The Incredible Hulk had a respectable five-year run on television. It remained an iconic part of popular culture, from “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” taking root in the popular consciousness to a hilarious offhand reference to the show in The Usual Suspects.
Six years after its cancellation by CBS, New World picked up the rights to the show and sold it to NBC. New World owned Marvel at the time, and they wanted to use their only real TV success as a springboard to try to launch other heroes into television.
Partnered with Bill Bixby, they produced two movies in two years that also served as backdoor pilots, one for Thor, one for Daredevil. Neither of these went to series, and the third movie a year after that was a Hulk solo film that ended the Bixby/Ferrigno era with the Hulk’s death. (A sequel was planned, but scrapped due to poor ratings for The Death of the Incredible Hulk. Any chance of reviving the series died with Bixby in 1993.)
Still, these first two movies were the first attempt at a “Marvel Cinematic Universe.” Indeed, any kind of coherent universe for any superheroes, truly. There had never before been this kind of guest appearance of another hero from a company’s “universe.” No other DC heroes ever appeared in The Adventures of Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman, no other Marvel heroes ever appeared in Spider-Man or The Incredible Hulk. Ditto for the various movies, though Superman would later get a brief mention in Batman & Robin.
Thor had more significant changes from his comic-book roots—and actually in some ways was closer to his Norse roots, as the Thor of mythology is a hard-drinkin’ womanizing jackass, far from the noble hero Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us in 1962. Meanwhile, Daredevil actually hewed fairly closely to the setup and origin from the comics, with the costume changed from the iconic red devil outfit to a simple black bodysuit and the supporting cast altered.
Despite being the developer and show-runner for the series, and despite being good friends with Bixby, Kenneth Johnson was not involved in these three movies, not even knowing about them until he started seeing commercials for them.
While both Bixby and Ferrigno return for all three, Jack Colvin only appears in the first movie. Shortly after filming of the first film, Colvin suffered a minor stroke and retired from acting, so we never saw McGee again after The Incredible Hulk Returns. The Trial of the Incredible Hulk also started the tradition of Stan Lee making cameos in Marvel screen adaptations, as he appears as a juror in the dream sequence that gives the movie its title.
“You can’t win the game unless you’d rather die than lose it!”
The Incredible Hulk Returns
Written and directed by Nicholas Corea
Produced by Bill Bixby & Nicholas Corea
Original release date: May 22, 1988
David Banner’s life is actually looking pretty good. Yes, he has nightmares, still, but he hasn’t turned into the Hulk in two years. He’s working as a technician at the Joshua Lambert Research Institute as David Banion. Lambert knows that he’s got a past he won’t talk about, and knows that he’s smarter than the average technician, but Lambert is willing to keep his secrets because “Banion” is responsible for the creation of the Gamma Transponder, which will be a fantastic energy source. Banner has also been making additions to it after-hours that will enable the device to possibly cure him of being the Hulk forever.
Banner is also in a relationship with a bio-geneticist at the institute, Maggie Shaw. He spends most of his time with her, but isn’t ready to move in yet—not until he’s rid of the Hulk, though she knows only that he has anger-management issues he needs to get under control.
One night, Banner finally is ready to use the Gamma Transponder on himself, but he’s interrupted by a young man who’s broken into the institute: Don Blake. A doctor who studied under Banner at Harvard ten years earlier, he recognizes “Banion” as his favorite professor from med school, whom he thought was dead.
Blake has a problem, and he hopes Banner can help him. Having always had an interest in Norse myth, he joined a climbing expedition in Norway as the doctor. During a nasty storm, he found himself drawn to a cave where he found a sarcophagus, which was covered in runes he could read, much to his surprise. In the sarcophagus was a dead body in armor and a hammer. Gripping the hammer caused the corpse to come alive as Thor, an arrogant war god who has been forbidden from entering Valhalla until he becomes more humble. He is tethered to Blake, who can summon Thor and banish him to the nether realm he was in at any time.
Banner thinks that Blake was hallucinating due to the thin atmosphere. We will now pause to be amused at the guy who turns into a big green rage monster at the slightest adrenaline spike being skeptical about this. Blake realizes he has to prove it, so he summons Thor, who shows up, is brutish and arrogant and starts trashing the lab. Banner tries desperately to keep himself calm, which lasts right up until Thor tosses him into a electrified computer bank. Thor himself realizes he’s being a jerk, and saves Banner, but the damage is done: Banner’s eyes go white and he Hulks out.
Hulk and Thor duke it out in the lab, trashing a lot of the equipment, and eventually the Hulk buggers off.
Thor manages to find a bedraggled Banner the following morning, before Blake banishes him again. Blake shows Banner the newspaper, and everyone assumes it’s a publicity stunt. One person who doesn’t, though, is Jack McGee, who has, since the end of the TV show, been fired from the National Register, amidst some nasty words to his editor. He grovels for his job back now that there’s a lead on the Hulk.
Blake promises to help Banner fix the equipment. The Gamma Transponder itself is fine, but the computer controls are trashed and need to be replaced.
Meanwhile, Lambert’s brother Zack is tired of being in his older sibling’s shadow, and works out a deal allow a mercenary named LeBeau to steal the transponder and sell it to the highest bidder, with Zack getting a cut. Part of the deal is to take Banion, whom Zack knows is the real brains behind the device. The first attempt to steal the transponder fails thanks to the Hulk. Now that a first attempt has been made, security will be increased, so LeBeau decides to kidnap Banion’s girlfriend with himself and the transponder as ransom.
LeBeau’s thugs manage this, despite the best efforts of both Thor and the Hulk. When the Hulk reverts to Banner, he decides he needs to trash the main component of the transponder before turning it over to LeBeau. Why he decides this remains unclear. Zack is not happy that they’ve kidnapped a friend and colleague, and so LeBeau shoots him. From his hospital bed, Zack tells Banner and Lambert where they’ve taken Maggie, and Blake, Thor, and Banner head there to rescue her. Lambert also shows up with a gun, and he and Banner get into an altercation that leads to Banner Hulking out. Thor, Blake, and the Hulk take down the mercenaries and rescue Maggie.
With McGee still hanging around, and all the publicity surrounding the institute, Banner realizes he must leave, and start from scratch on his search for a cure. He bids goodbye to Maggie, to Blake, and to Thor and wanders down the road to piano music…
“I was sighted until I was fourteen—I remember green.”
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk
Written by Gerald Di Pego
Directed by Bill Bixby
Produced by Bill Bixby & Gerald Di Pego
Original release date: May 7, 1989
Banner, now calling himself David Belson, is working a rural migrant-labor job, but he leaves rather than suffer the constant bullying he receives at the hands of one of his coworkers. He heads to “the city” (which looks a lot like Vancouver), figuring he can get lost there.
He rents a crappy room in the shadow of a skyscraper, recently constructed by Wilson Fisk. Publicly, Fisk is a successful businessman. In reality, he’s a surveillance-obsessed crimelord, with half the police force on his payroll, as well as many other folks. He supervises a well-orchestrated jewelry heist, and two of the thieves get on the subway, into the same car as Banner and a woman named Ellie Mendez. Flush from the successful heist, one of the thieves decides to harass Mendez. At first Banner stays out of it, but eventually his heroism wins out and he tries to help her—which gets him tossed ass-over-teakettle behind a couple of seats.
