Movie 666

By Demon

The Hulk has never been fond of the military, always smashing first and asking questions later. Many an old issue of the comic book The Incredible Hulk featured the green behemoth ripping the barrels from tanks, tossing frightened soldiers in all directions, and exclaiming “puny humans, Hulk smash.”

The military has always earned its licks from the big green guy. When they weren’t trying to outright exterminate him, soldiers were usually strapping the Hulk to some impossibly strong but ultimately futile restraining device in order to dissect him or turn him into the latest superweapon.

Never Fond of Tanks The Hulk smashes

One would expect that given the timidity of mainstream media in the last couple of years not to mention our country’s revived, unapologetic militarism, the big Hollywood movie version of The Hulk would take a more careful, sympathetic view of the armed forces than the comic book ever did. But nope, this ain’t the case.

In fact, the military portrayed in the Hulk movie, The Hulk, is as vile as ever: killing things they don’t understand, experimenting with destructive superweapons, using torture and the threat of violence to achieve objectives, carrying out the desires of egodriven leaders, blowing away our natural landscapes with all manner of weaponry, and cutting shameful deals with private industry.

It is no stretch to link the military of The Hulk with contemporary politics. America’s foreign policy since 911 has been to use our military aggressively, fighting fire with fire at the risk of building an even bigger fire. This is not to say that the Hulk himself represents Al Quaeda, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein specifically - but one theme of The Hulk is certainly that violent solutions to problems frequently make the problems worse and beget new problems. This is apparent in The Hulk as the angrier the Hulk gets, the bigger he gets; furthermore, the more the military strives to defeat the Hulk, the more the Hulk problem escalates.

Of course, deriding the military is not a popular topic for American audiences still celebrating The Annual War to Preserve the Fat Lifestyle. Do movie-watching crowds in this time of unrelenting jingoism, military opportunism, and peer pressure patriotism really want to see a negative portrait of our crusaders? Probably not.

Which means that Hulk concludes on some uncomfortable notes. Remember, Ang Lee rarely makes feelgood movies.

Firstly, there is the final battle scene where the military simply blows away the misunderstood Hulk and his evil but compelling father.

Secondly, there is the concluding dialogue that takes place between father, General Ross, and his daughter, Betty over the fate of her boyfriend Banner.

Ross: would you tell me if Banner tried to contact you?

Betty: No, but I wouldn’t have to, since you’ve got my phone bugged, my computer bugged, and I am under surveillance at all time.

Betty resigns herself to being survielled by the military. As a surrogate for the American public, her loyalties are fickle, sometimes to the misunderstood Banner, sometimes to the kill-’em-all father, but usually somewhere in between.

Ultimately, The Hulk cloaks its disgust with the military behind a comic book exterior. After all, Hulk is only being true to comic text by showing the military as bunch of cannon happy yahoos eager to blow away the man in the purple pants, as is the case in just about every Hulk comic ever produced (or that I have seen anyway). It should also be noted that the footsoldiers and tankers getting chucked around by the Hulk are not necessarily the true menace. The real problem, posits The Hulk, are not the hapless tankers and footsoldiers who are doing their job but the mad generals, politicians and corporate helmsmen in charge - a scene that could easily be equated with Republican wars-of-domination of recent years.

Despite its anti-military overtones, it would still be mistaken to call The Hulk a subversive film. But it is certainly a film open to a subversive reading - remarkable for a big weekend summer release. Don’t worry, however, Tom Ridge: the trailer advertising the SWAT movie later in the summer portends a surefire hit and should make up for any Hulk-inspired doubts one might have had in the beauty of our budding police state.

Related posts:

1. Trapped Between Monsters and Military in Cloverfield
2. Watchmen
3. Quantum of Solace
4. Red Planet Versus Blue Planet
5. Iron Man Crunches Terrorists While I Crunch Popcorn

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