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Hulk's Louis Leterrier Explains the Trailer

by Kevin Powers
March 14, 2008
Source: Empire

By now most of have seen the debut trailer for Ed Norton's upcoming The Incredible Hulk. And I bet everyone's drawn a conclusion or two from what they've seen; at least judging from the 70+ comments we received in our initial post original post on Wednesday. But before you get too far down an opinionated path, take a moment to hear what the film's director, Louis Leterrier, has to say about various parts of the first trailer. Empire has great walkthrough of 11 different parts of the clip with commentary from Leterrier.

Here are some of the better points to take away:

1 - Similar to Ang Lee's 2003 film, The Incredible Hulk is primarily about Bruce Banner's struggle.
Not that this is surprising, per se, since that's the classic superhero dilemma. "Bruce's struggle is the whole story of our movie. That guy doesn't want that superpower. It's like Spider-Man: My power, my curse. He really doesn't want that; it's too big for him." But unlike Lee's version, there isn't a lot of preface to Banner's condition and current place in life. Banner sees a therapist, Leonard Samson (Ty Burrell), and partakes in yoga and meditation to "keep the monster inside him."

2 - Hulk is not shy - he appears in the first three minutes of the movie.
As I mentioned, there is no build up to the story. "We're not treating it as an origin movie...he's the Hulk already." This is so refreshing, really. No waiting around and superfluous explanations and scenes. We want to see the Hulk in action. And at this rate, we only have to wait a mere 180 seconds. Fantastic!

3 - Hulk and Abomination fight for a full 26 minutes!
"This sequence is toward the end of the movie. But our final scene, our final battle, unlike a normal movie where the final fight scene is six minutes long, ours is 26 minutes long! So you get 26 minutes of two monsters pummeling each other through New York City, jumping up and down, ripping helicopters from the sky and stuff. You know, lots of green blood on the street, splashed all around." If Hulk's immediate reveal is viewers having their cake, this grand battle is us eating it, too.

4 - Abomination is green like the Hulk.
For those of us not completely in the know, Abomination is actually green in appearance like the Hulk. That's hard to imagine given what you see in the trailer; he appears more like a decomposed white color. "Since there are lots of layers of skin and he's kind of transparent, he reflects whatever's around him. Since both he and Hulk are gamma monsters, they both have to be gamma green. He's brand-new, he's a new monster, so he's unstable and not perfectly green, but he's still very green."

5 - Tim Roth, who plays Emil Blonsky and eventually Abomination, was Leterrier's favorite pick as Norton's archenemy.
"When I met Tim I was like, God! He was so good and had so much energy that I said, Blonsky must be Tim Roth. I had to push Marvel, Edward, everybody was hesitant to get Tim, but he really added a new dimension to the character." Personally, I've liked Roth for a long time and think it's great he's playing opposite Norton, who is also on my list of faves.

6 - The trailer took so long to come out.
With only three months until its release, Norton's Hulk has been surrounded by speculation given the sheer lack of noise surrounding the film. It's safe to say that this trailer was received with hungry appetites. "No shots are finished yet. That's why we took so long to release the teaser, because unlike the other movies coming out this summer, our main character relies on so much calculation and technique. None of the shots in this trailer are finished shots, but I think it's decent enough and it shows the audience what we're going for."

For the full article and the walkthrough of 11 different scenes from the trailer, head on over to Empire.

This last point is an important one since there seems to be a strong focus on the visual rendering of the Hulk. Obviously, this makes sense since the Hulk's true scale can only truly be rendered through artificial assistance. Lee's version was widely criticized for what a lot of people regarded as sub-par CGI. There's been similar reaction to Norton's version so far, though certainly not as extensive. But keep in mind Leterrier's statement that things aren't finished yet.

Personally, I'm not as sensitive to the visuals as some might be. I think Ang Lee's Hulk was pretty decent. And I think Norton's is going to be better. What I'm looking forward to more in this version is Norton, himself. As Leterrier states, the primary story is Banner's struggle. I think Norton is pretty good at the whole stressed-out/running/fighting/serious-stares kind of deal. I have total confidence that we'll get a better rendering of the Hulk. Where there's more chance, I think, is the rest of the story shaping up. And I think Norton can do that.

Judging from what we've seen, what we've learned, and where we are in the process, I think Norton's version has the potential to be... incredible. (I couldn't help myself!)

Has Louis Leterrier settled your fears or is The Incredible Hulk still looking like a big summer letdown?

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Related categories: Discussion, Hype, Opinions