The Incredible Hulk (television series) 1978-1982

[The Joker]

Not specifically related to the Bixby/Ferrigno series, but I'll just place this here rather than create a whole new thread just for this article.

FLASHBACK 1997

Wizard Magazine reports on the progress of a "HULK" movie, that was being targeted for a July 1998 release date with Johnny Depp as Bruce. Evidently, Universal/Marvel had agreed upon using simply "Hulk" as a title, rather than "The Incredible Hulk", even back then. Several years before the 2003 film that was released years later. Other time capsule reports involve the DCAU "World's Finest" crossover, Marvel animated projects, a live action "Shi" movie starring Tia Carrere (shame that never happened), ect.

[The Joker]

[The Joker]

[The Joker]

[The Joker]

CBS Prime time lineup. Circa 1980.

[The Joker]

[The Joker]

[Silver Nemesis]

My earliest memory of The Incredible Hulk is watching the pilot movie back in the late eighties and being terrified by the scene where the girl's sitting on the riverbank and turns to see the Hulk towering over her. I must have been three or four when I first saw that, and for years afterwards I was terrified of the Jolly Green Giant.

I've just re-watched the 1977 TV movie and I think it's aged rather well. It's easy to dismiss it as just a pilot, but it has a more filmic quality than the episodes that followed. It feels more like a movie than a TV episode and in some countries it even received a theatrical release.

Comic fans hoping for lots of action and super powered fight scenes will be disappointed. Writer and director Kenneth Johnson took the basic premise of the Hulk comics and then built his own version from the ground up. The result is a psychological horror film that's got less in common with typical superhero fare than it does with Cronenbergian sci-fi thrillers such as Scanners (1981) and The Fly (1986). It's a dark drama exploring themes of PTSD, bereavement and survivor's guilt. It begins and ends with tragedy, and the pathos evoked in the final scene exceeds the emotional depth of any of the modern Hulk movies.

The Hulk's origin in the comic, where Banner survived a gamma radiation bomb, was always a bit silly. I like how the TV movie takes a more thoughtful approach to his transformation. Here he's studying rare displays of superhuman strength and identifies a common genetic trait in the test subjects. Banner himself possesses the same DNA trait, but not the strength. He looks deeper and discovers a correlation between the special DNA pattern, the occurrence of superhuman strength, and higher amounts of gamma radiation resulting from solar activity. To test his theory, he exposes himself to gamma radiation in an attempt to awaken his genetic potential and access his latent super strength.

I find this a far more interesting back story than simply having him survive a bomb blast. Exposing himself to such high levels of gamma radiation, without supervision or safeguards, and without first consulting his colleagues, is clearly a foolish thing to do. But I can believe Bixby's Banner would do it, given the psychological and emotional context of his bereavement and the effect it had on his research. In the comic he was exposed to gamma radiation by accident while saving Rick Jones, but in the movie he intentionally did it to himself and must live with the consequences of his mistake. This rewrite of the Hulk's origin story shifts the TV movie away from the science fantasy of Stan Lee's comic and into the realm of more mature science fiction.

The 1977 movie is also very well made. The first transformation scene during the storm is particularly well shot and edited and remains a very creepy sequence. The acting is good too, and it's not hard to see why Bixby became so iconic in the lead role. It's also interesting to see Banner interacting with Jack McGee in the film, as throughout the television series he'd consistently avoid contact with him. McGee comes off as particularly slimy in the movie, with the tragic ending being a direct consequence of his actions. I don't recall him ever being held to account for Elaina's death, but he should have been.

The Trial of the Incredible Hulk (1989) remains my favourite Hulk movie (no prizes for guessing why), but if we're discussing which Hulk film is objectively the best I'd say it's a toss-up between the 1977 TV film and the 2008 theatrical movie. I also think the 1977 film ranks favourably on the overall list of 1970s comic book movies. I wouldn't rank it as high as Superman (1978) or Tales from The Crypt (1972), but it would still make the top five. Even if you're not keen on watching the rest of the TV series, the original film is worth checking out.

[Kamdan]

My first exposure to The Incredible Hulk's pilot movie was renting the VHS from the kids section of the video. Make no mistake that wasn't misplaced there or that it crossed with the family section. I could tell right away this was no kids show when it opened with Banner's nightmare about his wife being killed in an automobile accident. It's remarkable to me how compelling the story was to me at that age and a credit to Johnston how he elevated the material from the source.

[The Joker]

I'll parrot what's been said here, in that I too believe that Kenneth Johnson elevated the source material (along with Bill Bixby, as Johnson has stated several times that Bixby was absolutely adamant that Johnson stick to the original Hulk pitch, and not allow the network to succeed the show into a failure via meddling), and origin of the Hulk. Having Banner being a individual suffering from PTSD, survivor's guilt, frustration with one self, and subsequently becoming a cursed victim of his own unwavering mania, gave the origin of the Hulk a much more profound effect and way more of a hook for general audiences to grasp than the outright hilarity the original Lee/Kirby origin provided back in 1962.

Straying from the source material, oftentimes, is frowned upon more often these days, but there are examples where I think providing a divergence from the comic book-to-live action transition actually boosts the material for the better. This is one of them.