Naturally, he turns into the Hulk, trashing the car and the thugs, and then taking off down the tracks. The cops find a shirtless Banner on the tracks and arrest him.
Mendez is taken to the hospital with a concussion. After a visit from Fisk’s thugs—who are let in by the floor nurse, who is also on Fisk’s payroll—Mendez tells the police that “Belson” is the one who attacked her, and Fisk’s pet thugs tried to help her.
Matt Murdock is a blind attorney-at-law, who has a thriving practice with his partner Christa Klein, and their paralegal, a former Army sergeant named Al Pettiman. Murdock has been trying very hard to bring Fisk down. For that reason, Murdock offers to represent Banner pro bono. Banner, however, refuses to cooperate and is unwilling to stand trial, fearing that the stress of it will cause him to change. Murdock doesn’t believe that he only cares about himself simply because he helped Mendez in the first place.
Banner has a clandestine conversation with Deputy Chief Tindelli, who appears to be one of the few cops who isn’t on the take. He tries to get Banner to talk, saying there’ll be no consequences (never mind that Banner has already almost been shanked once), but Banner refuses.
Murdock visits Mendez in the hospital, though she sticks with her story. Fisk orders Mendez to be killed, but she’s saved by a local vigilante called Daredevil (graffiti singing DD’s praises are all over town). Mendez is put in a secure wing, and she then calls Murdock and—livid that they tried to kill her even after she did as she was told—recants. Unfortunately, one of the security guards covering her is also on Fisk’s payroll, and he kidnaps her, taking her to Fisk Tower.
Banner has a nightmare about standing trial and turning into the Hulk. (We don’t realize it’s a dream sequence at first, though there are several hints, not the least being that the Hulk is way more violent here, tossing someone out a window to his death and strangling the prosecutor. Banner’s subconscious has a much more jaundiced view of the green guy.)
Unfortunately, the stress of the nightmare causes him to Hulk out and break out of prison, mostly by breaking the prison. When he reverts to Banner he goes to the flophouse to pack and leave town, but Daredevil is waiting for him. To keep him in town, Daredevil takes off his mask to reveal that he is Murdock.
They retire to Murdock’s house where we get his origin: fourteen-year-old Murdock saved an old man from being hit by a truck. That truck was carrying radioactive waste, which spilled and hit his eyes. He was blinded, but his other senses increased tenfold and he has a kind of radar sense that allows him to detect objects. It’s how he can function as Daredevil.
DD works with Tindelli, who has an untraceable phone link to Daredevil. Banner is willing to help Murdock save Mendez. Tindelli calls with a tip that may indicate where Mendez is being held. But after Daredevil leaves to rescue her, Tindelli calls back—the person who provided that tip is now spending money like there’s no tomorrow, and the deputy chief thinks it’s a setup. Banner hears this, and follows DD to the abandoned movie studio where she’s being held.
Sure enough, there’s an ambush, with Fisk hitting Daredevil with bright lights and loud sound to disorient him while his visor’d, ear-protected thugs beat the crap out of him. (The lights, of course, have no effect, but the sound is twice as bad for DD’s sensitive hearing.)
Banner sees this, Hulks out, and then the big dude trashes the place, though the thugs manage to spirit Mendez away. A battered Daredevil has his hands on the Hulk’s face when he calms down and changes back to Banner.
They return to Murdock’s home, where Banner scrapes the rust off his medical degree and treats Murdock, who’s moping because he got his ass handed to him. Banner gives him a pep talk, using the exact same words that Murdock used on Banner to try to get him to help him bring Fisk down. Eventually, Murdock comes around, and he puts the outfit back on.
Mendez is still being held hostage. Fisk’s right-hand man, Edgar, asks Fisk what they should do with her, and Fisk is very confused when he asks if she’s still alive. When Edgar replies in the affirmative, Fisk simply asks, “Why?” However, Edgar has taken a rather creepy shine to Mendez, and he keeps her alive.
Tindelli informs Daredevil that Fisk is gathering crime bosses from all across the country. Fisk’s plan is to unite them all into one gigunda syndicate, and he’s using the footage of Daredevil getting his ass kicked as his presentation piece (with all the Hulk footage edited out, of course). None of these crime bosses have outstanding warrants on them, so Tindelli can’t do a thing about it. But Daredevil can—he and Banner head to Fisk Tower. Daredevil takes on Fisk’s thugs, while Banner searches for Mendez. Banner arrives just in time to save Mendez’s life—the same thug who harassed her on the subway and started this whole mishegoss has been ordered by Fisk to make Edgar kill her—and Edgar actually helps Banner and Mendez escape. When Mendez points out that Fisk will kill him, Edgar says that Fisk will forgive him—he’s the only one Fisk does forgive.
Daredevil takes down Fisk’s thugs and then crashes the high-powered meeting. Fisk and Edgar escape in a hovercraft.
Mendez is safe and well, Banner decides that he needs to get back to trying to cure himself, so he’s heading to Portland to check out a new radiation lab. He and Murdock part ways, each entrusting the other with their secrets, and he wanders down the road to piano music…
“I am free…”
The Death of the Incredible Hulk
Written by Gerald Di Pego
Produced and directed by Bill Bixby
Original release date: February 18, 1990
Calling himself David Bellamy and pretending to be mentally challenged, Banner now works as a janitor at a government facility (presumably the one in Portland he talked about at the end of the previous movie, though it’s never specified what city they’re in). Also working there is Dr. Ronald Pratt, whose work with radiation Banner has always admired, and whose theories were among those he studied when he first did the experiment that turned him into the Hulk way back when.
Banner has been sneaking in after hours and making adjustments to Pratt’s experiments. Pratt has been reluctant to learn his mystery guardian angel’s identity because he’s worried that he’ll go away, as his notes have been brilliant. But eventually common sense prevails, and he installs video surveillance. (Why this government facility doesn’t already have video surveillance is left as an exercise for the viewer.)
Meanwhile, we meet a chameleonic woman named Jasmin, who is working as a spy for a group of Eastern European revolutionaries who are supposedly fighting for “the cause.” What this cause is, where they’re actually from, what their true goals are, who’s funding them—none of this is ever revealed, though they seem to trade in intelligence and weapons. After Jasmin completes her job of getting information from a congressperson, her handler, Kasha, gives her her next job. Jasmin wants this to end, but then Kasha shows her a picture of her sister being held prisoner. Her sister will die if Jasmin doesn’t continue her work.
Jasmin’s next assignment is to obtain Pratt’s work.
Pratt confronts “Bellamy,” and realizes that he’s actually the supposedly dead David Banner. Pratt is stunned, but is willing to let Banner in as an unofficial consultant on the project, which might be able to cure him of being the Hulk. They actually have him change into the Hulk under controlled conditions (something Banner quails against at first, probably remembering what happened the first time he tried that), and later Banner watches the video footage in awe. He’s never actually seen the Hulk before.
Unfortunately, Pratt is about to lose his funding because his work has insufficient military applications. If they’re going to try to cure Banner, they have to do it soon before the plug is pulled.
Naturally, the night they do the experiment is the night that Jasmin infiltrates the facility, having obtained fingerprints from one of the security guards while chatting him up in a bar, while stealing another guard’s uniform from her dry cleaners.
Jasmin’s break-in forces Pratt to abort the experiment, but then things go horribly wrong, there’s a fire, Pratt is injured, and Banner Hulks out. Pratt is unconscious and is taken to the hospital, and he’s only alive because Jasmin pulls him away from the fire.
