The Problem Child

To follow the bombastic box office beater Iron Man, Marvel chose to tackle their most unpredictable property.  Ang Lee's 2003 effort at bringing Marvel's Jekyll and Hyde to the screen is politely ignored as the shadow of Bill Bixby stands tall over Edward Norton's incarnation.  Although this time he's Bruce and not David thankfully.

As a TV series, The Incredible Hulk was a mainstay of childhoods anchored around a mere four television channels.  It's for that reason that a heavy dose of nostalgia would help Kevin Feige truly incorporate Hulk into the newly established Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Lou Ferrigno is, not entirely, replaced by CGI as Edward Norton takes the role of the tormented scientist who eats odd meals in bowls as Bill Bixby appears in South American imports.  Norton was no stranger to duality after Fight Club but with the clever incorporation of breathing exercises and anger management techniques keeps the gamma fuelled beast at bay.  For a while at least.

The leading players are vaguely established and the origin story glossed over; this is a movie for fans.  Hulk fans will know all about the gamma rays, Thunderbolt Ross and Betsy but the lab accident and Banner going fugitive could have done with a bit more backbone.  The US military is cast as the enemy as it seeks to get its hands on an uncontrollable weapon.  It's a seemingly age old plotline that has been brought to life by Weyland Yutani and many others.  It's often been said that Hulk was a reaction to The Cold War and the military-industrial complex even if he was a reinvention of Jekyll and Hyde.  A harsh juxtaposition in more recent times to DC's Dr Manhattan.  However, let's face it, allegory is displaced by explosions and green screens in the Noughties and so we have The Abomination.  Thanks very much Wolfgang Peterson, Michael Bay et al.

No, The Leader is alluded to but we are presented with The Abomination.  Woefully miscast is Tim Roth who gamefully gets his Hulkamania on only to be splatted all over the screen.  The Abomination looks like a steroid addicted version of Dogma's Golgothan. 

Just add gamma rays

It feels like a concession, what started off as a reasonably cerebral exercise in story telling soon gives way to smoke filled conservatories and footprints we haven't seen since Jurassic Park, the formula is exemplified by the tacked on end credits scene.  You can almost feel the frantic phone calls getting William Hurt and Downey Jr into a room to introduce a 'team.'

The Incredible Hulk is missing the sense of ambition and grandiose that Marvel gave Iron Man and, later, Thor.  However many nice touches and nods to the past are made Marvel can't quite shake the notion that The Incredible Hulk is a place filler, burdened with lost love, a warm up act for something yet to come.  The lack of continuity as Norton is exiled in favour of Mark Ruffalo in time for Avengers Assemble proves this.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe may be expanding after its Big Bang but quantity isn't a substitute for quality.

Batman (1966) or POW! How to Kill an Acting Career

So, here we go with my first foray into the Marvel vs DC Movie Mashup and it's all the way back to 1966.  World Cups and Harold Wilson, Blonde on Blonde and an Everton FA Cup win. But none of that really matters.  Not when you're thinking about superheroes.

I'm a child of the '80s and I know two Batmans.  One is the Dark Knight: stoic, emotionally stunted and very, very serious.  The other is a camp cowboy in grey, unflattering cotton lycra mix with speech bubbles that come out of his hands.

Batman was born in 1939 and became a leading light of the Golden Age of comic books, he was a dark vengeful detective not a superhero; a man who had put his intelligence and money to use, the perfect foil to the alien Superman.  By the late 1950s superhero comics were waning,  the Comics Code of America, war and the nuclear age had taken their toll whilst the world was becoming freer as Baby Boomers grew up.  At the same time Batman comics were very sci-fi orientated, full of aliens and gadgets.  Just as the comics took a turn back into darkness ABC commissioned a Batman TV series.  Ironically, ABC's vision of Batman was Pop Art and drenched in camp comedy, practically a parody of Bob Kane's character.

The series ran for three seasons and sandwiched between seasons one and two was a hastily put together movie starring most of the TV cast.  Sadly, Julie Newmar missed out and Lee Meriwether was drafted in as Catwoman.  The villains are the real stars and there's a level of innocence and pure fun that makes Batman brilliant.  Four TV show regulars form United Underworld, I mean who

Just one villain? Nah, I'll take the lot.

makes a superhero movie with just one villain? 

Cesar Romero plays The Joker as a pure clown and it's this gay abandon that makes the character more dangerous than other incarnations.  He's so unpredictable which compliments the scheming of Burgess Meredith's Penguin.  Bouncing between the two is Frank Gorshin's manic Riddler, a performance aped by Jim Carrey in 1995, whilst Catwoman is essentially the groups pawn, used for bait and reconnaissance.

A simple plot is stretched over 105 minutes with a clever appreciation of the Cold War and several breaches of the fourth wall.  Ignore the huge lumps of ham in the form of Chief O'Hara and the irritant Aunt Harriett and enjoy the saturated colour of the dehydrated United World Organization's Security Council.

Ready for anything

We begin with a bit of high budget tomfoolery and an exploding shark. Yep, Peter Benchley is rapidly scribbling that one down.  The vanishing yacht and the imprisonment of Commodore Schmidlapp feel like they could be investigated by Steed and Mrs Peel, instead we are whisked away to downtown Gotham and Commissioner Gordon gets handy with some Polaroids and a slide projector.  The United Underworld are loosely headed up by The Penguin and romp around in a, frankly, ludicrous submarine.  A porpoise may foil a torpedoeing of the Dynamic Duo but no submerged mammal gets in the way of the kidnap of the Security Council.  The cheeky Schmidlapp had invented a funky Dyson which helps store people in their own, individual test tubes.  Chuck in a kidnap and an infiltration of the Batcave and The United Underworld are very busy indeed but there feels like there's something missing.  The TV series had been built on cliffhangers and set piece fights yet apart 'some days you just can't get rid of a bomb' the ridiculous peril of seeing Robin about to be drowned in a giant Slush Puppy or Batman being fed into the Human Key Duplicator is absent.  We're crying out for 'Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel' moment.  You'd have thought they could have found just one more abandoned candy warehouse in Gotham.  No matter, the brisk pace sees Batman come to an enjoyable end.  You won't see an ocean based ending again until Star Trek IV.  I'm not entirely sure if that's s good or bad thing.

After a spot of rehydration without Lucozade Sport Batman saves the day and quietly returns to the small screen.  He won't make it back to the cinema for over 20 years.

At least Batman endured, unlike Adam West and Burt Ward.  Once the series was cancelled both found work hard to come by having been so heavily identified with the thwocks and the pows.  Even a rumoured flirtation with Bond wasn't enough to keep West off the convention circuit before nostalgia saw Batman reappraised and a stint in Quahog.  The dodgy rumours of deviancy made it hard for Ward to shed his life in tights, maybe he should have taken that role in The Graduate.  Batman himself wouldn't be rid of the camp and colour until the mid 80s when Frank Miller and Alan Moore took the character back to black and a darker, dirtier Gotham.  Their work would be the template for Burton and Nolan.

Batman appeals to the kid in me, the colour, the nostalgia and the camp make it perfect easy viewing and it's unfair to compare it to the modern cinematic interpretation. 

One thing's for sure: Adam West was a better Batman than George Clooney and he didn't need nipples on his Batsuit

.