dimfuture.net

Hey, they’re making a new Hulk movie! With Edward Norton! Before 2003, this news would have made me very excited. However, all my memories of a big-screen Hulk are of Ang Lee’s plodding, overwrought misfire — so I’m more in the realm of “cautious optimism.” So I’ll vent my spleen by taking a few potshots at Sci Fi Wire’s press release.

Edward Norton (The Illusionist) has been set by Marvel Studios to play Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk, a role formerly played by Eric Bana, Variety reported.

The Louis Leterrier-directed drama will be distributed by Universal Pictures, with an opening set for June 13, 2008. Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.

The Incredible Hulk will shoot this summer in Toronto.

To give it that mystical, elusive Stargate SG-1 feel.

The Incredible Hulk, following on Ang Lee’s disappointing Hulk, aims to be less self-serious and more in line with the comic series and TV show. Leterrier directed the action-filled Transporter 2 and Unleashed.

The most oxymoronic pair of sentences ever… oh, they said less self-serious. Well, thank God.

The new movie begins with Banner on the run, trying to avoid capture long enough to cure the condition that turns him into a misunderstood green menace.

But is he on the run from giant mutated poodles? God, I hope so. That was a Freudian masterpiece of intricate psychological, uh…

The script for The Incredible Hulk was written by Zak Penn, who had a hand in crafting two X-Men films, Fantastic Four and Elektra for Marvel.

Note how it doesn’t say which two X-Men films. Could that be because one of them is The Last Stand? Well, never mind. If he can save The Hulk from the drab, pompous shipwreck of the first film, I’ll oficially forgive him for The Last Stand. I’m sure he’ll be deeply relieved to know that. (I won’t forgive Ratner, though. Don’t ask the impossible.)

I have one major thing to say about the trailer for Stardust, and that is, if they’re going to make so much fuss about this film being an adventure “unlike you’ve ever seen before,” they ought to have refrained from showing Michelle Pfeiffer rounding out a trifecta of wiches, especially ones that out to steal someone’s youth. Nice try, assholes!

Beyond that, I can’t really say much, other than it seems mildly interesting, in the way that most Neil Gaiman non-comic offerings seem to me these days. Oddly enough, I almost universally adore Gaiman’s comic work, but have never been able to get excited about any of his prose books, much less movies based on them. I finished Neverwhere, but could barely tell you a thing about it; Anansi Boys was equally forgettable, and I never could make it through American Gods at all, despite weeks of trying. Stardust is still sitting on my shelf, and I should probably tackle it before the movie comes out and I no longer care.

In the meantime, this trailer doesn’t actually look half bad. Pfeiffer looks amazing, and I’m always happy to see Claire Danes in something, even if she should never be a blonde. I wish I could say I was more thrilled to see De Niro than I am; with every passing year, I wish a little more that he’d just take a few years off from acting. Remember when just the fact that De Niro was in something meant that it would probably kick ass? Yeah, me neither, and that’s kind of what I’m getting at.

Meanwhile, the trailer for Day Watch looks overwrought, noisy, and goofy — precisely all the attributes I adored about the first one, so this is good news. More than anything, I’m glad to see that the sequel to Night Watch will be hitting the States, as I had serious doubts. If you haven’t seen the original, I’d love to link you to my lengthy review, but it appears I never posted it. Long story short: I recommend it for a good bit of Saturday afternoon fun.

The story of the sequel looks as adorably corny as the first — a titanic battle over a piece of chalk? Not just any chalk, mind you — the chalk of destiny. I can only hope, in my filthy little heart, that they approach this subject with a completely straight face. It’s the only way to make a titanic, generations-long battle over chalk really work.

If nothing else, it certainly looks as though the special effects are a big improvement over the first, and it seems that, as per the first film, heavy cues are being taken from American pop culture — most notably the car being driven up the side of the building at the end of the trailer, which seems to be the new schtick, apparently. That sequence had me rolling my eyes and laughing; it looks exceedingly stupid, but in a very fun way. I’m hoping to enjoy Day Watch as much as I did Night Watch… they just better have those cool animated subtitles like the first film did, or else I’m storming out in a huff.