Kasha is ready to have Jasmin killed for her failure, as the facility’s in lockdown and Pratt’s in a coma, making the intelligence unavailable. Jasmin manages to save herself by mentioning Banner—he was part of whatever experiment Pratt was performing, and perhaps he knows the specifics. Jasmin is sent with two others to kidnap Banner. However, Banner manages to foil the kidnapping, aided by the distraction of the other thugs trying to kill Jasmin, whose death sentence was only stayed, not stopped.
One thug gets away, the other is shot and killed, but before he dies he reveals to Jasmin that her sister Bela is the head of their movement—she faked the kidnapping to get Jasmin to continue to work. Banner takes Jasmin to a remote cabin and treats her gunshot wound. Then he goes to visit Pratt in the hospital, but he’s still wanted in connection with the fire at the facility, so he has to sneak in—Jasmin, grateful for his aid, helps with that, using her mad spy skillz to get them into his room.
Banner’s words of encouragement (as well as mentioning a school prank Pratt was involved in) help bring Pratt out of his coma. After Banner and Jasmin leave, they are attacked by Kasha’s people, but Banner Hulks out and saves them both. Jasmin gets away on her own, while the Hulk runs off, and when he reverts to Banner, they rendezvous at the cabin. The two of them fall into bed together.
Pratt is moved to a more secure facility, but Kasha’s people manage to get him and his wife away with a stolen ambulance.
Banner and Jasmin plan to go away somewhere and start over (Banner has been doing that on a regular basis for years now, after all, and he didn’t have Jasmin’s talents for blending in and changing faces), but then Jasmin hears the radio report on Pratt’s kidnapping and reluctantly shares it with Banner. Banner has to try to rescue them, and Jasmin agrees to help, even though she just wants to go away. Jasmin works a contact of the movement who runs a car shop, and they find out that the Pratts are being held at an airfield. They leave the car salesman for the police with a note about the airfield. The federal agents who are in charge of the Pratts’ case—who are already pissed that the Pratts were kidnapped right from under their noses—head to the airfield with a mess of cops.
Bela’s people are questioning the Pratts, who are cooperating out of fear. However, once the cops arrive, the guard who sees them immediately opens fire. Things go to hell in a hurry. Banner manages to free the Pratts, Bela shoots Kasha (who has already made a play for her position), Banner Hulks out, Bela tries to escape in a plane, but the Hulk jumps onto it. Bela rather stupidly tries to fire her weapon inside the plane, which results in it exploding. The Hulk plummets to the tarmac and dies in Jasmin’s arms.
“When the troll’s upon you, you’re a mighty fighter!”
It’s funny, rewatching Returns and Trial, I had no trouble remembering everything that happened. Even though it’s been decades since I watched them last, I still had clear, detailed memories of many of the events and performances in those two movies.
For Death, I had nothing but a vague memory of a scene here and a scene there. Which is especially odd given that two favorite actors of mine—Elizabeth Gracen and Andreas Katsulas—are in it. But where watching the first two was revisiting a couple of old friends, the third was almost like new.
Watching it again now, the reason is that Death just isn’t very good. Honestly, neither is Returns, but it’s mitigated by excellent performances by Steve Levitt as Blake and especially Eric Kramer as Thor. Kramer embraces the joyous-warrior aspect of Thor wholeheartedly, and it’s great fun to watch, and Levitt’s lost-at-sea Blake sets up a possible TV show nicely. Just as the changes to the Hulk from the comics made for a strong television narrative, so too would have the changes they made to Thor. It’s funny, by the time this movie aired, the comics themselves had abandoned the Don Blake identity for Thor. Unlike many changes made to comic book characters, this one has remained permanent (with one brief exception), a testament to how uninteresting and pointless it was.
However, this take on it had potential: the two of them sharing a relationship instead of being two different aspects of the same person. I particularly like that both Blake and Thor had journeys they needed to go on (the former toward meaning in his life, the latter toward humility, both of them toward heroism), and I’m disappointed that we didn’t get to see that journey.
The story that introduced them was dumber than a box of, um, hammers. (Sorry.) It makes no sense for Banner to agree to set aside the experiment that has the potential to cure the nightmare of his existence so he can have a conversation with a student he hasn’t seen in a decade. It makes no sense that Banner would trash the vital component to the Gamma Transponder.
And it especially makes no sense that the bad guys would shoot the younger Lambert. Seriously, these guys are mercenaries and thieves. Murder is a more serious offense than thievery, and one that will bring more attention from law-enforcement down upon one. Plus, of course, shooting someone and not making sure he’s dead before you walk away runs the risk of him, say, telling someone where you’re hiding out and going after you. (This is made worse by the fact that he might tell someone who turns into a big green rage-monster, but one can understand their inability to predict that ahead of time.)
Even more frustrating is how they botch Banner’s romance. The opening of the movie is all about the happy life he has with Maggie, and then Maggie becomes utterly irrelevant (except as a kidnap victim, snore) for the rest of the movie. At the end of the movie, he leaves Maggie and the institute behind without any kind of conversation or anything, he just leaves because it’s the end of the movie and that’s what’s supposed to happen. He doesn’t even make a token attempt to stay or to consider Maggie’s feelings. It just feels perfunctory.
Again, though, Returns is worth sitting through the dumb plot (and Charles Napier’s hilarious attempt at a Cajun accent) for the Thor stuff, plus Bill Bixby remains superb as Banner. I especially like that Banner doesn’t let Blake off the hook for how badly he’s screwed everything up.
Death has no such redeeming features. The bad guys are so incredibly generic that we have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. Seriously, nothing about this group is explained. They all talk with Eastern European accents, plus Andreas Katsulas plays one of them, so we know they’re evil, but—what? I mean, they’re just there to be evil and talk vaguely about causes and that’s it.
And once again they botch a romance, though this one is worse. In Returns, they do an excellent job of establishing Banner and Maggie’s romance at the top of the movie—the problem is that it doesn’t go anywhere after that. In Death, the “romance” between Banner and Jasmin just doesn’t track. Them falling into bed together actually works—they’re both in a bad place emotionally, as Banner’s had yet another cure yanked out from under him (latest in a series! collect ’em all!), while Jasmin has had her entire life ripped apart, and finding solace in each others’ arms is a natural outgrowth of what they’re going through. But the leap from that to running away together and being each others’ twue wuv strains credulity to the breaking point. We’ve seen Banner have relationships with several women, and his romance with Jasmin is the only one that isn’t convincing as a romance.
Which is too bad, because Elizabeth Gracen is, as always, superb, showing Jasmin’s spycraft as well as her pain and anguish. And it’s fun watching her play different roles, and I particularly enjoyed her “duh!” expression when Banner asked how they could possibly get past hospital security to visit Pratt. Gracen has always impressed me with her acting work since she played Amanda on Highlander: The Series and its spinoff Highlander: The Raven, and she outshines the limitations of the script.
One of those limitations is the really appalling impersonation Banner does of a mentally challenged janitor, which just feels oogy watching it now. Having said that, Bixby is also brilliant here, particularly the friendship he develops with Pratt, which is as natural and joyous as his friendship with Elaina Marks in the pilot.
As with Returns, the ending is just wrong, though it’s worse here. The plane takes off, Hulk is holding onto it and then Bela just whips out a gun a starts shooting? These revolutionaries (or whatever the hell they are) are good enough to steal a scientist and his wife from under the nose of federal agents but they’re not bright enough to know not to shoot a gun on an airplane in flight? Really?
