Things Happen In The Night

These days, Marvel has the golden touch. Everyone with rights to a fictional franchise wants to emulate their successful model of a shared universe in film and on TV but no one else quite has the knack to achieve it. It was a much different story in 1989, though, when the TV movie The Trial of the Incredible Hulk debuted to tepid response.

Back then, even the goal of using the established character of The Hulk to spin another Marvel character into their own live action series was a bar set too high. The second of three Hulk TV movies made after the cancellation of the show in 1982, Trial continued the trend started in The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988) of pairing ol' Jade Jaws with another Marvel hero in the hopes of launching them into a show of their own. Both movies failed in that regard but while Returns badly botched the introduction of Marvel's God of Thunder with its poor depiction of Thor, the street level Daredevil fared far better.

Shortly after David Banner (Bill Bixby) leaves his latest job as a farm hand for fear of Hulking out against a bullying co-worker and arrives in the big city (which we assume to be The Big Apple but it's not specified whether the movie actually takes place in New York), he becomes involved in an incident on a subway car in which two thugs in the employ of Wilson Fisk (John Rhys-Davies) harass a female passenger (Marta DuBois) and incur the wrath of Banner's gamma-powered alter-ego in the process. Post-transformation, Banner is picked up by the cops and finds himself in jail, facing charges of attacking the woman on the subway. Banner's plight brings him legal counseling in the form of Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil (Rex Smith).

Thanks to his heightened senses, the blind lawyer senses David's innocence (as a bonus, he also knows the real criminals are in the employ of Fisk, who Murdock is gunning for) and is determined to help clear his client while David can only worry about what the stress of a possible trial would do to his raging alter-ego (which leads to the only time in Trial that the Hulk actually appears in court - during a nightmare suffered by the anxious Banner, a cheat that led many fans to cry foul).

After Banner has Hulked his way out of jail, post-nightmare, Matt tracks him as Daredevil and reveals his true identity to David as a gesture to gain his trust. Eventually Matt also learns the truth about David's cursed nature and while the Hulk's unpredictable nature makes a true team-up impossible, Banner and the sightless superhero do join forces in order to rescue DuBois' damsel in distress (who finds herself as a prisoner in Fisk Tower) and to take down Fisk as well.

Meant to serve as a pilot to a Daredevil series, Trial was no more successful on that count than Returns had been in spinning off Thor. But in terms of being a respectable adaptation of the character, Trial is no embarrassment to DD. No, it's not nearly in the league of the best of what the comics had accomplished, but it treats the character with respect and the warm bond that develops between Bixby's Banner and Smith's Murdock is a highlight of the Hulk's TV legacy.

Written by Gerald Di Pego and directed by Bixby himself, Trial is strictly a meat and potatoes affair. There's nothing fancy about it and it isn't out to service fans with shouts out and Easter Eggs referencing the wider Marvel U. But like the best episodes of the Hulk series, it has an adult tone and doesn't condescend to the audience. Comic book adaptations are more ambitious now and take much more care to hew to the comic's mythology but, as much as I appreciate that, I like the simple attention to telling a good story that Trial represents.



The Trial of the Incredible Hulk made its debut on May 7th, 1989 to high ratings but also to fan grumblings due to a lack of screen time for the Hulk, rightly regarding it as more of a Daredevil movie than a Hulk one. Adding insult to injury, Tim Burton's Batman arrived in US theaters on June 23rd and seized the pop culture zeitgeist that summer, leaving Marvel's chintzy TV movie to be regarded as a joke.

On the upside, Marvel's done a good job of catching up since. And, you know, that chintzy TV movie isn't so bad. Or actually bad at all, in my opinion. Marvel's live action adaptations have become far more sophisticated since but there's a charm to how rudimentary Trial is.

It's a nice reminder of a time when this kind of stuff was not at the forefront of popular culture and when fans were grateful for any live action appearance of their favorite characters. True, Trial bears evidence of all the weaknesses of superhero adaptations of the time but yet it has a number of strengths to recommend it and while nostalgia surely plays a part in my own feeling towards Trial, I don't think you necessarily need rose-colored glasses to appreciate it.

After Fisk has been momentarily vanquished (if not brought to bear for his crimes) and David and Matt have said their goodbyes (with Banner finding himself a little less alone, telling Matt "I have a brother in the world now."), Trial ends with Matt Murdock's office mates at the window of their legal firm, observing that the skyline of the nearby Fisk Tower seems to have been altered (we the viewers know that it's because a structure fell away to allow Fisk's flying car to take off, leaving an enraged Daredevil stymied yet again). Not being able to "see" the topic of discussion himself, Matt nonetheless joins his friends at the window and wryly observes, as they stand in the warm glow of a new day, that "...things happen in the night."

It's the last line of dialogue of Trial and the last time that anyone would see this live action incarnation of The Man Without Fear. It's a shame that this DD didn't get his own series as Trial shows that he had plenty of potential. As derided as the black ninja costume he sported was by some at the time, it was later adopted by Frank Miller and John Romita Jr. when they did their Man Without Fear miniseries in 1993 and which in turn influenced the initial look of Daredevil in the new Netflix show. If nothing else, it would've been great to see what the title sequence for an early '90s DD show would've been like.

