the page to the screen, which meant Lee explored various ambitious filmmaking techniques.

“But I also agree with you, the way he was morphing, the way pages were flipping. I mean, he was creating a visual comic book,” the actor detailed. “And I haven’t seen anybody do it quite the same way he was doing it — think about it, that’s 20 years ago, right? So, there’s an incredible auteur filmmaker beneath this monster, an early Marvel movie. I have nothing but respect for it.”

Despite the excitement to see a big-budget version of the character come to life in theaters, Hulk kicked off some complications for the rights to the character in the MCU. While Bruce Banner/Hulk made his MCU debut with The Incredible Hulk in 2008, it was early enough in the development of the franchise that Marvel Studios partnered with Universal Pictures to bring the project to life, which means any Hulk-centric film has required a similar collaboration between the studios. Instead, Hulk has been incorporated into team-up projects, leaving the notion of a solo Hulk film to stagnate for more than a decade.

Stay tuned for details on the future of Hulk in the MCU.

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