And then we have the death of the incredible Hulk because he falls from a great height. And that’s it. It’s the most anticlimactic climax ever and just sits there on the screen, posing a lot more questions than it answers.
Questions that will never be answered, as the response to this movie was so justifiably putrid that the planned sequel was trashed.
Between these two, though, we have one movie that actually succeeds. The storyline hews pretty closely to Frank Miller’s first run on Daredevil—the run that vaulted DD to a more prominent role in the Marvel Universe, where previously he’d pretty much just been a second-rate Spider-Man—during which Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of Crime, became DD’s primary bad guy. The reinterpretation of Fisk as someone obsessed with video surveillance is an interesting one (and is particularly amusing to watch two decades later when such surveillance is commonplace), and no one ever went wrong casting John Rhys-Davies, who brings a slightly surreal menace to Fisk.
While Matt Murdock’s supporting cast has been altered—partner Foggy Nelson and secretary Karen Page have been changed to partner Christa Klein and secretary Al Pettiman—these changes still work in context. I can certainly see how they might want to have the potential blonde love interest be Murdock’s law partner rather than his subordinate, and the dynamic among the three of them is nicely established early on. As with Thor in Returns, the Daredevil TV show we never got to see had the potential to be interesting. Rex Smith’s Murdock is a convincing crusader, and while I wasn’t completely happy with the smarmy voice he put on as Daredevil, he made the dual identity work, particularly with the change in body language. Murdock is very stiff and deliberate, but once Smith puts the costume on, his movements become much more fluid.
Bixby also does a nice job with a Banner who has pretty much hit rock bottom. (This is supposed to be symbolized by his growing a beard, but honestly? He looked better with the beard. I was disappointed when he shaved it. I kinda wish they had had Ferrigno grow a beard to go along with it, but that was probably asking too much.) Best of all, though, is that the heroism that is inherent to the character, that we saw in the very second movie when he couldn’t resist trying to help the disabled girl visiting her father’s grave, is still there, as he can’t turn his back on Ellie Mendez.
Both Marta DuBois and scripter Gerald Di Pego deserve a ton of credit for the character of Mendez, who could easily be just the generic damsel in distress, but both the script and DuBois’s performance give her far more agency than that, in particular her anger at being targeted for death even after playing ball, and again when she rails at Fisk for violating her life. The character is a perfect metaphor for Fisk’s power over the city, as she was attacked while commuting, and instead of being able to get justice for her attack, her life is threatened and she’s used as a pawn against Daredevil, solely because Fisk a) gives priority to protecting his employee over justice for his victim and b) needs her to stop his enemy. But she’s also a person in her own right, not just a victim, and it’s a bravura performance.
An interesting casting choice in Trial, also. Our good guys include an African-American (Pettiman), an Italian-American (Tindelli), and a Latina (Mendez), while all the criminals are white. Even Turk, a low-level thug from the comics, is re-cast with a white guy. I’m especially grateful that the only Italian character is not one of the mobsters, as Italians are almost always either mobsters or comic relief on television and in movies, and it grows tiresome.
Bixby also directed both Trial and Death, and he is to be commended not only for the strong performances, but also for some impressive camera work. In both movies he uses closeups of Lou Ferrigno’s eyes to good effect during transformation sequences, and he makes some other clever cinematographic choices to show the Hulk’s rampages to vary things up a bit. My favorite is the Hulk’s breakout from prison in Trial, where we just follow the trail of destruction, which is even more effective than yet another Ferrigno-destroys-things sequence.
As an attempt to introduce more Marvel heroes to television, these movies should have been successful. These interpretations of Thor and Daredevil might well have made for good TV. Alas, it was not to be, though one can hardly complain about the work that Chris Hemsworth and Charlie Cox have done in the roles more recently. (The less said about Ben Affleck the better, though you can be assured I’ll say plenty when we get to the 2003 Daredevil movie in this rewatch…)
Next week we’ll have a double-shot of the rewatch, as we’ll take a special Hallowe’en look at the four Crow movies on Tuesday, then on Friday we shall tackle the 1990s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy.
Keith R.A. DeCandido‘s most recent book is Marvel’s Thor: Tales of Asgard, an omnibus of his trilogy of novels featuring Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three.
Reposting/revising my reviews from the TrekBBS (yay, the paste function is working again):
I have mixed feelings about The Incredible Hulk Returns. The Bixby Hulk was set in a far more grounded universe than its contemporary superhero shows. While Wonder Woman and the bionic duo fought aliens and robots and the like, and Spider-Man faced clones (yes, really) and a telekinetic, the only fantasy/SF elements we ever got in Hulk beyond the core gamma-mutation premise were psychic precognition, a bit of vague Chinese mysticism, and one random sapient artificial intelligence. So suddenly throwing in outright magic and myth made real was too jarring a change to the ground rules of the show. At least the MCU tried to rationalize the Asgardians as aliens with science indistinguishable from magic. TIHR did retcon Kramer’s Thor into a “warrior king” rather than an actual god, but he was still a dead guy resurrected by calling on the power of Odin.
And even with former TIH writer-producer Nicholas Corea returning as writer and director, the movie takes a less dramatic, more action-oriented tone than the series — and certainly more violent and gunplay-driven, thanks to laxer network standards on censorship. The lack of Joe Harnell’s music is a major loss; Lance Rubin just isn’t a comparable talent, and the ‘80s synth arrangement doesn’t help. And a Hulk-out without the Startling Metamorphosis Chorus just isn’t the same.
Still, a lot about this movie works surprisingly well. Its version of Thor is pretty revisionist (though not quite as much so as its version of Banner), but it’s effective. Eric Allan Kramer is quite good as Thor, and having him be a separate entity summoned by Blake is a good idea, since it lets them play off each other in a mismatched-buddies sort of way. Their developing relationship is the most enjoyable part of the story. It’s certainly more effective than David’s unconvincing romance with Maggie; Lee Purcell is no Mariette Hartley.
It’s nice to see McGee again, but given that this would be his only appearance in the revival movies, it’s a shame it’s so routine. And it’s kind of sad, actually, because it sounds like he quit the Register and doesn’t seem to have been doing so well career-wise. (The name National Register is never even mentioned, even though the editor he talks to on the phone is called Mark, like Walter Brooke’s recurring character Mark Roberts from the series — yet it’s clearly not Brooke’s voice.) I wish he’d gotten more of a payoff in the end, and it’s a shame the subsequent movies dropped him.
The timing is also odd. This came out 11 years after the pilot, but Blake says he last saw Banner 10 years ago at a lecture. And McGee says he chased the Hulk for nearly 4 years, while it’s been only 2 years since the Hulk last appeared. So is the movie supposed to be set several years earlier than it really is?
It’s also surprising how much more pumped up Ferrigno is here compared to the series — and he was huge enough in the series. I wonder, did he overcompensate to balance out the effect of his age, or was it just due to changing style in bodybuilder physique, the growing insistence on even more ridiculously overdeveloped muscles?
The movie’s ending is oddly upbeat, to the point of being incongruous — it’s set up to suggest that, for once, David can just stay where he is and have a contented life with the woman he loves, yet without explanation he just leaves at the end.
