20 Years Later, Ang Lee's Hulk Is A Misunderstood Triumph Of Superhero Cinema

June 13, 2007 was hardly time for Marvel Studios to be taking a victory lap. Despite a record $151 million opening weekend, Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man 3" was on pace to become the lowest-grossing film in the series. Mixed reviews and a clear sense of creative apathy on the director's behalf augured poorly for a fourth installment. This came on the heels of the apparent death of Fox's X-Men franchise — which Bryan Singer had abandoned to make the strangely sullen and, it turned out, unwanted "Superman Returns" — at the cloddish hands of Brett Ratner.

Marvel's other two Fox-distributed properties, "Daredevil" and "Fantastic Four," were either buried or terminal. "Blade" had run its course at New Line, "The Punisher" made Artisan about as much money as a Punisher movie will ever make for anyone, Sony's "Ghost Rider" self-immolated by hiring the hack who bodied "Daredevil," and here's where I remind you Brett "The Lawnmower Man" Leonard directed a "Man-Thing" adaptation.

Yet here I was, seated in a gargantuan Playa Vista, California hangar-turned-soundstage that once housed Howard Hughes' fabled aeronautical folly "Spruce Goose," with a bunch of webmasters from a bunch of "geek-friendly" websites — which, for the most part, only exist on the Wayback Machine nowadays — lobbing questions at Marvel's newly appointed head of production, Kevin Feige. And, boy, was he chesty.

The occasion was a set visit for Jon Favreau's forthcoming "Iron Man," which, judging from the swanky decor of Tony Stark's Malibu bachelor pad, at least had the space-age aesthetic down pat. After receiving the grand tour of the premises, a Paramount publicist sat us down for a press conference that played like the feeling-out first round of a heavyweight fight.

Previously, Feige had hung out in the background as former Marvel Entertainment honcho Avi Arad's number two, but now he was the man. Could we trust him? Did he care if we did? For most of the gathered fanboys journalists, he earned their loyalty by trashing Marvel's most stirringly singular movie to date.

Getting "Hulk" before cameras was a labor largely devoid of love. Development on the film began in 1990 with producers Avi Arad and Gale Anne Hurd commissioning drafts by screenwriters such as Michael France, John Turman, and Zak Penn. A select contingent of comic book fans swooned when Joe Johnston, the VFX pioneer who'd helmed the exhilarating Golden Age yarn "The Rocketeer," climbed aboard to direct, but he bolted for the far less complex (yet sadly unsuccessful) "October Sky," at which point the producers started throwing more writers at the project.

Having struck out in Hollywood with two superb films ("The Ice Storm" and "Ride with the Devil") that failed to garner a single Academy Award nomination, Ang Lee scored an unlikely blockbuster in the wuxia epic "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Suddenly, an American awards body that had long treated martial arts films as grindhouse trash saw artistic merit, at which point the sealed-shut studio doors once again flew open for Lee.

"Hulk" beckoned, and Lee seized the opportunity with his frequent collaborator James Schamus attached to rewrite a script that had most heavily been worked on by France and Turman. (Indeed, the WGA awarded them "written by" credit.) Amazingly, for a studio project that had languished in development hell for over a decade, Lee's finished film is bracingly personal and tonally unified. Shot for shot, cut for cut, this is Ang Lee suffusing the comic book movie with his own pulp kinks. It is a grand, mega-budget entertainment that, VFX-wise, might've been a few years ahead of its time, but these limitations are where our imaginations fill the gap. It is a film of artistic and technical ingenuity that asks you to dream along with it.

The physical toll doesn't fully emerge until Bruce, immersed in a water chamber like a fetus in an amniotic sac (so that his genetic fury can be mined for the military-industrial complex's gain), realizes his father David killed his birth mother. The pieces click together, and, suddenly, everyone who's sought to weaponize Bruce's brilliance/anger/sorrow has a big green problem on their hands. And that's when Lee gives us the blockbuster goods. Though VFX maestro Dennis Muren's Hulk isn't always photoreal, he's as ecstatically believable in the context of the action as Willis O'Brien's King Kong (and just as much fun). Whether he's hammer-throwing a tank or slapping a steel turret into the palm of his hand like a mob bruiser wielding a shillelagh, Muren's Hulk is dripping with character.

One legitimate criticism leveled at Lee's film holds that Eric Bana, by design, isn't allowed to give an entire performance as Bruce. Once he gets mad, we get the Hulk. Bana was evidently frustrated by this, and it's understandable why. But that's a built-in flaw with Bruce's origin story, especially as reconfigured here. Banner can't break the shackles of his arrested development until he makes peace with the existence of the abuse-induced monster within.

Bruce accomplishes this in his highly charged final showdown with David, which is lit and staged like an experimental SoHo revival of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night." Again, Bana is forced to play emotional second fiddle to Nick Nolte, who views Bruce as "a flimsy husk of consciousness just waiting to be torn off." Here, at last, is the true monster of "Hulk:" a father whose masterpiece is a malignant offspring, a molecular miracle of hate.

Imagine letting Anthony Hopkins' Odin play these notes.