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Joe Karlosi wrote:

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"A number of reviewers have tagged 2008's THE INCREDIBLE HULK (henceforth HULK '08) as "average" or "by the numbers." This verdict bespeaks the inability of most critics to discern meaning in superhero films unless the film all but drives those meanings into the critic's skull with a balpeen hammer. HULK '08 is admittedly not a work of cinematic genius (whatever form that might take for the greatest of all possible Hulk movies). But for all of its flaws, it's far from average-"

I thought it was average, at best (** of ****). It need not have been, had the filmmakers realized there was far more potential for this perceived "one trick pony" character, if he was endowed with more personality and articulate characterization (yep, such as in the comics).

Actually, when you get right down to it, most superhero films are indeed "by the numbers".

Well, this discussion potentially gets us into the question, "By what standard of excellence do you rate XYZ as average?" I dunno if you care about getting into those deep waters. I've tried discussing such things on other boards and some people really don't like to discuss their standards analytically-- maybe with some justification, if you believe that ultimately we all just like what we like and then find rationalizations.

For instance, my argument on the blog is that I do think HULK '08 pulls together a lot of narrative threads from the comic-series in an artful way, even though not everything worked. To me that makes it better than average, in comparison to, say, the two FANTASTIC FOUR films. In the latter, you can see the filmmakers simply cherrypicking the comics-series w/o any understanding of what I call 'expressive potential.' Even where HULK '08 let me down in this regard-- failing, as some other posters have also said, to make Blonsky's motives believable-- it was still a more interesting failure than the horrible screwup of Doctor Doom in the aforesaid films.

So what's your standard for superhero excellence, Joe?