BREAKING: Edward Norton Is 'The Incredible Hulk'

Bad idea. Bana can play anything. Norton's slipped totally off the radar since banging Salma Hayek and his last movie was laughably awful. His career's been careening downhill faster than Oprah after a hostess truck. I have plenty against - namely that he squandered his talent and slipped into straight-to-video hell.

FWIW, if not for Bana, Troy would have been totally unwatchable instead of 90% unwatchable. ditto black hawk down. and Bana OWNED munich and deserved the oscar for his work in that film. Bana's first major misstep looks to be the strangely bad looking Lucky You.

Reply

bgdc sounds like he wants to suck Bana off...

I think Nortons a great decision to play Hulk.
I didn't hate Lees version, but everything I've heard about this new "reboot" is fantastic. Hopefully the Hulk in this one won't look like a Saturday morning cartoon.

Reply

I think its great news. When Iron Man was announced I wanted Norton for that, but when Downey got it I was satisfied. I look forward to a 'reboot'. I didn't hate Ang Lee's Hulk, but I didn't love it either. I think a reboot offers the chance to get things started on a better foot for the Hulk.

Reply

generally i would be down with Norton taking on a role in a big budget action film, I still have (some) faith in Norton but Down in the Valley was about as bad as a film can get.

I wish though that he had taken on a super hero role where he was in the whole movie, rather than the hulk where he will be morphing into a crappy looking CGI character for all the juicy parts.

Reply

Ang Lee's version was fine and a damn good movie. The only problem is that he basically made an intelligent film forn adult audiences of a comic-book hero and that didn't go down well with the teenager boys and middle America who think arthouse films are any film starring Seth Green. It's an impossible seel, like selling democracy in the Middle East. You can't instill democracy among savages.

Reply

Bana, a vanilla actor, you've obviously never seen Chopper.

Reply

The Ang Lee Hulk had many fine moments. I really enjoyed the bit where he was beating up the tanks. It was like when Spider-man opened and I felt like I'd been waiting 35 years to see this movie.

OTOH, Lee's Hulk had serious structural problems. The amount of time the audience had to wait for the title character to appear was an endurance event. They should have started with a spectacular action sequence that put the Hulk center stage almost immediately, then used flashbacks to show us how things got this way, then moved on to even more spectacular action after the need to avoid showing us the Hulk head-on was over.

The climactic battle between Hulk and his father as the Absorbing Man was wretchedly done. It was so dark the audience frequently had no idea what was happening. Likewise much of the fight with the Gamma Dogs, which were a bad idea from the start or at least executed badly. They looked like they'd escaped from 'The Mask' and were too cartoonish in relation to the rest of the production.

It could have been a far better movie. Having that be so apparent was what embittered many about it. On something like a 'Batman and Robin' the entirety is just rubbish and undeserving of the effort to critiques its faults. The cast and crew should just be euthanized and the world move. Really. No major participant in that movie has had anything I regard as really contributing anything important to film since.

Reply

Of course, let's throw out insults at a poster! Grow up.

Norton was fantastic. Once. His early work earned me admiration (American History X, Fight Club, People V. Larry Flynt). Then he started on a downward slope.

As for Bana - so far that guy's been money. How do you go from playing a bad ass in a turd like Troy to a regular joe-schmo getting in over your heard in Munich? Chopper? There aren't many movie characters quite as memorable as Chopper, imho. Bana still stands to screw up his career - Lucky You looks atrocious (the presence of hacks like Barrymore and Duvall don't help matters).

Reply

I agree with the posters that have commented about Bana's work in Chopper... I was sort of confused at why this guy I had never heard of was getting all these big roles (Troy, Munich). Then I rented Chopper. His performance in it is simply incredible. Great movie, too. Rent it if you haven't seen it, Scott W.

Reply

Norton is a great pick for this movie. In reference to his spiral downward..I would strongly disagree. Down in the Valley may not have been his best but he has been doing a lot of indie films to touch all different areas of the creative process. I think that is more impressive and substantial than just taking any blockbuster movie to get there.

Reply

Norton wasted his talent on making Frida for the ungrateful Salma Hayek. Norton wrote it, got the money for it from Harvey Weinstein, and got Salma nominated for an Academy Award even though she's a dog as an actress. He did all that so she would love him. Instead she dumped him. I think that's why he's made such awful choices since 2003.
Now that's she prego, he's over her and trying to resuscitate his career. So he took a page from Toby McGuire and signed on to be the Hulk. Look What Spider Man has done for Tob. Ed's going to do just fine.

Reply