With Kung Fu Panda,Dreamworks have finally made a good movie! The story,the voice acting,the design,the cinematography,the pacing,the set-up and the resolution-it all worked.
I especially loved ancient Master Oogway voiced by Randall Duk Kim who was so advanced in years his every movement showed a real visible fragility,the character animation on this character was flawless. There is a scene whereupon after being interrupted in his meditation by Master Shifu he sets about slowly extinguishing some candles which is just picture perfect.
The action scenes were spectacular in both staging and execution and had me at times(quite a few times to be honest)actually sitting forward in my seat as I was completely entranced by there sheer inventiveness-Tai Lung's escape and the rope-bridge sequence to name but two were just fantastic.
The Hulk,which to be quite honest I wasn't too keen on seeing was thankfully a pleasant surprise.I guess the oafish big green looking baby that Ang Lee plastered across the screen previously was still fresh in my mind(In fairness I did like certain aspects of the Ang Lee interpretation...just not a lot) This Hulk was how I had always envisioned The Hulk to be: ugly,monstrous and as angry as hell.
The script was a little patchy at times with quite a few flaws but overall I felt it delivered the goods, having taken some plot ideas from the recent Bruce Jones Hulk comic whilst also giving quite a nod in the direction of the old TV show. Norton made a damn good Banner, Liv Tyler was a believable Betty Ross and William Hurt(who I always have a lot of time for)gave a usually very wooden character a little more depth and substance in being cast as General Ross. Tim Roth was also pretty decent as Emil Blonsky/The Abomination.
The fight scene at the end with The Abomination was hardcore,really quite vicious and ugly and of course... I loved it. I mean this is two huge monsters completely going at it,so it should be quite primal and animalistic in tone and I think they achieved just that.
I worked on The Hulk movie cg game tie in, in 2003 so I thought it would be kinda apt to post a few images...
1 comment:
The fact that you got to work on the Hulk game franchise has certainly got me green with envy! Damn, that must have been fun! Anyhoo, I caught this latest Hulk film in HK and I was very pleased with the results too. However, I never liked the design of the Abomination, I dont know if "Scale face" would have worked verbatim from comics to screen but somehow the design they ended up using with kept reminding me of the that Alien monster in Alien Resurrection.
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