Hulk

Directed by Ang Lee

2003 • PG-13 • English • 138 min.

Marvel superheroes pretty much own the movie theaters these days, and they all do cameos in each others movies, and the movie rights to all of the characters are with Disney (except Spider-Man, but Sony shares him with Disney so he can be in Avengers movies and whatnot). But it wasn’t too long ago that the rights to Marvel’s characters were spread out across multiple studios, and each of the characters occupied a smaller world — a pocket universe, as it were. The first big screen Hulk movie is a good example, released by Universal and directed by Ang Lee as a follow-up to his arthouse martial arts hit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Lee takes an interesting approach to the material, generally playing it straight (maybe too straight) but also employing some split-screen visuals that evoke Hulk’s comic book origins.

Cast: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott