You thought the CGI Hulk was unconvincing? Let me ask you a question--can you imagine any way a 10' green man could look anything but "fake"? Ang Lee could have grown one to order and it still would have looked weird.

i disagree with aserdaten- if they can make hagrid look realistically big, they can do the same thing for the hulk.

The Hulk....now I must be precise in this posting as a fan of comic books I must honestly say that until the announcement of this film I could really care less about the Hulk or his world and history. Nevertheless, the surprising explosion of comic book movies being rushed to be made thanks to a little unknown comic book character named Blade that showed the worlds comic books can make good movie entertainment. Of course Blade was just the spring board, only allowing certain people in hollywood to give comic book movies a chance and so X-Men gets green lighted and its success, pushing forth the long in development Spider-man movie, and well...the rest is history. Anyway, as a fan of both movies and comic books I try to update myself as much as possible on comic book characters that I know little about so I can properly enjoy the big screen adaptation (this is of course a big mistake on my part as Hollywood seems to think that by "adaptation" that means to alter it as much as possible from its original manifestation, thereby keeping anyone who knows the original source from successfully enjoying the live big screen version, but that is neither here nor there.) So I learned everything I could about the Hulk as I did with Daredevil (which was really a bad comic book movie)so I could enjoy and judge Ang Lee's film. Now, for starters I can say that a lot of the comic book was put into the film, which is a good thing, personally I think that there's nothing wrong with the source material of any comic book movie and have the potential of making a rather great translation to film, and why not, works for Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings (though the latter seems to be getting altered more and more with each new chapter) Anyway, the Hulk...um...was a good film. I dunno...I can't explain it...because you watch it feeling like you are watching a great film, or SHOULD BE watching a great film, but there's something that doesn't seem to be there. Ang Lee did a very good job of keeping this film three dimensional to give this particular character depth, but unfortunately, though a lot of the comic was put into this film, a lot of it was left out. For example, the character of Rick Jones, in the comics he was the teenage average kid who decides to stroll onto the military testing site for the governments new Gamma bomb, created by scientist Bruce Banner. In the original history, Rick was the guy who Bruce pushes out of the way and faces his destiny as he bathes in Gamma radiation. Rick then becomes Bruce's sidekick, being the only one at first who knows of his dark, green secret, and feeling guilty about it. I think less of the movie should have been about Bruce's father and more on Rick, who is sadly absent in the movie. Overall, however, you gotta take what you are given and Ang Lee's version of the Hulk ain't that bad, and yes, the cgi is obviously cgi but hey, compared to what has been done in the past this is revolutionary work even though we are too spoiled in our modern movie going experiences to give a rat's ass. Especially since Ang Lee practically moved into ILM until the final product was done and even did all the motion capture sequences for the Hulk, I say the director should be commended. The split screen effects were sometimes cool but never really brought up a sense of necessity. The ...uh....dogs...not to give anything away, were actually not as silly as they were originally expected to be and that particular sequence was kinda cool...if only..and this is a problem with the final battle sequence....and that is that it was too dark! too dark to even see what was going on...I mean...yeah that's great for the guys at ILM but not for us! I mean seeing the Hulk battle a rock monster in the desert is supposed to be a bad ass sequence...not something you have to strain your eyes to see what the fu** is going on! Anyway, I think the biggest problem with comic book movies is not the director...its not the actors....its the writer(S) since these movies are basically just feeding the wallets and bank accounts of people sitting in their big fancy offices ordering some guy to find some other guy who may or may not know a dang thing about comic books to take a script that ten other guys who didn't know anything about comics wrote and rewrite a draft that will hopefully make (more) money at the box office. The Stan Lee and old 70's version of the Hulk/Fugitive Lou Ferrigno cameo was comical, the desert scene was great though it took way to long to get to, the dogs scene was fun, taking the Hulk from the desert military base of the comics and putting him in San fransisco only to take him away from there and put him in a desert base only so he can escape and go back to San Fransisco to do all but five minutes of damage to one street was kind of pointless, but I guess they needed a point A and point B to give the Hulk a reason to use his 3 mile jumps, but the obviousness of that is poor writing in itself, I say, they should've stuck to the original idea of Banner being the creator of a gamma bomb and just not have him be proud of it instead of being a researcher for cell regeneration...which...by the way kinda explains the Hulk's extra mass , the nanomeds in the body basically create the additional cells that make up the Jade Giant, anyone familiar with cliched sci fi info know that nanotechnology is basically microscopic robotic engineering that act as artificial cells that can do everything from reattaching or regrowing limbs (I'd use Jason X as an example but nobody watched that piece of..) to making physical alterations to the human body and manipulating it in a way so that it was more or less a robotic virus that poisions the body (Assistant Director Skinner from the X-Files had the liberty of having a nano virus torment him). Anyway....its a classic tale of a huge green angry monster, why do we have to nitpick at little things like how can those pants hold together or where does the extra mass come from? I mean how many people try to negate the logistics of movies like Independence Day or T2...I mean seriously a robot who is all liquid metal...how does he maintain sentience? He's all goo! Who cares he's coo as a muth!

I am actually going around claiming the Hulk cgi was pretty good, in fact better than The Matrix. Like the scene with the dogs in the trees- you don't think about the special effects, because it just looks real.

Come on, you are telling me all those scenes in broad daylight with the Hulk flexing his considerable girth were not even the slightest bit convincing? I thought it was great.

It probably helps that I AM COLORBLIND and did not notice the Hulk is green...

Hulk didn't work, but damn, did AO Scott have to give it such a mean bad review? AO Scott lost all credibility with me when he declared piece-o-crap Punch Drunk Love a masterpiece.

I loved Punch Drunk Love! A.O. was pretty vicious in this review; I like him better when he's reviewing obviously shitty movies, like that Mandy Moore one, "A Walk to Remember."

Captain America deserves two hours but not the Hulk? Please, I mean super soldiers are cool but when the government has them dressing up in red white and blue tights carryign a big dorky shield, well, I'd sit through two hours of the Hulk over watching an outdated WWII nazi fighting super hero who awakens in the twenty first century