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!"

Fifty Years Of Web-Spinning

Amazing Fantasy #15, featuring the debut of Spider-Man courtesy of writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, was cover dated August 1962. That means it was probably actually on sale in June of that year but as August was the month on the cover, Marvel is honoring Spidey's anniversary this month with Amazing Spider-Man #692, on sale this week.

I won't go into a long lecture about Web-head's history - with fifty years of adventures across various comic titles and across various mediums, I wouldn't have the time to do Spidey justice - but I will say that Marvel's flagship character remains my favorite superhero many years since I first encountered him on the children's show The Electric Company.



I'll also take a moment - since I neglected to do so back in July - to say that I really loved the recent big screen reboot. It wasn't perfect, no, but I think that in most respects it was the best treatment the character has recieved on screen to date and I say that as someone who really enjoyed the Raimi films - even the much-reviled Spider-Man 3! Raimi's original Spider-Man was solid for the time and it stuck to the comics in a commendable and gratifying way but it came at the dawn of the comic book movie era and ten years later, it shows. Mostly in a charming way (to my eyes) but it's undeniably dated.

The action elements of the new Spider-Man film are its weakest component (in this regard, Raimi's panache is especially missed) but the characters and the emotions are dead-on and as much as I liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, I much prefer Andrew Garfield's portrayal. And Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy is arguably the best love interest in any superhero film to date. I also loved how effortlessly Spidey's mechanical web-shooters are introduced. In the Raimi films, they were replaced with organic shooters because Raimi feared mechanical web-shooters would stretch credulity too much and it would take too much time to convince an audience that this high school kid could concieve of such a thing. In the new film, it only takes about a single scene to show the invention of the web-shooters and it never seems like it's asking the audience to buy into anything outrageous. Which, mostly, I think is due to the fact that audiences have become that much more accepting of comic book material over the past ten years. You don't have to work so hard anymore to get them onboard with the same stuff the fans have accepted for years.

I also loved that Webb and co. weren't in any rush to get to the fight scenes and special effects. It didn't feel like the film was ever trying to cater to the blockbuster crowd, which is pretty brave for a film that really did need to grab that audience as far as being able to recoup its massive budget. But it was really more about conveying the emotional quality of Peter Parker's journey than about bells and whistles and I appreciated that. There was a lot of loud grumbling in advance of the film's release about the fact that the origin was going to be retold and while I wasn't convinced going in that it was needed, the film won me over. I liked the tweaks that were done. They made it just different enough to not seem like a rerun while perserving the core elements of the story.

So, yeah, I liked The Amazing Spider-Man a whole lot. It got more than enough right to please this old-school Spidey fan, at least.

As for this week's anniversary issue, Spidey scribe Dan Slott takes things back in spirit to Amazing Fantasy #15 with Peter attending another scientific experiment on high school grounds but this time as a professional scientist giving a demonstration.

Of course, the famous Parker luck holds true to form and one accident later, Peter has inadvertently created a new young superhero - one who isn't cut from quite the same cloth that Peter was. As the story continues over the next issue or two, Peter will have to take on the responsibility of training this latest hero and something tells me it won't end well.

Luckily, Spidey himself is in good hands. Slott's tenure on Amazing Spider-Man has been exceptionally good and he looks to continue on the book for some time to come - even if he promises a major shake-up in time for issue #700. Spidey's movie reboot was a success and even in animation, Spidey's doing good with Ultimate Spider-Man on Disney XD. Some fans hate this cartoon for its irreverent and some say too-juvenile humor but all I can say is that my seven-year-old son loves it and I do too.

It's a safe bet that I won't be around to celebrate Spidey's 100th anniversay but it's an equally safe bet to say that the character will be every bit as popular when that date rolls around as he is today.

The Mostly Mighty Thor

As a longtime Marvel Zombie, Thor has never been high on my list of the company's heroes. I've enjoyed him as a member of The Avengers but only sporadically followed his solo adventures over the years. I think it was a masterstroke on the part of creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby to dip into the realm of gods and myth, thereby avoiding having yet another superhero birthed from an accident with radioactivity, but I've just never been that attracted to the character or the world that he hails from. I much prefer the street level Marvel heroes, like Spidey, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Moon Knight. Compared to those earthbound types, I've always found Thor to be a hard character to relate to so given that, the God of Thunder's movie debut was the one Marvel movie I've been least excited for.

I think it was roundly agreed upon by everyone - even Thor fans - that Thor would represent the biggest challenge to Marvel Studios on the road to The Avengers. While it's easily accepted in the comics that Thor occupies the same shared universe as Iron Man and The Hulk, would the realm of Asgard be an awkward fit for the Marvel movies? Turns out the answer is no. Director Kenneth Branagh, working from a script by Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, and Don Payne (based on a story by J. Michael Straczynski Mark Protosevich), has cleared Thor's biggest hurdle - the movie fits seamlessly into the world established by Iron Man 1 and 2 and The Incredible Hulk.

Thor may possess the powers of a God and he may live in a gleaming celestial city that defies our understanding but as he explains to scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), what may be perceived as magic from our earthly perspective is known as science where he comes from. Or something like that. The point is, Thor is a movie that makes it possible for a guy with a magic flying hammer to stand next to a guy in an advanced suit of armor and have it make sense.

