indefinite articles

Nope, he still doesn’t look quite right - pretty blatantly fake, in fact. Sure, everything else in The Incredible Hulk looks like its been improved since Ang Lee got so lowbrow he ate dirt with 2003’s Hulk. But the Hulk himself, the giant pickled artichoke heart of the movie, still looks like a total goofball. It shouldn’t have to be this way. The concept is a rubber-band ball of allegories: a stand-in for military technology, a platform to discuss the moral black area that comes with it, and the ultimate expression of anger and anxiety in a post-nuclear world.

And he still looks like a goddamn Stretch Armstrong.

After the box-office embarrassment of Hulk de Lee, I would’ve guessed that more care would’ve been taken with the look of Hulk 2.0, ultimately the movie’s biggest liability. He’s darker and a touch more realistic, but still lacks any real spark of life, too much Rob Liefeld and not enough Tim Sale. Why not go for a more mid-sized Hulk with better cinematic mileage - a Travis Bickle-style Hulk that cleanses the palette and refreshes the mind?

Really?

Instead, Marvel, now with more creative control of their movies than ever, have decided to keep the big cartoony Hulk - and perhaps for good reason. Taking a look at Marvel’s upcoming line-up of films, things start to become clear. As it turns out, The Incredible Hulk has far less to do with Ang Lee’s version than it does with last month’s Iron Man.

Marvel’s next two intellectual properties making their way to theaters are Captain America and Thor, who, taken with Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, effectively make up the starting line-up for The Avengers, Marvel’s flagship superhero team and main competitor with DC’s Justice League. Lo and behold, there are two Avengers movies slated as well.

Things continue to get interesting. Those who stuck around past the credits of Iron Man were treated to a glimpse of Marvel’s five-year plan: Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, the butter that holds together the bread of the Marvel universe. In the comics, Fury bounces from title to title, setting up cross-overs and making it so that supergroups like the Avengers can exist.

The real kicker of this post-credit teaser was this, and here’s where it gets slightly complicated: In the Marvel universe, Fury is a grizzled old white dude. But in 2001, Marvel created an alternate publishing universe called the Ultimate Universe - essentially a spin-off rebooting of the entire Marvel world, only now without 60 years of baggage. With this new universe came a slicker Nick Fury, modeled after none other than Samuel L. Jackson.

In the plain old vanilla Marvel universe, the Hulk recently took over an alien planet after being jetissoned into space.

The Ultimates (as the Avengers in this alternate universe are known) operate less like a gang of Spider-men and more like a fascistic, militant NGO. They are the flawed, self-destructive character types of Watchmen, only embedded in an action movie of unseen proportions.

Proportions that, I’m hoping, will be met with an Avengers movie. Proportions that will require an absurd -looking Hulk. If Marvel can pull it off - that is, launch four successful movie series, then smoosh them together into one enormous action smorgasbord - they’ll have created a Lord of the Rings-style moneymaker, theoretically without end.

The Incredible Hulk will come, then, as either a herald of a dark future, or a promise for a new utopia, depending on your point of view. But either way, I just can’t make myself take the big fella seriously.