Why did they make another Incredible Hulk movie? The last one was in 2003.
Better graphics?
Hubris. Marvel now has total control of their product, and they think they know what went wrong with the first Hulk movie.
They are mistaken, of course. Nobody cares about the Hulk, no matter who makes the movie. Marvel is going to eat a total sh*t sandwich with this turkey.
Better movie.
The first Hulk was directed by Ang Lee, he of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain fame. Lee is a great director, but he tried to get all philosophical and daddy-issue with the Hulk, when really, let’s face it, all we want is to see Hulk SMASH! The movie flopped, and the geek consensus was that it was an overstuffed dud.
The idea with the new one is, fewer daddy issues, more smash. This time with Ed Norton!
Because no one liked the first one except for me and…um…me.
And even I hated the battle
his father/the absorbing man
at the end.
I’ve heard someone say that the new one may tie in better to a future Avengers movie, but I’m not sure if that’s true.
I liked the first one. It wasn’t perfect, but it was enjoyable.
Having said that. Why are they making a new one? Because the last one made 245 million dollars and they like money. That would probably be the easiest answer.
pat
Marvel wants a franchise. (Translation: sequels.) The first movie didn’t provide that. ($245 million worldwide didn’t make a cent for Marvel. Total costs were way higher than that.) Don’t think in terms of quality of any kind. This is purely business and selling action figures.
So, is this new Hulk movie related to the Ang Lee film, or is it a “relaunch” of the property in film?
Obligatory Onion link: Why No One Want Make Hulk 2?
Maybe the re-make is a sacrifice, to keep Hulk from being re-made with Ben Stiller as Bill Bixby and Owen Wilson as Lou Ferigno, which would siphon money from everyone else’s stupid summer movie.
From what I’ve heard, plotwise it’s a sequel, but they’ve recast most of the parts and made some stylistic changes etcetera.
And Iron Man cameos! 
I always favored DC over Marvel in any case, but I always considered the Hulk to be the lamest 1st line character in the whole Marvel stable. I found Ang Lee’s movie far more entertaining than I thought it would be. A movie that concentrates on “Hulk smash!” is going to be just another CGI snorefest. Maybe I’m alone in this, but as CGI has become the mainstay of action movies, action movies have increasingly sucked.
Now that Marvel is in control of their material, and using the studios solely for their distribution apparatus (c.f. Lucasfilm), they’re starting to attempt to “build their world.”
Robert Downey Jr apparently has a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo as Tony Stark in the new Hulk. And of course there’s the post-credits cookie in Iron Man.
So maybe this film is designed to “hook into” the rest of the Marvel Universe in a way the Ang Lee film didn’t.
I couldn’t be more underwhelmed by the trailers. More running, smashing CGI beasts.
The answer to “why?”
These are the new blockbuster model. Not Stallone & Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis. You can’t even keep track anymore of all the superheroes they’ve turned into movies now. Can anyone think of a good rason we WON’T see Green Lantern, Flash, and even Aquaman at some point? Make sure your answer addresses the fact that they’ve already released Daredevil, Cat Woman, Punisher and Fantastic Four.
I know they already made one Hulk, but it wasn’t dumb enough to fit into this blockbuster category. They need it to look like all the rest, with the same promotional package so that it takes in $100M on it’s opening weekend, has something stupid at the end of the credits, and sets up a franchise.
The Ang Lee movie was OK, I thought (the best part, IMHO, was when he was on the back of that Air Force fighter and went soaring up so high the frost started to form on him - come to think of it, they did that in Iron Man too!). But I agree with Scumpup about the generally underwhelming character of Bruce Banner/Hulk to begin with. Even for comics, it’s a silly premise, and I’m not convinced it can really support an entire movie.
I remember when they had this franchise known as “The X-Men”. Then they put some pinhead in charge of the third installment and managed to kill it.
Give it 10 years and I think the comic-book-movie-trend will swing the other way. Didn’t Marvel do something equally brilliant with their distributors somehow?
-Joe
-FrL-
If you can make money in the movies for 10 years, you’re nine years ahead of everybody else. What difference could it possibly make if you run it into the ground after that time?
Perhaps they wanted to use a director whose name didn’t give rise to such obvious jokes.
(Link is to a YouTube vid of Stewart Lee, an English comedian…)
Ang Lee’s Hulk is actually an enjoyable watch if you skip past the first 30 minutes that attempt to lull you to sleep.
The new Hulk doesn’t look all that interesting and it’s probably a bad sign when the star/write (Norton) disagrees with the producers about the final cut of the film and refuses to promote it.
That just sort of raises the “Why” question in a different way, though; why do the Hulk for the second time in five years, rather than trotting out something relatively fresh, like the Green Lantern or Aquaman?
I guess it’s well proven you can run a franchise into the ground and still make money; they’ve made like ten “Batman” movies since the silly Tim Burton movie, starring eighteen different Batmen and two entirely different origin stories.