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Ok… I have officially taken too long to post this review, so my apologies to all of my adoring fans out there. So i have to say i liked the movie.

I wasn’t really looking forward to it up til about a week before it came out. That was about the time i saw a clip of one of the fights unedited on a webcomic i usually keep track of. I saw what looked to be one of the best fights between an actual person and a fictional cg thing, that i may have ever seen. What made it more impressive was that it was broad daylight. A little sunlight usually makes even the best cg artist’s falter a bit (in my view), but it was seamless and outright impressive. I was more than a little jazzed about seeing it at that point.

Coming out of the theater after the movie, i felt a bit dissapointed, but nowhere near unhappy.

I guess i should start with the good. Much like the fight i had seen earlier, just about every fight was thoroughly enjoyable and built well off previous fights. I can’t stress that last bit enough. There is such a good progression of building an enjoyable conflict that by the time you see tons and tons of cg mayhem you aren’t even thinking about how ludicrous it is to see a giant green guy bounding around Manhattan. They really crafted all the tension well, starting with a lowly but intelligent scientist and slowly revealing all of the elements that could spell out his doom. No action scene seemed out of place or unnecessary. Which is pretty impressive since about 70% of the movie seemed to be action scenes.

Speaking of the CG… there was an incredible(teeheehee) amount of excellent quality cg in the movie. Character animations where flawless and the scene compositing was really a joy to see. Liv Tyler really seemed to be talking to a person instead of a emotionless creature whenever she had a scene opposite thin air. There where a few hiccups. The effects used to portray Stark technology where a bit cheezy looking at long range, and oddly enough compositing a helicopter into Manhattan was a bit challenging for the animators, but these are just complaints of a perhaps over critical eye. There really shouldn’t be anything the general audience will dislike when it comes to special effects. Most likely your head will be more preocupied with the thought ‘Whoa. That was kinda cool’.

An now for my big gripe about the movie. All of that perfectly done emotion between Liv and a cg thing, didn’t translate to the interactions between Liv and a real Nortan. Scenes where the two were face to face seemed stilted and awkward. There just felt like there was zero chemistry between the characters, which honestly blew me away. I think Nortan absolutely shines with his ability to interact with anyone in just about any scene in just about any movie, so when i saw the scenes in question it took me completely out of the otherwise excellent artistry of the movie. The problem vanishes every time the camera looks at them one at a time, and thankfully this was the bulk of their interactions.

Did that ruin the movie for me?… well no. So much of this movie is well done that the maybe two minutes of awkward or slightly sub par scenes were no match for the overall quality. For me this movie was only a small step down from the quality of Iron Man (Gamin’s review would be almost identical to one i would write on I.M.), and is a definite reccomendation for any comic fan. The story and visual elements are handled so well that even Hulk haters (like me) will most likely be converts after seeing the movie.

Good film. A (95%awesome)
-The j suN