The Incredible Hulk 3-Disc DVD Review

Credits:

Director: Louis Leterrier
Writer: Zak Penn
Based On: Iron Man, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Cast:
Edward Norton – Bruce Banner
Liv Tyler – Betty Ross
Tim Roth – Emil Blonsky
William Ross – General Ross

Story:

The Incredible Hulk does not pick up where the last film left off. Rather it is a reboot of the franchise in a different direction that tries to give the fans more Hulk action in line with the comic book.

This time out, the Hulk faces not only the strength of the US military, but another being like himself. When Ross’ secret weapon, a super soldier fueled Emil Blonsky, breaks down and turns on all of humanity, it is only The Hulk that can save us all. The ending battle is a gamma powered slugfest that takes the two from city streets to building rooftops and Banner’s love and enemy are both in danger of being destroyed.

Movie Review:

The Incredible Hulk pays a lot of nods to the source comic material, the television show, and even the first movie. There is a lot that this film has to offer the comic book fan and I have to say I enjoyed it more the second time around. I still wish we had more of The Hulk and Abomination, but it was still a good comic book film.

Check out a complete review of The Incredible Hulk movie.

DVD Special Features:

• Alternate Opening
• The Making of THE INCREDIBLE HULK: An in-depth look at the making of the blockbuster film, featuring interviews with Edward Norton, director Louis Leterrier, and producers Avi Arad, Kevin Feige and Gale Anne Hurd and the entire cast and crew. The documentary covers the film’s innovative take on the character, look and storyline, as well as the casting process, production and profile of director Louis Leterrier.
• Becoming The Hulk: This featurette focuses on Edward Norton’s approach to the iconic role and the incredible visual effects employed by award®-winning studio Rhythm & Hues to create the character on screen.
• Becoming The Abomination: From the first motion-capture session to the visual effects at Rhythm & Hues, viewers go behind the scenes with actor Tim Roth and watch as he transforms both his mind and body into the super villain known as The Abomination.
• Anatomy of a Hulk Out: Behind-the-scenes looks at three of the movie’s most exciting action sequences:
• From Comic Book to Screen: See the incredible comic books come to life courtesy of narration, sound effects and “living” panels of action.
• Feature Commentary With Director Louis Leterrier And Cast
• Digital Copy of THE INCREDIBLE HULK: Compatible with PC, Mac or iPod.
• Deleted Scenes

The 3 Disc set of The Incredible Hulk has a lot to offer DVD fans. The first having the commentary track and deleted scenes. Pretty standard fair here. I was glad to see the commentary track, unlike the Iron Man DVD, which was noticeably missing.

The second disc holds a nice buffet of special features. The making of The Hulk feature holds some interesting moments in the production of this movie including some great moments about how they constructed Harlem in Vancouver BC, the Mercedes steady cam car, and how shooting in Rio can be hazardous for your health.

Another great feature was the From Comic To Screen feature that took a scene from Book 5 of Hulk: Gray by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale that was the inspiration for the cave scene in the movie. It is basically the comic with some animation to it, kind of like the old Marvel cartoons from far ago, set to some mood music. It adds a nice nod to the movie overall.

My personal favorites were the Becoming The Hulk and Becoming The Abomination features. For a lot of the CG animation, that is the actual movements of the CG characters, they used suits with balls on them for reference points. Actors in a padded room moved and tried positions to keep Abomination and The Hulk form looking to similar. Seeing Tim Roth at the studio, working with the stuntmen and watching them being able to see their movements translated onto a monitor where an Abomination figure responded to their movements was very cool. Also seeing how they used a new capture technology with actor Edward Norton to capture his facial movements and put them into The Hulks performance was stunning as well.

The third disc contains a digital copy of The Incredible Hulk in WMV (Windows Media Video) and a version for ITunes. While a neat thing, taking up almost 2 gigs of space for the film seemed a bit much, and the most annoying thing was that every time you wanted to access the file to transfer it to your computer you had to input the security code. You also need to be connected to the internet, which makes me think they are tracking how many times you are putting it onto your computer. Darn you Big Brother!

Conclusion:

The Incredible Hulk 3-Disc set has some great special features with it, but some that I didn’t see myself using. The digital copy is nice but not necessary. The cool thing is that this 3-disc set is about as much as other 2-disc versions. The retail price is set at $35, but most stores will be selling it for about $23. The single disc is priced at $30 but is selling for around $16. I’m the type of person that wants the special features, so I would buy this version over the single disc, and for seven bucks more, you get a good amount of stuff. Other special features discs felt a bit meatier, but if you are into the extras that DVD’s come with nowadays, than this is a good bet, with the Blue Ray edition having even more than the regular DVD.