I got an email from my good friend Nick over at the amazing Empire Magazine, who wrote to tell me about a conversation they just had with Incredible Hulk director Lewis Letterier and got some nice little details about the movie from him. Some of the highlights from the conversation were:
1) The Hulk appears in the first 3 minutes of the film
That’s right… no waiting around for half the movie for the big green guy to finally show up. Although this is a re-do, they’re not covering the Origin of The Hulk… when the movie starts, Bruce is already “infected” with the gamma radiation and we see him transform into The Hulk by minute 3 of the movie. SWEET ASS! This is right in line with what a vice president at Universal told me at Comic Con last summer who said Hulk shows up in the first 8 minutes.
2) The final fight with Abomination is 26 minutes long!
I had to re-read that a couple of times. A 26 minute fights between The Hulk and The Abomination. I was on set in Hamilton Ontario as they were filming some parts of that sequence and all I can tell you is that there are a LOT of explosions, fires, cars flying all over the place.. mmmmm… delicious!
3) General Ross Is Ahab
This is always how I’ve sort of pictured Thunderbolt Ross. As Ahab from Moby Dick. He’s obsessed with The Hulk. Not to destroy him… but to capture him, to use him, to harness him for the benefit of the military. He’s so obsessed that he’s alienated himself from his family, his friends… even from the military itself.
4) Why the design change for Abomination:
” I really wanted to justify [Abomination’s] appearance. I really wanted to wrap my head around the original scaley-with-big-ears monster that was in the comic book, but I couldn’t justify it. The guy isn’t crossed with a fish; he’s not crossed with a lizard. Just like the Hulk he’s an über-human — his body, everything, grows out. And the way he gets injected with the serum, he’s shot in the skin and the muscles, and shot inside the spine. That makes his bones grow thicker and bigger and longer, making him a super-weapon. So he’s got that spine that flares out, which becomes a weapon. He’s got elbows that stick out and become these martial arts, Chinese knives — things that can slash back and forth. He’s got this tongue thing and the heel-spikes… so he’s a killing machine. It’s pretty cool, it’s funny. He’s got bones sticking out, so it becomes like an exo-skeleton which he uses as armour…”
There is a whole bunch more. You can check the article out yourself over here.