Which makes it jarring to go from there to the start of the next movie, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk, which seems to disregard the previous movie and portray a closed-off, embittered David who’s lost all hope. Although it’s similar to its predecessor in being a broader, more action-driven story. But I actually like this movie best of the three. It’s more a Daredevil pilot than a Hulk movie, with David not even Hulking out in the climax, but it’s a pretty good Daredevil pilot for its time. Rex Smith is a bit broad as Matt Murdock, but still engaging, and John Rhys-Davies makes a superb Wilson Fisk, despite the odd way the character is written with his obsession for video and his mirrored sunglasses. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it otherwise invents new characters and backstory around Daredevil rather than using familiar characters like Foggy, Karen, and Ben Urich — but given that, I am a bit surprised that it does include Turk Barrett. I would’ve been interested to see the series this was a test run for, although it wouldn’t have compared to the current Daredevil.
I also feel that Daredevil is a better fit for the mostly-naturalistic Bixby-Hulk universe than Thor, since he got his powers from radiation the same as David, and they’re quite subtle powers compared to the Hulk’s. And it’s nice to see Matt and David bonding as radiation bros. There are a couple of continuity errors with the series, though. David has no fingerprints on file, unlike in “A Rock and a Hard Place,” and he says he’s never considered how a blind person would live, even though he was briefly blind himself in “Blind Rage.” Also, why in the world would David think that it was safe for him to be in general population in prison? Even without murder attempts, that’s hardly a stress-free environment.
The Death of the Incredible Hulk was the one installment of the series that I’ve never chosen to rewatch, since I remembered it being bad, but I eventually decided to track it down for completeness’s sake. It’s actually not as bad as I remembered, for the most part. There’s actually some very good material here between David and Pratt, some excellent acting moments from Bixby, and Pratt gets a good rant off at a government backer about how the perfect soldier has gone fishing because he’s out of work. Gracen is quite beautiful as Jasmin, and reasonably effective in the role, though she’s too young for Bixby and their relationship develops rather fast. The problem is mainly how detached it all is from anything prior. Like the previous movies, it seems to ignore past continuity of both the series and the recent films and tell its own standalone story. How are these newcomers David’s only family, the ones on hand for his final moments? Granted, the series handled his relationships the same way, but it’s hard to find these strangers’ relationships to David as poignant as we’re asked to accept they are. I can’t help wondering what happened to his father and sister from “Homecoming” – or, heck, to Daredevil, whom he befriended 9 months earlier.
What really dooms the movie is that climactic death scene. It’s terrible. Jasmin ends up getting chased by a taxiing plane for no good reason. David’s final Hulk-out is the most slapdash one in a movie where they’ve all been half-hearted. And the Hulk provoking the villain to shoot the fuel tank and kill herself and her pilot is a terribly wrong storytelling choice. Even aside from its stupidity, it violates the core of the Banner/Hulk character. David spent a dozen years fearing that the Hulk would someday kill someone. His innate morality, David’s deep reverence for life that made the Hulk instinctively unwilling to kill and driven to protect, was essential to the show and the highest priority of the lead character. So having him be responsible for two deaths other than his own taints him in a way he could not forgive himself for, and that is an utterly horrible and wrong way to bring his journey to an end.
Beyond that, the Hulk’s final fall is laugh-out-loud awful, with poor Lou having to lie on his back and flail his limbs in slow motion while a cheesily elegiac pop song plays. And then he changes back, David says “I’m free,” he dies, the end. It’s a terrible way to end it all. David, the Hulk, and the series deserved better.
The movies were mostly forgettable to me, but the climatic battle had a line has has remained in my lexicon ever since. When Thor suggests a simple plan of the Hulk attacking from the front while Thor and Blake attack from the rear, Banner reminds him that he doesn’t hulk-out on purpose.
Of course when Thor sees the Hulk charging down the driveway, he screams I KNEW HE THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD PLAN!
I honestly completely missed these when they initially aired — I was in college at the time, and the dorm TV probably would’ve been stuck on MTV when they were broadcast.
I went to high school with Eric Kramer, although he was a couple years ahead of me. We did act ( in separate plays) in he same one-act festival and were the only two from our school to receive awards. Clearly his was the more deserving. And we maintain distant contact on Facebook. I mention this only because a couple weeks ago I discovered the father of a friend of mine was once good friends with Lou Ferrigno: they used to lift weights together on the beach (he was also friends, although not as close, with Ah-nold) and Lou even attended his wedding.
Christopher: As I said in the rewatch, they didn’t drop McGee, Jack Colvin retired from acting after having a small stroke. And the Hulk didn’t provoke anything at the end, Bela just grabbed the gun and pulled it on the Hulk, just like villains had been doing all throughout the series and movies. It was Zed who tried to get her to stop because of the danger, but she fired anyhow, blowing up the plane. I don’t see where you get the notion that the Hulk “provoked” the plane being shot. His behavior was exactly the same as it always was, and Bela’s behavior was typical (if stupid) bad-guy behavior, it just happened to be on a place where firing a gun was a spectacularly dumb idea.
Alan: that’s a perfect example of how great Kramer was in the role. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Haven’t really watched these as an adult. Little tidbit: in Latin American TV (my country Uruguay included), the Daredevil film was called “Hulk Vs. The Ninja”.
@1 – Chris: Regarding the time the movie is set, did we ever get an indication that the series was chronicling events in real time? Just because it lasted X amount of years in the real world it doesn’t mean that’s the time that passed in-universe.
@5/krad: The point is, a Hulk-out led to someone’s death, however inadvertently, and that was the one thing David was always the most afraid of. In “The Psychic,” when he thought the Hulk had been responsible for the death of a teenage gang member, he was ready to commit suicide. So it’s not the Hulk’s behavior I’m talking about, it’s the writer’s choice to have the situation play out that way. I’m offended that Gerald DiPego chose to end the Hulk’s life in a way that also caused others to die, because that betrayed the spirit of the original show and made a mockery of the core priorities of David Banner as a character. It would’ve been truer to the spirit if he’d at least sacrificed himself to save other lives.
In a lot of ways, TV has changed for the better since the ’70s and early ’80s, but one change I don’t care for is the far more casual approach to lethal violence.
@6/MaGnUs: Of course it’s possible for TV series and revivals to pretend less time has passed in-story than in reality — Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a major example of that. But it’s more common to acknowledge the passage of real time, especially in a series set in the present day. It’s just that it’s hard to tell in this case — did they really intend less time to have passed, or did they just fudge the numbers?
As for the series, I don’t recall exactly, but I think there were probably some episodes that gave present-day dates in signage or newspaper text or the like, if not in dialogue. I never got any sense it was meant to be in “the near future” or anything.
I barely remember watching these movies when they first came on. I do remember liking how Daredevil was done. What I most remember is an interview by Lou Ferrigno where he says the producers wanted a new Hulk but that Bixby said they would have to replace him also.
Nice of Bixby. Sounds like a stand up guy.
I have all three of these movies on DVD but I haven’t watched them since. I did see a bit of the movies on cable a few months ago because the channel that added the show to their line up had a giant marathon of everything Hulk. I thought the first movie was goofy fun. I enjoyed the second one much more the story was better. I’d never heard of DD in 1989. It was an interesting introduction. I hate the third movie . It kills off the character in the most cheesy way. The story is sad and I never believed in the continued romantic relationship between Banner and Jasmine. I always assumed they wrapped it up this way because Bixby was getting very ill with cancer. I was amused that some of the character actors were repeat players in all three movies . John Novak played a villain three times. The tv show remains one of my all time childhood favorites and, I like catching re-runs on my days off during the week.
