Hulk: Struggle For Control

Hulk 08 is a movie I’ve seen too many times, both original & fanedited. The original is a very dry one while both QuickCut & Tomahawk’s extended editions, while fleshing story, character, & narrative out & functioning as slow-burn movies, might be too long for people & I doubt even I could sit through again. While I’m impressed that Lapis was able to cut out so much & add so much back in, I feel like more could’ve been done.

-While I used to enjoy reinserting the deleted opening, I don’t think it pairs well with the opening credits, since the information provided in the latter is either going to be repeated or can be disseminated more naturally throughout the film. As much as I miss when comic book movies used to have opening credits, I don’t think they’re necessary.

-Everything with the white flower is a time sink. It kills the pacing (since Bruce cutting his thumb open dovetails nicely into the U.S. government learning of his location), & the only relevant information is that Bruce has someone in the states helping him with his gamma sickness, which you can accomplish by having Bruce send his mail package in the earlier montage before we see Bruce at the soda factory.

–Bruce pining for the lady at the soda factory (and kissing her on the cheek) should be cut out. In the brilliant dinner scene between Bruce, Betty & Leonard, Bruce mentions that is’ the first time in awhile since he’s felt light about anything, which is at odds for a man willing trying to avoid stressful situations with rude coworkers (or kissing a woman on the cheek when we don’t know how well they know each other & never will).

-Is it at all possible to splice in Ross’s dialogue about how “I WANT! WHAT’S INSIDE HIIIIIIM!!!!” while Bruce is being chased in Brazil. Granted, it’s important character motivation for Ross, but the scene itself drags. Other scenes that would benefit from being spliced together would be (1) Ross telling Blonsky about the super soldier program while Ross digs it out of storage & (2) Ross talking about Promethean fire while Blonsky gets injected with the stuff. Little trims so we get multiple things happening in a short amount of time.

-I don’t think we need the scene of Ross’ supervisor warning him about messing with super soldiers again, since Ross just ignores him anyway. You can keep the bit about Blonsky not being able to tell the Hulk’s color, but the important part of that scenario should be Blonsky wanting answers.

-There are a few deleted scenes I wish made it into this version of the film, like Bruce telling Stanley about how all the research back at his lab is gone. You could call it repeating what we know, but it helps dramatize Bruce’s desperation about everything & wanting to leave, only for Betty to come in at the last second.

-The second deleted scene I missed was Bruce venting to Betty on the campus grounds. Again, it’s just him talking, but it’s him opening up & airing out his frustrations about the experiment & what it cost him, shows more vulnerability to Bruce’s character & sets up Bruce’s speech in the climax about he, Betty, & Ross are responsible for The Hulk/Abomination.

-The third deleted scene I really missed was Betty showing Bruce her scars in bed. I know it ties into the heart rate monitor Lapis’ isn’t a fan of, but again, it shows the scars that the Hulk experiment caused & it has Better opening up about her trauma to Bruce & how Bruce must feel about it, etc.

-Back to things that should’ve been deleted, Betty selling her mom’s necklace doesn’t drive the plot & could be removed. I can believe that they have enough money on them to get them to New York, the army prepping to find them is enough in terms of desperation.

-I also don’t need them getting stuck in traffic, getting out of the car, & hiring a boat to get them into the city. It’s screen time that could be saved by just assuming they drove straight to Samuel Stern.

-One last scene I missed was of Ross telling his men “remember, if he gets agitated, just let him go & we’ll try again later” with Blonsky being angry about not getting round three. It shows that Ross is not an idiot & unwilling to cause another incident like at the campus, as ell as Blonsky growing more & more about wanting to fight the Hulk and less about avenging his team at the beginning of the film.

-I understand Lapis wanting to cut any CGI of Hulk that doesn’t look convincing, but I really did miss the bit where it seems Hulk’s won, but Abomination gets back up, spurring Hulk to give a “aww, here we go again” type of look that was really charming for me. On a similar note. Abomination shouting “you don’t deserve this power, now watch her die,” and stabbing his elbow bone into Hulk’s chest was sorely missed, since aside from the visual continuity error of Hulk’s chest being blue-green, you don’t see that kind of violence in the MCU & that’s what makes the final fight in this movie unique.

