News: Leterrier Talks Incredible Hulk

Empire’s got an interview with Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier on the new trailer and all sorts of Hulk secrets that he can now talk about. Here are some choice bits from his scene-by-scene guide to the new trailer, including the reasoning for character choices and details on the final doozy of a fight scene.

On the Abomination:

“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,” Leterrier says. “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…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.”

I don’t know exactly what it is about the Hulk’s archenemy Emil Blonsky, the Abomination, that makes people think they can just change him wholesale and nobody will care. Some writers have done that in the comics themselves, and now the movie is doing the same thing. Sure, some changes are necessary, seeing as how being a Russian spy at the height of the Cold War isn’t going to work anymore, but even the standard fanboy rage over minutiae doesn’t seem to really congeal over this guy.

I suppose the fact that Leterrier’s looking for logic is a good sign that this film won’t be a completely brainless punch-em-up, as I’d initially feared Marvel would push for as an overreaction to the criticisms of Ang Lee’s Hulk, but hands-down, Marvel’s original Abomination just looks cooler. The premise in the original comics was that gamma radiation affects everyone differently. The Hulk still looks reasonably human, but he’s unstable and shifts back and forth between forms. The Abomination looked monstrous and was stuck in his ugly form, setting up a tragic personal story. The Leader didn’t even get strong - he just got a giant brain, etc.

Anyway, I shan’t risk getting overly nerdy here. I’m just really worried about the “tongue” thing, because prehensile tongues were given to pretty much everybody in the Ugly 90s era of comics, and they’ve become annoying. I was glad when Sam Raimi left it out of his interpretation of Venom, but I’m sad to see it take up residence with a character who never suffered from it to begin with. Although “this tongue thing” is fairly vague and I could be reading into it. I’m going to need to unclench about all this, I think. It’s a movie. It’s supposed to be fun.

Read more of Leterrier’s words after the jump.

“You’ll see Bruce Banner transform in minute three. (Laughs) Minute three! That’s what’s good about it and it was really important when I was accepting the movie. We’re not treating it as an origin movie but: Bruce Banner stepping into his chair and the gamma bomb and everything. He’s the Hulk already, with the Hulk within him, and you get to understand how he came to be in this situation, his struggle in life, the other characters surrounding him and the enemies that he deals with and fights with.”

“It’s really like Ghost And The Darkness, the feel, where you only glimpse Hulk and it’s really scary. Like Alien, where you think you’re seeing the Hulk but it’s not the Hulk — it’s a tank. You think you’re seeing a tank and it’s Hulk. I mean, there are some nice, interesting things. It was a nice test to start the visual effects with this scene — to get a beautiful silhouette of the Hulk and beautiful textures for his skin, things like that.”

“General Ross (William Hurt) has a great line in the movie: “Banner was an accident and something went really wrong — or really right.” He loves that thing and he wants to control it, to harvest it. He has another speech where he talks about the splitting of the atom: fire, the universe opens and there is a new force — and somebody has to step up to the plate and not cower away from this thing but grab it. He’s the Ahab of this story, this alienated guy craving that power. He’s alienated himself from the army and his family, because he’s obsessing about only one thing: the Hulk, the Hulk, the Hulk.”

I find this quote interesting, because it sounds like they’re stuffing two characters - Thunderbolt Ross, Betty’s blustery father, who is obsessed with killing the Hulk due to its involvement with his daughter and a sense of responsibility for its destructive ways, and General Ryker, who was a cold, soulless soldier who was more into the ‘harnessing that power’ aspect - together into T-bolt’s shell. That saddens the Hulk nerd in me.

“Tim Roth is Emil Blonsky, who becomes Abomination. He’s an ace, but he’s an ace that is kind of over the hill. I really wanted to work with Tim Roth; he’s an amazing actor and he’s extraordinary on the screen. When I met Tim I was like, “God!” He was so good and had so much energy that I said, “Blomsky must be Tim Roth.” I had to push — Marvel, Edward, everybody was hesitant to get Tim, but he really added a new dimension to the character. He is the opposite of Bruce Banner — he’s a fighter, he’s a machine, he’s a very effective, cool-as-a-cucumber soldier that is over the hill – 38, 39 years old – has finished his life as a soldier, should be a Colonel by now and has never accepted that failure. He loves being a fighter, loves being on the field.”

Yes, a drastic reimagining of the character. It could be a good character, but it won’t feel like Emil Blonsky.

No shots are finished yet. That’s why we took so long to release the teaser, because unlike the other movies coming out this summer, our main character relies on so much calculation and technique. None of the shots in this trailer are finished shots, but I think it’s decent enough and it shows the audience what we’re going for. There’s a different version of the teaser that will only be shown in movie theatres where you see a close-up of the Hulk’s face as he comes out of the darkness and cries to [Betty]. A full close-up, like full-screen. And until we had that shot right I didn’t want to release it. That’s why it took so long for us…I never saw that Superbowl spot [that drew criticism of Ang Lee’s film for showing Hulk unfinished]. I’ve asked for it and they’ve said, “No, no, you don’t want to see that.” (Laughs) Anyway, I would have never allowed anything to come out that I wasn’t happy with.”

“Our final scene, our final battle – unlike a normal movie where the final fight scene is six minutes long, ours is 26 minutes long! So you get 26 minutes of two monsters pummelling each other through New York City, jumping up and down, ripping helicopters from the sky and stuff. You know, lots of green blood on the street, splashed all around. So it’s pretty cool. For me it was one of the most exciting elements of making the movie: ‘I have two monsters fighting in New York City, that’s going to be fun.’”