What Went Wrong: 13 Disastrous Comic Book Movies (And Why They Sucked)

13. It Hid What It Was (And Then It Leaked) - The Hulk

Before The Avengers reinvented the Hulk in the shape of Mar Ruffalo and even before Ed Norton semi-botched his own take on the character, Ang Lee made some of the boldest creative choices behind any comic book movie. The result was a curiously contemplative Hulk movie that explored the darkness within in a provocatively "new" sort of way.

In short, this wasn't just a Hulk smash, but unfortunately for Lee, it wasn't a smash hit either.

The Cause

First off, Lee's creative decisions alienated the existing Hulk audience. The film is way too long at 138 minutes and way too slow, it splits focus across two villains in the name of a twist and crucially, it doesn't portray the Hulk as a superhero. Fundamentally, it seeks to be too clever without really having enough to back it up, and any immediate hype (which pulled in more than $60m in its first weekend) died quickly as it suffered a 68% drop.

But arguably more fatal was the fact that Lee requested no footage from the last half of the movie was shown in trailers to preserve the twist. Not only did that make it look like the trailers were for an entirely different movie (hence the killer word of mouth after it debuted), but also built up expectations of a good second half. In reality, it was a mess and the psyche-battle is just ridiculous.

Sadly for the studio, a work print copy was leaked to the Internet before release, and those who saw it spread news that the effects were terrible. That definitely didn't help it, but then, had it been any good, it wouldn't have been a problem.

How Disastrous Was It?

It might have made SOME money (though claims it was a success are a little much), but Hulk's week-on-week performance smacked of a terrible film, and it was rebooted out of existence only five years later.