Although this was the first real attempt to create a shared Marvel universe, it obviously weren’t the first cross-overs. You already covered the Batman/Green Hornet one, but Filmation also made an attempt at a shared universe by mixing Shazam (Captain Marvel) and Isis in the mid-1970s.
Speaking of which, you have done many of the pilot movies for these characters. You did not do a Shazam pilot. Is that because I missed it? Or does it not qualify as a movie by your rubric because it went straight to series? Any idea why some pilots took one route and not the other? I’m sure that question is Television Production 101, but it’s not something I have ever thought about before.
Most TV shows film a pilot episode as proof of concept, something that will not be broadcast if it’s not picked up; while others try their luck first with TV movies (feature length, as opposed to a pilot episode) that is filmed to be broadcast no matter what. If ratings are good, they’ll follow up with a series.
@11/Joe: I’m not sure I’d count Shazam/Isis, since Isis was an original spin-off created by Filmation rather than an adaptation of a pre-existing comics character.
But it should be pointed out that when Keith says this was the first such attempt at Marvel crossovers, he means the first live-action attempt. There had been plenty in animation over the decades.
Anyway, the Incredible Hulk series made an attempt to create its own spinoff “superhero” character in the episode “The Disciple.” It was a sequel to an earlier episode featuring Mako as a Chinese kung fu instructor who’d tried to teach David to control his power with meditation, but it was mainly a backdoor pilot centered on Rick Springfield as an ex-cop who was a disciple of Mako’s character and was able to use his training in martial arts and Eastern mysticism to draw on effectively superhuman strength, senses, and physiological control (making him sort of a knockoff Iron Fist). So in a sense, that was the first “superhero team-up” in TIH. It was written by Nicholas Corea, who later wrote and directed the Hulk-Thor movie. And it followed a similar template to the later movies, in that Springfield’s character learned David’s big green secret and teamed up with (but overshadowed) the Hulk in the climax.
Also, a few years before these revival movies, Bixby and Spider-Man star Nicholas Hammond made an attempt to sell a revival movie that would’ve teamed up the Hulk and Spidey. Hammond says it fell through because Ferrigno was unavailable due to shooting a Hercules movie in Italy, but Ferrigno says he was never contacted about it. https://www.cbr.com/spider-man-hulk-tv-crossover-nearly-was/
“Speaking of which, you have done many of the pilot movies for these characters. You did not do a Shazam pilot. Is that because I missed it? Or does it not qualify as a movie by your rubric because it went straight to series?”
This is a review series for movies based on superhero comics, not for pilots. The only pilots included here are those that were released as standalone TV movies. Shazam! had no movie-length pilot; it only had half-hour episodes.
I watched the original series every week when I was a kid, then again in syndication in the mid-late 80s, and so, of course, I had to watch these 3 revival movies when they came out. Now, I’ve always had an ear for music and sound design (and, as an adult, have done work as an audio sound designer) and the most glaring problem I had with these movies back then, and after I rewatched them on DVD (following a DVD rewatch of the original series) a few years ago, was the near lack of any of the original series sound, both Harnell’s musical cues and SFX.
I always liked Death the most of the three, as long as I overlook the last couple of minutes of it, mostly because it had the closest “feel” of the original series. Not that I disliked any of the post-series movies, Bixby, Ferrigno (and Colvin) were great to see again and still have their roles nailed down… and although I knew nothing of Thor or Daredevil I thought they were fine as well.
It’s a shame Jack Colvin’s health issues kept him from returning. I always wanted a series finale that was sort of along the same lines as The Fugitive, with the pursuer and the pursued coming together at the end. Maybe McGee finally discovers that the Hulk/”John Doe” is David Banner, but he passes up getting his Pulitzer-winning story about the Hulk in order to help David get his cure at last and live out the rest of his life in peace. That would’ve been much better than the ending we got.
I always wondered if Jasmin originally was intended to be a version of the Black Widow. Also I always thought Bixby’s illness was the reason the sequel wasn’t produced.
Is there any possibility of a rewatch of the tv series?
According to an interview that Glenn Greenberg did for Back Issue with Gerald Di Pego, Bixby’s illness was not why the sequel was cancelled. He hadn’t yet shown any signs of the prostate cancer that killed him three years later when the sequel was canned. It was purely due to the poor ratings and poor reviews for Death.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Yeah, I’m rather fond of these (even the last one). I think the revision of Thor works really well, since the origin in the comics never made a bit of sense and they kept flip flopping on whether Thor and Don Blake were the same person or not. Here, they’re quite clearly separate people. McGee does his thing and works quite well and it’s fun seeing the Hulk and Thor trashing things together. In many ways, despite having a Norse warrior walking around, it’s perhaps the most true to the series.
The second one works well too. It’s depressing but true to character to see Banner so repressed at the beginning of the movie, unable to stand up to a bunch of redneck bullies and actually considering letting a woman be molested rather than risk becoming the Hulk. I have to say, having watched it twice I never actually twigged that the Karen Page Expy was meant to be the lawyer and the Foggy Nelson Expy was meant to be the secretary, probably because neither of them actually does anything except sit around the office talking about Murdock. So the whole thing kind of feels like someone didn’t want to pay for a couple of extra copyrighted characters. But the whole thing actually ends on an upbeat note: Banner has restored Murdock’s faith and saved a woman without even needing the Hulk.
But in many ways the third one is the ending the show needed to have. I’m not sure if anyone would have accepted a “Yay, Banner’s cured!” ending. And yes, the villains are generic and it makes its supporting cast out to be more important than they are. I don’t have a problem with the ending. I’ve heard it protested that the Hulk’s survived a fall from a plane in the past but here the plane explodes around him so he was probably injured even before the fall. It underlines the difference between the Hulk’s intentions and his understanding: His instinct is to simply push Bela’s gun towards the floor but he doesn’t realise that that’ll rupture the fuel tank. I was actually more disturbed by the climax of “A Solitary Place” where the Hulk’s actions accidentally result in a young man’s throat being crushed and he would have died if there hadn’t been a doctor on hand to give emergency surgery. Perhaps death was the only release Banner could have ever had. The fact that the death of Bill Bixby is one of the reasons why he never returned just adds to the poignancy.
@15/CLB-I remember reading that Kenneth Johnson planned to end the fifth season with a two-part series finale where Banner was revealed as being alive and the Hulk and was placed on trial for the murder of Elaina Marks, which I’m guessing would have included a role for McGee somewhere, but then the plug got pulled after just seven episodes, resulting in the run ending on an unremarkable intended mid-season episode with McGee having made a low-key last appearance a couple of episodes earlier.
@19/cap-mjb: “So the whole thing kind of feels like someone didn’t want to pay for a couple of extra copyrighted characters.”
Well, at the time, it was still fairly atypical for a superhero adaptation to draw on comics characters other than the leads. Granted, they did tend to use supporting protagonists more than villains, but they often relied heavily on original characters. Wonder Woman had Steve Trevor and Etta Candy in its first season, but then dropped Etta and diminished Steve’s (well, Steve Jr.’s) role in the second-third. Spider-Man had Jonah and Aunt May in the pilot, but only Jonah going forward (and he was revised to be more like Perry White). And of course, Hulk only used one character from the comics and changed his first name. Later on, the 1990 The Flash had Barry Allen and Tina McGee (who was a relatively minor comics character given an enlarged role), as well as Barry’s parents, but otherwise relied mostly on original characters, and wasn’t allowed to start using comics villains until the back half of the season.
