forgive the choice of phrase, but how often can you poorly execute something, before the concept is damaged?
Hulk? I thought the last movie was a nice blend of the comics and the tv series. Not sure how it did critically or financially.
To do the Hulk, you have to do one of two things: either radically alter the concept, as they did in the tv series (basically turning it into The Fugitive or Kung Fu in green), or you have to take it back to its roots... go back to the cold war, nuclear-fearing horror movies of the '50s
that Lieber was so obviously inspired by when he created the Hulk. Of course, that movie would have to be a stand-alone:
Nuclear scientist accidentally irradiated while saving someone's life during a bomb test. He seems fine at first, but then strange things start happening. At the dramatic highlight of the movie, he turns into this horrible monster. Meanwhile, the man is still within, and still desperately in love with the daughter of he army general trying to kill him. Ultimately the creature dies a hero, and transforms back just as he dies in the arms of the woman he loves.
Hell, they ought to make the puppy in black and white.
See generally Booker, M. Keith., "The creature from the Cold War : science fiction monster movies of the long 1950s" in
Monsters, mushroom clouds, and the Cold War : American science fiction and the roots of postmodernism, 1946-1964 Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2001
