hen acclaimed director Ang Lee signed on to direct the film version of the Marvel comic book The Hulk, the decision left both movie fans and Hollywood insiders scratching their heads. On the surface, it did seem like an odd fit. Lee's prior credits include the Jane Austen adaptation Sense and Sensibility, the angst-filled suburban drama The Ice Storm and the martial-arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But Lee had a specific vision for the story that went beyond the green skin, torn pants and patented "Hulk smash!" that fans often associate with the comic-book character. He wanted to explore the metaphors and deeper themes that the Hulk represents.
From the start, Lee knew that he would be using CGI technology to create the Hulk himself, but for his human alter ego, Bruce Banner, he wanted to find an actor who could portray the mild-mannered scientist with a hint of the rage that lurks within him. The director found those qualities and more in unknown Australian actor Eric Bana. Bana's previous work in the Australian film Chopper and the Oscar-nominated Black Hawk Down convinced the director that he had the range needed for the role, and he cast Bana after his first meeting with him.
Lee and Bana recently spoke with Science Fiction Weekly about the challenges of bringing together two very different aspects of the same character in one film. Hulk burst into theaters on June 20.
What was the biggest challenge of bringing the Hulk to life on screen?
Lee: It's pretty obvious. It's a CG character, and you have to look at him as a member of the cast. From shot to shot, the model [does] different things. It's different animators, thousands and thousands of animators to bring the unity, [and] dealing with the physics, because nobody has the sense of physics, although finally I had to do it myself. But I don't have that structure, the physics is different. And, in fact, all the things are different. They have to make that work. ... He has to have a continuity in his character, so all of that is very difficult.
Finally, it's really if the movie supports his realism. That's the biggest challenge. By nature of being big and green, he's not real no matter what you do. I mean, you can put Hulk's face and an actor's face next to each other, and Hulk has more detail. You put the green on him, he's not real. If they're in black and white, Hulk [looks] more real. So that is very challenging.
What did you do to make him look more realistic, then?
Lee: Reality sometimes can fool you. It's a fake illusion. It's just a reflection of the true, inner, hidden self. So to me that's the guy. And it's very abstract. There's a great challenge for a filmmaker to give that power. I earned my power. I want to bring that out. I want to have a Hulk-out experience as a filmmaker.
You have a lot of split screens and interesting transitions in the movie. Where did that idea come from?
Lee: About June or early July two years ago, just when I was working on the script, I called up Tim [Squyres], the editor who edited this film and all my other movies, and said, "Let's do an experiment." I've always wanted to do split screens. Now that I'm doing a comic book, I have the perfect excuse to do that. So we did two days' experiment on my previous movie Ride with the Devil. We [would] just take one scene and start. The first day was very frustrating. It's tedious work. You just realize why people don't do that before. And the second day I started getting to something, and we did a couple of experiments. I didn't go as far as that experiment goes, by the way. We weren't sure. I thought I got something. I was very excited. I showed it to [screenwriter] James [Schamus], and I showed it to [Universal head] Mary Parent. They both got excited. So I [knew] it's something I can do.
It looks like a comic book come to life on the screen. Was that the idea?
Lee: Yeah, it's more like a comic. When you open a page, your eyes go somewhere, and you have freedom of choice where to look at and to go back and forth, and it has a structure of its own. Except it's a still picture. With a movie, you have to choreograph because it's ongoing projection. So that's not only time-cutting but space-cutting for me. So it was very exciting. As a cinema person I could get very excited about it.
How do you direct your actors when they're working with a major character that's totally CGI?
Lee: They would rather trust me as somebody who did all those dramatic movies. I don't really want to damage them, their image or anything. So they put their image in my hands, and I try to be responsible and talk to them. Like Nick [Nolte], I talked to him about Greek tragedy and myth, just to get him psyched into the material and invested and believing whatever lay in front of him. That's the beauty of it. ... I would tune them into believing what we do is very noble and stuff. But just to invest the belief in the most ridiculous thing is art itself. So that's the morale-booster kind of speech.
And then, technically, some of the advisors and myself have to tell them what they see looking at the Hulk. If the Hulk's head is this big, it's not like looking at a person. You're looking in his eyes like that. So the way they pretend to look at him has a realism to that. ... And then performance-wise, I have to tell them Hulk is not about a CG character. This is a Hulk movie. Everybody's facing that. We're dealing with our subconscious, our aggression, our need to see Bruce Banner turn into the Hulk. You're dealing with your inner Hulk. What is your inner Hulk? I break it down along with them, and they do their homework.
Why did you cast Eric Bana, a relatively unknown actor, in the lead role?
Lee: We have the Hulk. We gave all the budget to the green guy. I think the benefit to having a fresh actor to do a franchise character is that you take who he is. There's no doubt. There's no acting needed. I don't have the baggage from movie stars. Movie stars bring something with them. For this character, I'd rather have it fresh. Eric is a good actor. I saw him in Chopper, the Australian independent movie. He plays a serious killer. In the comic book, nobody cares about Bruce Banner. He's a loser, a wimp. Because [of] the simplified drawing, he's a symbol. You can project yourself into his situation and get melancholy.