If anything, I think the modern trend for superhero adaptations to rely mainly on characters adapted from the comics rather than original characters is because the comics companies themselves (or the multimedia corporations that have grown out of them) are now producing the shows, so they want the shows to use characters they already own so that they don’t have to pay royalties to the creators of new characters. I suspect that’s why we see so many characters who have the names of comics characters but are otherwise effectively original — Felicity Smoak on Arrow, Jefferson Jackson on Legends of Tomorrow, Mack MacKenzie and Lance Hunter on Agents of SHIELD, Roger Dooley on Agent Carter, etc.
“I’ve heard it protested that the Hulk’s survived a fall from a plane in the past”
I’m pretty sure he hasn’t. When I rewatched the show over the past couple of years, I was paying attention to that in plane-related episodes because I remembered his fate in the last movie. In “747,” the Hulk almost fell out of an open cargo-bay door in midair, but he caught himself and pulled himself in. And in “Homecoming,” he was on his father’s cropdusting plane when a sabotaged wing gave way, and the Hulk held the wing in place long enough for the plane to land safely. Which was one of the show’s more impressive climaxes, since it was one of the few times there was any real sense that the Hulk was in danger or facing a challenge he couldn’t effortlessly overcome. There’s also “Free Fall,” where David fell from a skydiving plane without a parachute, but was handed a backup chute by another skydiver, deployed the chute successfully, but then had a strap shot out by the bad guy and fell a relatively short distance to the ground, triggering a Hulk-out. I figure people might be misremembering one of those scenes.
The TV Hulk was never as indestructible as the comics’ version. He was strong enough to tip over a construction vehicle with some effort or to smash through a vault door if he kept at it long enough, but he wasn’t bulletproof. He could heal rapidly from an injury, disease, or poison when he Hulked out — not unlike Wolverine’s healing factor before it was amped up to an absurd degree — but there was a risk that he could be killed. Indeed, in “The First,” the other, evil Hulk-like creature was shot to death at the end.
“His instinct is to simply push Bela’s gun to the floor”
Ah, thanks. That clarifies my objection to the scene. However accidentally, it’s the Hulk’s own action that points the gun at the fuel tank and thereby kills the other two people. Why didn’t he just crush the gun barrel in his fingers, like he often did on the show? Or just pull it out of her hand? The scene was deliberately written and directed to make the Hulk a participant in their deaths, and that’s what I feel is such a betrayal of the character and the ideals of the show.
@20/”but then the plug got pulled after just seven episodes”
In fact, there never really was a fifth season. The seven episodes of the fifth season were actually produced as part of the fourth season and held back. They’re all pretty mediocre, routine episodes, which makes me wonder if the producers deliberately held them back to make the fourth season stronger overall, and were hoping to spread them out among a stronger set of new episodes if they got an order for a fifth season. Instead, they just had to burn them off as a partial season, and the show ended with a whimper.
KRAD wrote: Jack Colvin only appears in the first movie. Shortly after filming of the first film, Colvin suffered a minor stroke and retired from acting
Wow, this is the first I’m hearing about this. When I asked Gerald DiPego why McGee didn’t show up in DEATH, he never mentioned Colvin’s health, only that he had asked about using McGee and it was decided that the character was extraneous to the story they were telling.
(I also noted to DiPego the similarities between Jasmin and the Black Widow, and he said that she was NOT originally intended to be Natasha Romanoff.)
the nightmare causes him to Hulk out and break out of prison, mostly by breaking the prison.
Good line! :-)
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is [RETURNS] supposed to be set several years earlier than it really is?
That was the impression I got. Bixby didn’t look much older than he did on the TV series, so it was easy to roll with the notion that less than six years had passed.
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cap-mjb wrote: I remember reading that Kenneth Johnson planned to end the fifth season with a two-part series finale where Banner was revealed as being alive and the Hulk and was placed on trial for the murder of Elaina Marks
Not true. Kenneth Johnson told me personally that no “series finale” was ever conceived, primarily because the show was canceled so abruptly. He never had time to consider what the story for such a finale would entail. Also, because the show was going into syndication, there likely would have been no push for a real finale that ended everything, since syndication packages were considered more valuable if you could air the episodes in more-or-less random order.
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ChristopherLBennett wrote: I’m pretty sure [the Hulk] hasn’t [survived a fall from a plane in the past]
The Hulk survived a fall from a plane in the episode, “Free Fall.” As I recall, not only did he fall from a plane, he crashed into a shack as he landed.
The seven episodes of the fifth season were actually produced as part of the fourth season and held back. They’re all pretty mediocre, routine episodes
By the time these episodes were written, most of the creative people who had helped build the series into a success (Karen Harris and Jill Sherman, Nicholas Corea, Andrew Schneider) were no longer working on it, and any scripts they had left behind, as Corea and Schneider had done, were pretty substandard. There was a new, young writer on the staff during that late period, and he wrote or co-wrote the majority of the final batch of episodes, and they are truly weak. In some cases, absolutely AWFUL. (I’ll refrain from naming him here. I don’t want to attack the guy. I’ve seen him in interviews and he seems like a nice, enthusiastic person who was really trying to do his best, but really, had the show continued with him as the primary writer, it would have been canceled soon anyway—or at least it would have deserved to be.)
@21/CLB-“The scene is deliberately written and directed to make the Hulk an active participant in their deaths, and that’s what I feel is such a betrayal of the characters and ideals of the show.”
I could be wrong here but doesn’t the villain in “The Snare” die in broadly similar circumstances? I can’t remember the exact details but I seem to recall he dies by his own hand during a struggle with the Hulk.
I thought the sequence in “Free Fall” went as glenngreenberg said but your version of events strikes a chord as well so possibly I’m misremembering.
@22/glenn: As I said, David didn’t fall all the way to the ground in “Free Fall”– he was handed a backup chute in midair and deployed it safely, then had it damaged while he was fairly near the ground. He didn’t even Hulk out until after he landed, so it couldn’t have been that hard an impact. So while technically, yes, you could say he survived a fall out of a plane, that’s a misleading way of putting it. It’s not at all the same situation as in Death of.
As for that “final batch of episodes,” my understanding is that the production order was very different from the airing order, with the 2-parter “The First” actually being the last episodes produced. Although I’m not certain how reliable the production-order listing I found online was.
@23/cap-mjb: In “The Snare,” yes, the villain dies by his own hand, but the Hulk actually tries to save him and fails, and even shows grief when he dies, even though David/Hulk had every reason to hate this guy. That’s why the finale of Death was so wrong for the character. The Hulk expressed David’s raw, unfiltered emotion, and his unfiltered reaction in “The Snare” was to grieve the death of even the most ruthless, malevolent opponent he ever faced. That’s how deeply compassionate he was. He spent so many years living in constant fear that the Hulk would cause someone’s death. So to casually make his greatest dread come true at the end of his journey was just a bad choice.
I just rewatched the relevant scene from the episode “Free Fall.”
Banner was about 600 feet up in the air when he started to plummet. The guy who shot up Banner’s parachute said he was 200 yards above the ground, which translates into 600 feet.
