With The Incredible Hulk, Leterrier has created a movie on a par with Jon Favreau's Iron Man, one that's only comparable to the last Hulk movie in that the two are nothing alike. Leterrier's movie is not only action-packed, with Hulk fighting Brazilian street thugs, Humvees, a super-powered Tim Roth and the Abomination, it's also funny and emotional, thanks to an amazing group of actors, as opposed to Lee's mismatched cast of quirky oddballs. Even the massive Hulk is slightly more realistic than Lee's, especially in the way he moves and fights and doesn't look like Gumby.

Leterrier has also made the Hulk look bigger. Note that I said "look." Lee's film managed to make the Hulk seem small, with Hulk bouncing across wide-open spaces (the desert, the sky, San Francisco) like a toy rubber ball, despite the fact that he was as much as 30 feet tall sometimes, thanks to Lee deciding that the madder Hulk gets, the bigger he gets. Leterrier takes him back to his roots, and just has him get stronger, but then he puts the Hulk in the smallest, most cramped places imaginable: a cluttered soda bottling plant, a tiny laboratory in the middle of a college building, a New York City street -- all of them emphasizing that the Hulk can never fit in, mainly because he simply doesn't fit. (Leterrier wisely draws the line at a New York subway, thereby saving hundreds of lives and millions of dollars off the budget.)

While Lee drew on some comic book mythology, he mostly created his own Hulk world, populated with Hulk Dogs and inherited, mutated genes. Leterrier, on the other hand, peppers the film with the familiar names and faces of the Hulk's world. Internet chats between "Mr. Green" and "Mr. Blue" are taken from Bruce Jones' run on the comic. The characters of Leonard "Doc" Samson and Samuel "Leader" Sterns are introduced, as well as main baddie Emil Blonsky, the Abomination. There's a nod to purple pants, and creator Stan Lee and TV portrayer Lou Ferrigno return in cameos -- Ferrigno even voices the Hulk when he's in monster mode, albeit in three-word increments.

And Ferrigno (who also appeared on American Gladiator Monday night) seems to be the crux of Marvel's marketing campaign -- promoting the film not as a sequel to the last film, but as a movie version of the TV show, complete with the glowing green eyes and the sad music and the hitchhiking along a lonely road. Promoting it as an Iron Man tie-in isn't a bad idea either, especially when Tony Stark makes a cameo. His scene comes at the very end, and is jam-packed with the promise of more Marvel movies -- presumably including the Hulk, given the movie's optimistic ending. Luckily, Leterrier has said he's game for anything Marvel will give him. I say let him pick.

Talk about this review in our forums!