A New Hulk, Designed For a New Age

While I loved the tv series "The Incredible Hulk" and still do, it was not quite an accurate assessment of the Hulk.The Hulk from the comics is a monster the width of a small truck. and there isn't a person alive who could really portray him without some special effects embellishment. I think most people were turned-off from Ang Lee's film the moment they saw the  computer generated Hulk. As good as the CG was and it was good, CG just lacks that human quality that even stop motion and animatronics capture awkwardly through human manipulation. It's an essence of realism that is simply missing from CG human characters. Also many audiences balked that the CG Hulk was too green and looked like the "Green Giant" or "Shrek". I think perhaps this observation may have been correct. A more subtle green may have worked better.  Nevertheless, I think it was brilliant how the Hulk was designed to resemble Eric Bana.  I  only wish the Hulk had appeared more gruesome and  freightening in appearance like his inspirations the Frankenstein Monster and Mr. Hyde. I feel it would have been best had test audiences been  used to  delevop the final look of the on screen Hulk.   Also, the character design may have been more successful had they used a combination of actor, prosthetics, animatronics and CG, though this would have proved more costly.   In the end, the choice of CG was  handle well over all and Ang Lee  showed real commitment to bringing the character to life  by acting out the actual parts of the Hulk in a motion capture suit.  If you ever come across any behind the scenes footage of how the Hulk was animated you will see that Ang really puts all his energy and sweat into  every scene in which he plays the Hulk.