And it was clearly established that Banner was already transforming right after he began to plummet, so he was already gaining mass and strength when he crashed through the shack.
Unless the plane in Death of was significantly higher in the air than the one in “Free Fall” had been—and as I recall, the explosion occurred just moments after takeoff, so the plane couldn’t have gotten TOO high up—I don’t think I was being misleading at all.
As for the production order, that may well be the case. I honestly don’t know in what order episodes were shot. Still, I stand by my comments that the late-in-the-series arrival of the writer I referred to earlier heralded a major downturn in the quality of the writing. And all you have to do is look at the producer credits to see that all the creative people I mentioned before who did a good job maintaining the show’s overall quality (Harris & Sherman, Corea, Schneider) were no longer there.
@25/glenn: Well, I could argue that even a damaged chute would slow his fall to some degree compared to a free fall. Or that hitting bare tarmac would be a more abrupt and deadlier deceleration than crashing through the roof of a shack. But instead I’ll look at it from the perspective of the writers’ intent. The makers of the series intended the Hulk to be strong but not indestructible. If their view of the Hulk’s powers had included the ability to fall out of an airplane and survive, they wouldn’t have written the scene to give David a backup chute first. Nor would they have used the risk of falling from a plane as a peril for the Hulk in “747” and “Homecoming.” As far as the creators of the original show saw it, falling out of a plane could kill the Hulk. So Death of was consistent with that intent, allowing for the inconsistency in exact details that’s understandable in stories made by different creators more than a decade apart. Although the explosion certainly didn’t help.
it’s weird, but i think i only saw the show with daredevil. at least, i remember it, and the other two shows are a complete blank.
Reading these comments discussing the tv show reinforces my belief that this series needs a rewatch on this site. I disagree that the entire fifth season was bad. The final episode where Banner arrives at an abandoned town (A Minor Problem ) I thought was pretty good. The first act where he’s walking through the town trying to figure out where all the people were was very eerie and reminded me of a couple episodes of The Twilight Zone. Granted it was the only good episode of the seven and didn’t serve very well as a series finale (although at that time in television shows very rarely got a series finale that provided any closure for the characters. Usually the show would just end).
Also, didn’t Jack Colvin teach acting for a time after the series?
@28/Michael: I found “A Minor Problem” unimpressive except for the nifty, jazzy musical score. My favorite of the last seven is “Sanctuary,” which is a lot of fun.
Hey all, first post here. Enjoying this discussion of one of my all-time favorite shows. Since the subject is the post-series movies, which have fascinated me since I watched them in their initial broadcasts, I’d like to repost some thoughts I shared not long ago in another forum, about the similarities between The Incredible Hulk Returns and the episode Bring Me The Head of the Hulk:
First off, I feel Head is a strong episode. Could have been great, but the interesting set up doesn’t quite payoff in the end, IMO. Maybe if it had been expanded to a two-parter and included more action, a la Prometheus. That being said, Nicholas Corea, who wrote & directed TIHR, must have remembered this episode fondly.
In both stories, new technology that could function as either a cure or a weapon is at stake: the DNA Transposer & the Gamma Transponder.
In both stories, a heavily armed mercenary is the main adversary. Even their names are similar – LaFronte & LaBeau. At the time of his appearance in the series, LaFronte was somewhat of a rarity for the show, though of course the heavily armed baddies were common in the three movies discussed here.
In both stories, someone connected to the bad guy has a crisis of conscience and tries to help Banner, then are killed or almost killed for their betrayal.
The bad guys even get captured the same way in the end – by having the Hulk wrap a bazooka/pipe around them before they can shoot him.
On a related note, Corea basically rewrote his own McGee/Editor Mark conversation from the end of Mystery Man and reused it at the conclusion of TIHR. The two scenes are very similar, right down to Mark invoking the names of mythological figures as he chastises Jack.
It is worth noting that Bixby did direct Head, so his memories of it must’ve been particularly strong, and perhaps it was he who suggested to Corea that they take a bit of inspiration from it.
Thanks again, all, for the lively discussion.
I liked Daredevil, even though the suit was black instead of red. Didn’t the actor end up playing another superhero (Streethawk)? The version showed on UK TV was really badly cut, removing all the martial arts. It would cut the beginning of any punch or kick, never mind them connecting, so it just showed goons falling to the floor or going through walls for no reason…
I loved the way Thor took such joy and enthusiasm in life. I like the biker bar scene, and the declaration “I KNEW HE THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD PLAN!” is one of my favourite lines too.
“Death” is mediocre. I barely remember anything about it. I thought the female lead was supposed to be a version of Black Widow. Maybe it’s what gave the idea to the later Avengers: AoU movie? Definitely agree the ending was bit “Really?! That’s what killed him?!” It felt like they had to live up to the title, but had run out of budget.
@31/WillMayBeWise: Rex Smith starred in Street Hawk in 1985, four years before he was Daredevil. I don’t remember watching the show, but reading about it on Wikipedia, I gather it was basically Knight Rider with a motorcycle. Could Smith’s character be considered a superhero when it was the bike that had the special abilities? “Vigilante” seems more like it.
32, I think Vigilante is ruled out, he’s actually employed by the government, which makes his actions officially sanctioned, though I can’t recall how much he actually followed police procedure.
That superhero even covers the budget Motor-cycle Iron-Man is probably the best fit.
@33/LV: Okay, in that case I’d call him a government agent rather than a superhero. Then again, I didn’t see the show, so I don’t know how the public saw him.
34, I don’t recall either, it’s been too long since I saw the series at all. I think people knew who he was, but I’m not sure they knew his identity. Or it might have been more urban legend style.
@31 – WillMayBeWise: The goons going through walls or falling to the floor for no reason makes it sound even cooler, as if he had psychic powers of some sort.
A little late to the discussion here but wanted to add a few things:
– People are talking about The Hulk’s fall killing him in TDOTIH… also consider the plane exploded, which could have had some internal force on the Hulk’s body, adding to the damage. (Yes, I’m over-thinking it but hey)
– Since the next film was going to have a resurrection, I assumed they were going to use the logic of “he’s just in a deep sort of coma” to bring him back- I assumed the old science couple were going to be in this next film. I also remember vaguely an interview with Lou where he said the plan was to have the Hulk finally speak.
– In 1988, I was 9 years old and vividly remember an interview with Lou on channel 2 news to promote the Return film and I remember him saying he was lifting more because “the Hulk is bigger in the comics” which, at the time, wasn’t true- the Hulk was grey and diminished, at about 80% of his power so as a 9 year old I wondered why Lou thought that.
Gary: I doubt Ferrigno was up on the most current comics of the time, and was mostly thinking about the classic version of the character.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
No disrespect, Keith but I don’t think these are the first draft of the MCU.
No
That honor goes to the Showa Gojira films that lasted for almost 2 decades on Japanese dudes kicking each other’s asses in monster suits ;D
@39/J.U.N.O.: Umm, Toho’s Showa kaiju films were a shared universe, but they weren’t a Marvel universe. If you’re broadening the topic to shared movie universes in general, the Toho series is predated by the Universal Monsters in the 1930s-40s.
As far as actual superhero crossovers go, the first outside of comics was probably the 1940s The Adventures of Superman radio series, which frequently featured Batman and Robin as guest stars.
@40:
Ok, good to know. (The More You Know) I was being semi-sarcastic, I’ve just been watching them a lot. A lot more than the MCU, for certain.