Moment of Clairification

So I saw the new Hulk movie Wednesday night at a special Ain’t it Cool News/Fantastic Fest screening at Alamo Drafthouse South. It’s set to come out June 13, and I would have honestly waited for it to come out on DVD (or even longer) to see it, but I got the great opportunity of attending this event, and it was a blast. As for the movie, I was about to pee my pants with excitement nearly the whole time (I love seeing action on the big screen!) … but that could have just been a side effect of the complimentary 42 Below Kiwi flavored (and strong) “gamma martinis” they served at the pre-party. Not to mention that they kept it coming with the green pizza, green sour cream potato skins, green guacamole chicken fingers, Heinekin and Rolling Rock (green bottles, of course). I’ll say — Harry Knowles knows how to throw one hell of a party.

Right before the movie started I got my Hulk poster signed by Tim Roth, who was phenomenal in the movie. But he’s always pretty rad. He had a long line of folks wanting autographs and no drink in front of him, so I picked him up a Heinekin in the beer line on my way to the table where he was signing and he seemed to appreciate it. He wrote “To Claire … Grrr … ” on my poster and asked if I was excited about the film. “Heck yeah,” I said. Then I laughed when he replied, “Me too. I haven’t seen it yet.” I thought he was kidding, but when he spoke before the movie started he said the same thing to the audience, adding that his kids were especially excited to see it and that he promised them they would get to very soon. So yeah, I was pretty surprised and excited that I was actually getting to see a film that even one of the main actors hadn’t seen yet.

About the movie: Marvel comics are so rad that a movie could never do justice to the cartoons or illustrations. That’s just a matter of fact. But this movie rocked, aside from the bits of too-cheesy dialogue. However, you could not listen to a word of the film and know exactly what’s going on and enjoy it just as much. All you have to hear are the smashes, crashes and pows to love this movie. Really.

Better than the TV show? Hmmm. I’m not going to go there. But it was pretty awesome. And I get really excited about cameos in movies and there were three of them in the Hulk. I’m not going to tell you who because that would just ruin all the fun

I could say more about the story line, etc, etc, but I don’t really have to … and doesn’t everyone already know what happens? Dude eats gamma. Dude turns into hulk. Dude smashes stuff. Dude turns back into dude. That’s just the wonderful thing about Marvel movies (think Spider Man, Iron Man) or any other movies based on comic books for that matter — They are freaking exciting and you wait in suspense to see what you already know is going to happen. And the good guys basically always win, so there’s no surprise there either… but I could be wrong. I’m no movie expert Still, in this version of the Hulk, there were some striking political statements in the movie which really caught my attention (whether they were intentional or not), something that one may not be able to get from a comic book. As the story goes, a U.S. Army general seeks to harm the love of his daughter’s life to steal his power in order to strengthen the U.S. military force, but the Army actually ends up creating a monster that it can’t control… and who they think is the real monster is actually no monster at all (regardless of its outside appearance) and ends up helping its enemies in order to make the world a better place for everyone. Take what you will with that…

I’d go see the movie if I were you… on the big screen. I actually don’t think a movie of this sort would be nearly as good at home. But aside from my criticism, I totally loved it. And that kind of means a lot coming from me, because I don’t normally go crazy over that kind of thing.