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The Incredible Hulk
Interview with Edward Norton
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Pedigree: On the one hand: the Oscar-nommed likes of Ed Norton and William Hurt. On the other: Louis Leterrier, the helmer of the dumb-but-fun Transporter movies. Estimated budget: $125 million. Predicted box office: $180 million (US gross), $400 million (worldwide).
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Ang Lee's 2003 big-screen realisation of Marvel's biggest (or, certainly, strongest) character was many things - complex, ambitious, sadly under-performing - but it was also, crucially, an adjective-free zone. Not so June's re-vamp/re-boot/re-imagining (delete as applicable), which restores the nickname that has stayed with the Hulk since his debut in 1962. And that brings with it just one problem: if your film has the word "incredible" in the title, you'd better make sure you deliver.
Well, Louis Leterrier's The Incredible Hulk aims to, with a plot that sees Edward Norton's Bruce Banner hunted down by a government taskforce intent on using his gamma-irradiated blood as the basis of a programme to create super-soldiers.
Leterrier's take on the Hulk is more action-orientated than Lee's movie, as the big galoot - who's nine feet tall and dark green in this one, with the brutish face of a bouncer - goes toe-to-toe with fellow brute The Abomination (Tim Roth). Yet, with a quality cast on board, it's clear that the new movie is about more than Hulk-smashing.
"It comes right out of Greek mythology - this notion of the suppression of your inner demon," says Edward Norton, who shocked the world by not only taking the Banner role, but also writing the screenplay. "That was what drew me to it - the idea of a moral person at war with this thing inside of him."
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