But you can't do that with a major motion picture, because of photography. It's a real image. You cannot watch a wimp for that long. So I would need somebody with the Hulk side. And Chopper proved that he has that. There's no doubt about it. And I met him in person. He, of course, is Bruce Banner, the nicest person, totally civilized, a good actor. So he's a reasonable choice. I think the freshness is a big plus, not only for me, for the studio too. They're very excited that I decided on Eric.
Is it true that you wanted the Hulk to be naked? Was that changed because of the PG-13 rating?
Lee: Yeah. The second Hulk I wanted to be naked, but most of the time he has the underwear on because it's too much trouble to try to hide him. He fights the dogs, I thought that was the most visceral fight, he should be naked. We should see. Because people always ask, including myself, "How come the pants always stay on?" And then it's just too much inconvenience. To a point I was feeling I was making Austin Powers. I said, "I can't do that." So I decided the last jump he lands on the dog and that's where he loses it. So we still get to see him, his back. But it's just too much cover work. It was becoming ridiculous. You want to stay PG-13. And it's inviting questions. People are going to see it, what are they going to say?
Eric Bana, where do you stand on the pants issue?
Bana: I think pants. I don't think it does him any harm to have pants on. Look, it's just one of those issues that's going to be bubbling away for a long time.
What was it like working with Ang Lee?
Bana: It was interesting. He was never overly specific. We spoke in preproduction. We had many long conversations. More, if anything, kind of philosophical conversations about a lot of different things, to the point that I remember at some point, preproduction, being sort of quite confused because I felt like we weren't really talking in very specific terms about things. And then I realized that that was actually quite deliberate, and he was wanting and forcing me to find things for myself so I could construct the character, which is great. I mean, it's obviously how you want to normally work. So yeah, he had at times very specific ideas during the production and other times would kind of let me go, so it was almost the best of both worlds.
How did this film come to you?
Bana: I was actually shooting Black Hawk Down when I first heard about it. My agent rang me and told me that they were looking at making this film and that Ang Lee was going to be directing and did I want to put my hand up as a possible candidate? And I said, "Absolutely." I wanted to look into it. So that's kind of where it started. Then I met with Ang some time later, and James Schamus, and had a long kind of discussion about a million different things. Then I flew home to Australia and kind of forgot about it, and a few months later I got a phone call saying, "They want you to play the part." And I'm going, which part?
It's interesting that anyone would watch Chopper, in which you play a convicted murderer, and think of you as Bruce Banner.
Bana: I don't know where people have got it from—I've seen the kind of meek, mild line before—but in actual fact, he's actually anything but kind of meek and mild. He's actually extremely affected and he's kind of bubbling away the whole time. You get what I'm saying? People have described him as kind of the mild-mannered scientist, and while he's kind of mild-mannered, he's not a very mild kind of person.
He does seem to be sort of passive-aggressive.
Bana: Yeah, I guess physically he is. But mentally it's a whole other story, which is, I guess, one of the biggest challenges of the role and why I was attracted to him. Because you don't ever really get a scene off. There's not one moment there where you just kind of get to be happy in his skin. You know what I mean?
Were you a fan of the Hulk before you got the role?
Bana: I wasn't a huge comic-book reader, but I was a fan of the TV show. I'm very familiar with the TV show, definitely. Loved it.
Did you have any reservations about playing a well-known comic-book character?
Bana: Not really. Mainly because I knew that in The Hulk, he's the Hulk, and I get to kind of share the limelight, I guess, significantly with a lot of different elements. It's not like you just see me the whole time. So I see it as something quite different from a Superman kind of thing, where whoever's Superman is kind of Superman. You know what I mean? So I wasn't that concerned. And then when I saw the film I was suitably happy about how ensemble it is. So no, I wasn't overly concerned about that.
The film is a lot more psychological than you would expect from a comic-book adaptation.
Bana: I think so. I think people will appreciate it. Yeah, surely you could kind of get away with it being much lighter. It'd still satisfy a lot of people, but I think it has the potential to satisfy even more people because we've taken it so seriously and Ang's given it so much depth. And that's why we're all attracted to it. I'm not so sure if the same people would have been attracted to the project if we didn't think it was going to be as serious as what it was.
Do you see an anti-war message in the film?
Bana: I don't know if there's an anti-war message. I see it as an anti-control thing. ... I don't see it as anti-war. I see it as challenging all things authority. I've seen the film once, I probably need to see it probably 10 times. There's so much that Ang is addressing there that I think it's more in a bigger kind of mythological sense rather than simplistically attacking different things. I don't think that was really ever the intention.
Why do you think the character is still around after 40 years?
Bana: I think it's testament to how good Stan Lee and Kirby are, isn't it? Because for something to stand the test of time it's got to be good. I think it's got to do with the fact that so much of that Marvel world is so mythological, and there's so little mythology in our modern day culture that I think, subconsciously, that's part of the attraction for people.
Back to the top.
