Hulk (DVD)

The big green guy has made it from the big screen to the small one and the flick hasn't changed and the special features don't add much to the production.

I gave this movie a "B-" rating after seeing it in the theaters and my opinion of the movie has stayed the same whether on the small screen or the large, but let's forget that for now and talk about what we have here on this 2-disc "Special Edition."

What we have here is a movie that was too long for its own good and special features that are also a little lack-luster, but that doesn't necessarily make this a bad buy.

Where in the theaters we had to sit through the three-and-a-half minute long credit sequence here it takes a push of the next button and we are into the movie.

The Hulk is more human and less animal than expected and there were several complaints that it takes too long to get him on screen, but with the wonders of DVD just go to track 11 and you got him in all his glory.

So to the "Special" Features. We got director commentary, commercials and more here, but what really stands out?

First of all, what really catches the eye and ear here is the feature length commentary by Ang Lee, which isn't as impressive as you may hope since he doesn't explain all the odd pieces of the movie like the focus on moss on rocks and that all-out mess of an ending but he does talk more about the technical details of filmmaking and can be quite interesting at points.

More Ang can be found in the Making of the Hulk and The Incredible Ang Lee and it's all worth it just to see Lee dressed in a skin tight outfit with little sensors on it as he jumps around acting out the Hulk's rage. Bet you didn't know that when you were watching that massive beast you were actually watching Ang Lee pounce around on studio props.

The rest of the features pretty much focus on the creation of the Hulk and how the specific CG scenes were developed and brought to life. The making of the Dog Fight scene is probably the most interesting vignette since the others are a little lack-luster and boring.

You also get a taste of the unique style of editing for the Hulk, which focuses on what may have been Lee's sole focus for this movie as he transforms the movie screen into his own personal comic book with a new generation of wipes, fades, and split screening to give the movie as much of a comic book feel as he could. While the effect worked it did start to get old and in many cases useless, but it is still interesting to see how the editors went around to doing it.

Aside from all that you get two sections of commercials (Sunny-D and the Universal Card Promo) which are useless and information on the cast/crew with features on their bios.

I can't necessarily recommend this for purchase and I can't flat out say, "Don't buy it!" This is more of a judgment call. I can see watching this movie over and over again because there are several moments of interest, besides if I get tired of the endless amounts of character profiling I can just hit the "track-forward" button.