And that’s all I have for this edit. It replaces the theatrical edition for sure, but it’s not my go-to version of the movie.

I was hoping someone would do a really great edit of this movie and someone did! This was the version we should have got in the theater.

I never noticed how the movie was trying to do too much before. Taking out little things and removing the heart monitor really works to benefit this movie. You don't miss a beat (see what I did there). The story just flows so much better here.

My only real issues were:
The video seemed a little dark? I don't know if that's just the movie proper or not because I haven't watched it in years. As the editor mentioned in the forum, the deleted scenes move a little funny sometimes, but there is nothing you can do about that when you are adjusting frame rates. But I would still rather have these scenes than not.

The narrative just works here and adds more character to the movie as a whole. This is a version that I will re-watch and is my go to version for now on. When I have friends who want to watch this movie, this is the version I will show them. I can't say enough good things here.

I certainly see the reasoning for including the snow scene at the beginning but Bruce never points the gun at himself, so that inclusion is rather confusing. He seems to be clearly pointing it away. Maybe there is some stock footage somewhere or a scene from a different film that could be repurposed in some way? Overall I appreciate the intent of that addition but it does feel jarring right at the start.

So I really liked what the editor did overall. I'd never seen the movie all the way though before but I could enjoy this version enough to watch it fully so it's a vast improvement over the original! I did notice the absence of the heart rate thing, as I remember it being present in the street chase originally. It's a welcome change and there's only really one part where I noticed reference to it, towards the end.

There is a lot of bad stuff in the original movie that spoils the enjoyment such as badly thought out locations and awful jump cuts. I can see that the editor did some work around at least one of these bad edits and the bad edit was left untouched, while the faneditor's change was flawless. It feels like a real shame that the editor could have polished the original movie by adding some cross fade or some other remedies to improve on that. I can't fault the fan editor of course but I feel like it's a missed opportunity.

Finally, I'd like to quibble about the encoding quality of the movie. I have to say I find it to be excessively high. Whilst I appreciate the editor's love for quality and I respect that, for me it means if I am going to keep it in my movies folder, I have to re-encode and that feels wrong somehow. It also takes a longer time to download. It's a minor quibble for sure, I just feel like for an AVC encode, 5Mb/s is more than adequate and for super high quality, 8Mb/s would be vastly more than enough, except for the most egregious of detailed movies such as pacific rim rainstorm scene. Anything above 10Mb/s is wasteful IMO, but it is only a quibble, I'm not giving negative points for that.

All in all, This is a superior version to the theatrical edit, but there is still room for improvement. Great job!

2008's The Incredible Hulk is easily in my Top Five Favourite Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.
I love the DVD release even more with it's 45 minutes of extra deleted scenes, as I would have been very happy with an almost 3 hour theatrical cut. Thankfully we have the Tomahawk Extended Edition to fill that dream.

But if you are looking for something that fits in between those two, then we have your answer right here with Lapis Molari's newest fan edit.

Pacing has been improved while character beats have been bolstered., strengthening the overall narrative considerably.

I love all the choices made for re-inserted deleted scenes. Each one adds extra depth and insight to the characters and their motivations. Unfortunately, all the deleted material used appears to be of a different frame rate (???) as they all have a distracting jittery quality. The audio levels of the deleted scenes also seem slightly different from the main material.

Lots of great choices made regarding the trims and changes. I thought the 'Love Scene" was masterfully edited.

There was a brief moment where the audio goes out of sync when Betty says, "It's okay", in the cave. And you can hear the cut during the factory scene when Banner is beaten and throw in the shadows behind crates. But these are brief blips on an otherwise nicely cut project. The additional new music was very well done.

I thought the newly redesigned End Credits scene was very clever! Though the Coulson footage really popped out at me, as it was of a significantly higher quality than the main feature.

But in the end, it is all about story, and on that front, this fan edit succeeds wonderfully.

A very fun watch.
Thumbs Up for me.
:)

This is the version we should have gotten. It has only the deleted scenes needed back in and a lot of unnecessary parts cut. Doc Samson comes out looking better here too. If you always wanted a good version of this movie, this is it.