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The trailer begins, as most do, with eerie music. Birds tweet outside a pleasantly sunny suburban home. We cut to a bathroom, presumably to discover the reason for all the eerie music. We see a rear-view of a man (Eric Bana) standing at a sink, wearing nothing but a towel. He has a pretty nice back, as far as backs go. Yet that eerie music won't let us forget that something is amiss here, darn it. As they do with any good trailer, questions immediately spring forth. What's that guy at the sink up to? Is he shaving? Brushing his teeth? Perhaps these aren’t monstrously exciting questions, but still the eerie music is building and, what, is he flossing? Is he just kind of standing there doing nothing? What? Suspense mounts as we close in... and discover him to be just kind of standing there doing nothing. The man stares at himself in the mirror. Everything seems okay so far -- until a voice-over pipes in, inviting us to think otherwise: "Even now, I can feel it," says the voiceover. "Buried somewhere deep inside. Watching me. Waiting. But you know what scares me the most?" We don't, and he continues. "When I can't fight it anymore, when it takes over, when I totally lose control..." He pauses at the sink. Possibly he adjusts his towel. Then, the final revelation: "...I like it."
You know, I honestly want to like this trailer and get hyped for the film -- but it looks exactly like he's expending a great deal of effort not to crap himself. And just to drive the point home, a little whiff of smoke rises up in the background, like he just cut the cheese so fiercely that it actually took on enough mass to be visible. We then see a quick moment where his eyes turn green before the trailer cuts back to the outside view of the suburban home. A loud bang sounds, and the side of the house splinters. Then there's another loud bang, and the entire side of the house explodes, our towel-saronged hero's sink suddenly airborne and flying at us at immense speed. That's right -- something comes out of this guy that is so powerful, his bathroom explodes. "I like it," indeed. If you've got enough gas in you to blow out the wall of a building, I don't doubt for a second that it'd be an intensely well-liked experience to get rid of it as soon as possible. I can appreciate how juvenile this must sound, but it was genuinely the first thing that occured to me when I watched the trailer. I figure I might as well be honest, rather than pretend it didn't immedately make me flash on a constipated Eric Bana. Clearly someone in the Universal Studios marketing division is having a great laugh at the expense of fancy-pants, internationally-revered director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). Either that or Ang Lee himself, certainly no slouch in terms of subtext, is mining some seriously underdeveloped bowel-oriented thematic undercurrents from the comic book series. Either that, or nobody bothered to think about what having a guy clenched in pain in his bathroom talking about the raging storm inside him, then cutting to a bathroom wall exploding, might suggest to the more filthy-minded among us (i.e., me and, let’s be honest, probably you too). I'm certainly game for a contemporary take on a classic comic book superhero, especially from a director as immensely talented as Ang Lee. I also personally find the stars of the film, Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly, to be attractive and engaging actors. But I'm a little wary of watching even the most attractive and engaging actor in a film about a traumatizingly vicious intestinal disorder. Okay, realistically, Jennifer Connelly would be easy on the eyes no matter what she does, even dropping a torrential load in a filthy truckstop restroom. I could probably be cajoled into paying to see that. But nowhere in this trailer does Jennifer Connelly expel anything -- fragrant, noxious, or otherwise -- from her delicate rosebud. No, this trailer only promises the prospect of watching the considerably less radiant Eric Bana wrestling with his rectum. Wearing only a loosely wrapped towel. With anally-projected bathroom implements flying at us at high speeds. With due respect to all involved, that is not a film I want to see.
RATING:
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The
main problem I had with the teaser trailer for Ang Lee’s upcoming
summer blockbuster is that at first glance it appears to be less about
the comic book character The Hulk and more about some sort of terrible,
embarrassing bowel condition.
He
continues to stare at himself in the mirror, apparently horrified by
something he feels buried deep inside him, watching him, waiting to
come out, something he seems barely able to contain. Yet, despite the
threat of losing control, it’s also something he rather enjoys.
The man closes his eyes, grits his teeth, and starts quivering like
he's experiencing tremendous discomfort.