“Planet Hulk” Review

Rating:

Laurence here, and I would like to do a prologue to Danny’s article and say that I have been very impressed with the collaboration between one of my favorite studios, Lion’s Gate, along with Marvel Studios, due to the more “made for mature” audience animated feature films that they have been producing for a number of years now.   In addition, it is not only them who have finally “gotten it”…DC and Warner Bros. Studios have been in tune with this for a while as well…and perhaps took the lead on taking our beloved characters and made more mature adaptations for us older folks.

It really goes back to what I was commenting about in an earlier article that we, those who grew up with these characters over that past 20-30 years, have been wanting and should be seeing…which is…our favorite characters and storylines coming to life without being watered down and/or candy-coated for the kiddies…which isn’t bad for the kids…but it does take away from our more sophisticated tastes of what we, now as adults really want to see.

Now, only if they really can start showing some of those AMAZINGLY drawn, exposed animated ta-ta’s…that would be cool.

With that said…on with Danny’s article:

The Incredible Hulk gets sent off to another planet and re-enacts Ridley Scott’s Gladiator but with aliens and Beta Ray Bill. Sounds like a winner to me. Granted, I had no interest in reading the “Planet Hulk” storyline in the comics — being an incredibly long story that kind of takes Hulk out of his element — but WATCHING Hulk hit things for 80 minutes sounded like a good time. Simple pleasures, right?

Planet Hulk the movie seems like a pretty faithful adaptation of the story: Hulk has smashed a bit too much for humanity’s taste, so the Illuminati (an inner circle of smart superpeople like Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Professor X and others) put Hulk on a spaceship and shoot him off into space. He ends up landing on the  planet Sakaar, where he’s captured and forced to fight monsters and robots for the amusement of the evil emperor, then he and his rag-tag group of gladiators try to escape and overthrow the empire. Oh, and there’s some weird space-virus that turns people into monsters. I dunno, I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention during those scenes.

Of all of Marvel’s mostly awful direct-to-video animations, Planet Hulk is the best, and only because of the action. I couldn’t care less about the plot and refuse to even acknowledge its worth (why force myself to lower the rating?), but Planet Hulk is suitably violent and even gory at times — and it’s pretty good gore. I kept rewinding over and over to watch an ant-like creature get crushed such that its eyeballs popped out of its head.

The animation itself is solid for DTV, but the character designs are so generic that I wanted every non-Hulk person onscreen to die so I wouldn’t look at them anymore. Their boring appearances are made even worse when the end credits show how the characters looked in the comics when drawn by Landronn or Carlo Pagulayan. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot, guys.

A bit of research has told me that, in the comics, Silver Surfer occupies the the deus ex machina role that Beta Ray Bill plays in the movie, but they couldn’t use the Surfer because of a rights issue. I like seeing Beta Ray Bill a bit more, being a much quirkier character: a space-horse that dresses like Thor. Only problem with his inclusion, however, is that I automatically root for Beta Ray Bill over Hulk in any situation. Sorry, Hulk. Maybe if you were a horse.

The most exciting thing about Planet Hulk, however, is the potential for an animated version of its follow-up, World War Hulk, wherein Hulk returns to Earth and fights all your favorite Marvel superheroes. There’s no good reason why Marvel and Lions Gate  WOULDN’T do it, so we can assume it will happen and look forward to World War Hulk. You heard it here first.

Still, I question these DTV animations DC and Marvel have been doing when one of their better entries is really only good because of the punching. They can appeal to a broad audience with their live-action films, but these animated movies should be something else. You can sell most of them on brand alone, so there’s no excuse for them to be so lame and middling in trying to appeal to both fans and regular folk. Considering the violence many of them are shooting for mature audiences, so maybe the writing and style should reflect that, too.

Then again, I guess if you REALLY wanted to experience a proper superhero story you could always read the comics.