Back in the day, The Trial of the Incredible Hulk didn't do much to advance the cause of Marvel on film but I think time should render a kinder verdict to it. To that, I say "case closed" or rather, "Excelsior!"

Make A Man Out Of The Hulk!

Bringing Marvel Comic's irradiated Jekyll and Hyde, The Incredible Hulk, to the big screen seems like a project that should come together naturally. After all, the TV series adaptation was a huge success in its day (1978-1982) and that was back when the best they could do to realize ol' Gamma Genes on screen was to put a body builder (Lou Ferrigno) in green make-up. So when the first attempt to make a movie version of The Hulk in 2003 under the direction of Ang Lee didn't score the kind of hit that such a popular character seemed primed for, Marvel didn't waste any time trying to get it right a second time.

But while the general consensus is that the new film (directed by Louis Leterrier this time around) is closer to what fans wanted to see in a Hulk movie (lots more smashing, including a climatic thrown-down between the Hulk and his comic book adversary The Abomination), it doesn't look like it'll end up making much more change at the box office than Lee's much-derided, artsy version. So what's the issue here? Is it a case of people feeling burned by the first film and deciding to wait till cable or DVD on this new version? Are audiences just confused as to what this new film is - is it a sequel, a remake, or something else? Did the stories about star Ed Norton's dissatisfaction with the final cut of the film keep some potential viewers away? Or is there just a very finite number of people who are willing to go see a Hulk movie and no matter what approach is taken, any Hulk movie will hit the same ceiling every time?

But after watching Marvel's latest try at creating a Jade Dynasty on film, I think the truth is simply this - they need to make a man out of the Hulk. Marvel Studios needs to realize that the Hulk should be played by a person. And the scene that really drove that home for me in the new version was Lou Ferrigno's endearing cameo appearance.

Ferrigno did a brief cameo in Lee's Hulk but here there's more of an overt effort to honor him, giving him a nice scene with Ed Norton. He looks every bit as fit today as he did in his prime and he makes the most out of his brief screen time. And after the scene was over, it was so plain to me what was wrong about this otherwise entertaining movie - any CG Hulk only comes across as a placeholder for the real thing. Think about it - if they made a Hulk movie in twenty years or so, would anyone be clamoring for the CG Hulk of '08 to make a cameo?

I'm not saying that Ferrigno himself needs to play the role again (although physically, I'm betting he could) but that casting a real person in the role would make all the difference. There are examples of CG characters that are perfectly rendered and that blend seamlessly into the environment of their films - maybe the best example being Gollum from Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ring series.

But for whatever reason, it doesn't work with the Hulk. Maybe the CGI itself is substandard but I don't think that's it. The CG in both Hulk films to date looked top of the line to these eyes. I just think a CG Hulk puts the character on an exaggerated plane that works fine in the comics but is a disadvantage to the live-action version.

The most frequent question or complaint I've heard from non-comics readers about both film versions of the Hulk is essentially "why is he so big?". I think for those who don't read the comic or only know the character through the TV show, the enormity of the movie Hulk is an automatic turn-off. I do think it harms the Jekyll/Hyde aspect of the character in that it's too hard to relate the CG Hulk to the live-action Banner - there's an instant credibility gap there. Most people can make the jump to believe that someone Bill Bixby's size could transform into a being Ferrigno's size but the change from Eric Bana and Ed Norton to their CG counterparts is just too much of a leap. And watching an animated character flex its CGI muscles just isn't that thrilling. I suspect a whole generation of kids were inspired by Ferrigno to go into body building - for a child to look at his Hulk was to imagine that they could be that strong if they tried. And that kind of emulation will never happen with a CG Hulk.

When I think of some of the best moments of the original series, they involve Ferrigno's performance. He was able to convey real pathos, as in the climatic moments of the two-part second season opener "Married" when he holds Mariette Hartley's dying character of Dr. Carolyn Fields (aka Mrs. David Banner), that's a scene that never fails to break me apart.

That's a scene between two actors that will live in my memory far longer than that of an enormous cartoon Hulk choking another oversized cartoon character with a giant length of animated chain. I mean, I'm all for action but there's plenty of action that can be accomplished with a real actor that will probably be more thrilling for being more human scaled. I never tired of seeing Ferrigno's Hulk trash assorted biker bars, discos, and bake sales on the original show, for instance, but the feats of strength of a CG character just aren't as exciting.

I guarantee you that if it had been Ferrigno that burst out of the ground to fight the Abomination at the end of this new Hulk, every audience that saw it would've gotten on their feet to applaud.

So please, Marvel - for the sake of one of your best characters, swallow your pride, go against what the leading FX gurus will tell you, and make the third time the charm. Keep Norton as Banner if you can but get a real person to stretch out puny Banner's purple pants.

Call this version The Rampaging Hulk and make some real green this time out.