Things I dug:

Bryan Hitch’s version of The Abomination come to life, Captain America in-jokes out the wazoo, Tony Stark bringing the house down, Nick Fury’s name in the opening sequence, the melding of the best chunks of the tv show and Marvel lore, MOTHERFUCKING OMAR!, Tim Blake Nelson kicking ass, Tim Roth looking like someone went at him with a bat by the middle of the movie, Hulk throwing a boulder at the rain (dude!), “HULK SMASH” – actually any bit of Hulk talking…

Yeah the cg kinda sucked. Yeah, no one even referred to Doc Samson by name. Yeah, you can really tell it was edited last week on Ed Norton’s laptop because it was full of in-scene continuity flaws.

But I liked it. The thing about superhero movies is there aren’t many good ones. In order – Iron Man, Hellboy, Batman Begins (which would be the best if you took out the fucking fight sequence shaky-cam and the third act didn’t leak like a seive), Superman 2, The Rocketeer, Mystery Men, Blade 2, Superman, and maybe Spiderman 2. Unfunny Spiderman still pisses me off.

I’d put it somewhere in the middle. And I love that Marvel is turning out two movies that could even be considered good. Showing that they understand their characters in a way that studios can’t. Because X-Men 2 and Spiderman 2 are pretty decent movies, but they both miss the tone of the comics completely. (Equally X-Men 3 was a piece of shit, but it got the overheated everything-hits-at-once vibe that the Claremont comics were all about). Marvel are showing they know their properties and keep a base-level of quality.

The Incredible Hulk might be a kind of lean action movie. The raw superhero movie template. The baseline Marvel should be using. The tone is down. Hulk runs from army, Hulk fights army, army makes bad guy, Hulk beats the living shit out of the bad guy, Hulk runs away. Thats the whole movie. No subtext, but lots of shit getting smashed.

Unlike most of these things, I walked out the theater smiling. More than I can say for the last Hulk movie.

I got my money back for that shit.