10 Bad Films By Great Directors

Roger Ebert said Ang Lee's Hulk was "a comic book movie for people who wouldn't be seen dead at a comic book movie", and he's right. Ebert meant that it was a different, more artistic take on the pre-Iron Man Marvel universe, with an essentially art-house director taking on a 150 million dollar action film.

Ebert presents that as a positive, and while he has a point, the film ultimately fails as a consequence.

There's nothing wrong with a director trying to intellectualise a blockbuster, and indeed some of the best ones are those that blend the action with something a little more substantial (think Edge of Tomorrow), but Lee pushes the point too far, and by trying to turn his Hulk into a Modern Prometheus-esque parable he fails the essence of the comic book film as an entity.

If anything, Hulk tries too hard.

This isn't as much a bad film as it is a mismatch of director and material. Lee deserves credit for trying to do something a little different with Hulk, but his vision was too ambitious, and ambition without execution is merely a platitude.