Despite it's ups and downs, such as the sort-of-feud, between Incredible Hulk star Ed Norton and Universal Studios over final cut rights resulting in Norton being a bit resistant to earlier help promote the film, I am still looking forward to this movie.
There are various reasons for this: one thing is the cast. Norton has always been a fav of mine and is well cast as the troubled Bruce Banner. Tim Roth as his primary adversary (once transformed into the Abomination) is always good for a decent, committed performance in anything he does. William Hurt looks truly transformed in the early pictures and trailer clips of him as Thunderbolt Ross. And Liv Tyler? Ehh, well she is definitely quality eye candy at the least.
Another reason to be optimistic about this project is the attempt to put more of a 'comic feel' into this second Hulk movie. Ang Lee's Hulk effort just didn't sit right with many of the Hulk fans out there, but this time around rumours of a nearly half-hour fight scene at the climax of the movie have fans excited at the prospect of this film being much more to their liking.
Plot-wise, I like the evidence so far that the script has 'borrowed' brief elements from some of the more entertaining recent Hulk comic stories, such as Norton's character being dropped out of a helicopter to give him the needed panic and subsequent adrenaline rush that will trigger his transformation into the Hulk. (brutal - but effective!)
And of course there are the rumored cameos from actors such as Robert Downey Jr., reprising his (Iron Man movie) Tony Stark role in this film. Talk about cross promotion.
Really, apart from the later June release of the Wanted movie, (June 27th) and the early July release of Will Smith's Hancock movie, (July 4th) there aren't even many other super hero movie releases out there within afew weeks on either side of the Hulk movie to mention, so it has the genre pretty much to itself. Remember that I don't really consider the Indiana Jones movie to be a comic book movie even though it has some classic comic book elements to it.
So we shall see just how loud and long the Incredible Hulk roars at the box office this Summer as he competes against all other comers...
