Marvel Comics Movies-The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk is another Marvel character created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
He made his first appearance in The Incredible Hulk #1 in May of 1962.
The Hulk is a mix of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a little of the Jewish myth of the Golem tossed in.
(Just a side note here...have you ever noticed that almost all of our major superheros were created by Jewish people? When people talk about American culture, I never hear anyone say " You know, without Jews, we basically wouldn't have any comic books today.")
Anyway... on the surface the Hulk looks like you basic crush and destroy monster, but inside he's really just a person that wants to be left alone.
The Hulk has been in a lot of media.
From the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes animated television series to the iconic 1978 live-action "The Incredible Hulk" TV series to two (so far) live action movies.
Well kinda live action.....

2003's Hulk was the first theatrical movie based on the character.
The 1978 Hulk TV series started out as two TV movies but weren't released in theaters.
Hulk was directed by the Academy Award-winning Ang Lee and starred Eric Bana as Dr. Bruce Banner, Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross, Sam Elliott as General Thunderbolt Ross, Nick Nolte as Bruce's father David Banner (and the Absorbing Man kinda) and Josh Lucas as Major Glenn Talbot .
Build up was huge for this movie, and so was the let down.
Everyone thought that since Ang Lee was a name director (He had just come off 2000's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, nominated for 10 Oscars) this movie would kill.
But the Hulk wound up looking like an angry Shrek on steriods, we had the weird "Hulk Dogs" and things really didn't mesh well.
Amazingly the critics didn't totally hate the movie. Roger Ebert was mainly positive about it as was Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle and Paul Clinton of CNN.
Even though they admired Ang Lee's attempt, almost everyone disliked the computer-generated imagery.
The Hulk was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film of 2003, but lost out to X2.
Despite all this, the Hulk did make over $306 million dollars, which was good enough to lead to a reboot of the series.....

The Hulk franchise was rebooted in 2008 with a new story that mixed the Hulk's origin in with the supersoldier program. This of course ties it in with Captain America.
This time out, the movie was directed by Louis Leterrier (The Transporter and Transporter2) and starred Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner, Liv Tyler as Betty Ross, William Hurt as General Thunderbolt Ross and Tim Roth as Emil Blonsky who becomes the Abomination.
It also had Lou Ferrigno as the voice of the Hulk which I totally loved.
The film also has Leonard Samson (Doc Samson), Dr. Samuel Sterns (The Leader) and of course the famous guest appearance of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark.
The film got mixed (though mostly favorable) reviews and as of now has a worldwide take of over $349 million dollars, that includes box office, DVD and Blu-ray sales.

Even though the second movie outgrossed the first, the sequel is a bit shaky.
It's possible another movie might be held off till after 2011's The Avengers, in which The Hulk is schedualed to appear.
According to interviews, Tim Blake Nelson is ready to play the Leader and Ty Burrell is ready to go as Doc Samson.
Edward Norton however has not signed on.