Thor also strikes the right balance between time spent on Asgard and time spent on Earth. You can't ditch Asgard altogether because that's what Thor's all about and hardcore fans don't want that mythological aspect to be shortchanged. At the same time, for most audiences, Thor has to be put in more relatable context. This has also been true of the comic all these years. I forget which comic pro said this - I think it might've been John Byrne (X-Men, Superman) - but whoever it was essentially said that you can only have Thor residing in Asgard for so long then he has to come down to Earth and punch out The Absorbing Man. If Thor isn't a part of life on Earth, as readers we're going to quickly lose interest in him.

The makers of Thor certainly get that and the movie finds most of its humor and heart once Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is banished to Earth by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) for his crimes of arrogance. There's the expected fish out of water humor as Thor interacts with unfamiliar environments but it's all handled just right, never veering into exaggerated schitck. As a love interest, Portman is fine - if not particularly outstanding - as Jane Foster. I've read some people online claiming that the relationship between Thor and Jane isn't developed enough and that they needed another scene or two to make it believable but I disagree. All we need to believe is that Jane and Thor would be attracted to each other and that's a pretty easy sell. From Jane's perspective, she just met a God so I think she'd automatically be really interested in continuing that relationship. From Thor's perspective, Jane is a woman unlike any he's ever met so, likewise, it's easy to accept that he'd also want to continue to see much more of her (personally I think he's making a huge mistake in overlooking Kat Denning's Darcy but that's just me). So what I'm saying is that I bought Thor and Jane as a couple in the making. In fact, if there's any scenes between them that were cut for time or pacing, just leave 'em off the DVD - I'm not interested.

The other big, if less loving, relationship in this movie is between Thor and his scheming brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston). Everyone seems to agree this aspect of Thor came off great and I agree. Hiddleston makes Loki one of the most compelling villains in recent memory. He's a cunning manipulator but we also see his wounded pride and his deep-seated neediness. That Hiddleston will continue on to The Avengers as that film's arch-foe is very good news.

And having now seen Thor, I'm also much more excited by the prospect of Hemsworth interacting with his fellow Avengers than I had been before. The trailers for Thor were some of the worst in recent memory and made Hemsworth's performance look like a potential embarrassment. What a pleasant surprise, then, to discover how terrific he is here and how effortlessly he's able to bring Thor to life. He conveys Thor's youthful arrogance, his pride, his sometimes unwise thirst for battle but also the positive attributes of bravery, loyalty and kindness that make him heroic. It's a performance comparable to that of Christopher Reeve's Superman in that Hemsworth manages to imbue this God-like character with a natural affability.

On a sour note, in step with the Marvel Studios films to date, the action in Thor is just ok. It's not bad but nothing near exceptional. This is one aspect where Marvel Studios really needs to step up their game. I understand that they're out to keep their budgets from skyrocketing and I like that the strengths of their films so far have leaned on an understanding of the characters and an expert eye for casting. And yet...when you're making movies about characters who design and wear the most advanced battle armour in the world, who transform into raging Gamma-irradiated behemoths, and who are pretty much Gods, then the action ought to be at least occasionally spectacular (I will say I loved the frequently Kirby-esque production design in Thor and I'm glad many actual sets were built for Asgard rather than just relying on CGI).

In Thor, the action is comprised of a battle with a race of Frost Giants, a battle on Earth with the metallic titan known as The Destroyer, and a final throwdown on Asgard between Thor and Loki and each one of these scenes, while competent, could've have used a lot more panache. When you think of the great action scenes in comic book adaptations - like the fight between Superman and the Phantom Zone criminals in the streets of Metropolis in Superman II (1980) or the fight between Spidey and Doc Ock on the elevated train in Spider-Man 2 (2004), those are scenes where the filmmakers really went the extra mile to take the kind of excitement that comic fans have enjoyed on the page for years and bring it to life in a big way.

And while there have been opportunities to do that in all the Marvel Studio films so far, scenes like the Hulk's fight with the Abomination or Thor's fight with the Destroyer have been flatly rendered. As Marvel Studios moves forward, they have to realize that the action of their films needs to start soaring.

During Thor's end credits, the Bond-ian promise that "Thor Will Return In The Avengers" appears and, as a building block towards that impending team-up, Thor plays perfectly (some have carped that S.H.I.E.L.D. feels shoehorned in but I disagree - I think it's natural to have them show up in the manner that they do and it's not necessary to have seen any of the other Marvel movies to understand that they're a F.B.I./C.I.A.-style organization).

It's true that Thor's reentry to Midgard has hit a roadblock by the end of this film but I think that's preferable to having Thor left on Earth. I'd rather have his entrance be a big deal in The Avengers rather than have his first meeting with Tony Stark or Bruce Banner occurring in the time between this movie and The Avengers.

As a character, Thor will never be at the top of my list of favorite superheroes but this movie is definitely near the top of my list of favorite superhero adaptations. It could've used some fine tuning, yes, but it's fun and well-acted. What's more, it's my six year old son's new favorite movie and that alone tells me that Branagh and co. hammered out a winner.