The Incredible Hulk RETRO-REVIEW

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In continuing our review series on the MCU movies, we come to the other 2008 Marvel movie.  Just two months after Marvel kicked off its Cinematic Universe with Iron Man, they expanded their roster with The Incredible Hulk.  This movie is largely considered to be among the worst MCU movies—which based on the Rotten Tomatoes score is accurate—but that only tells part of the story.  The Incredible Hulk currently has a 67% critical score and 71% audience score; the next-lowest is Thor: The Dark World, which also has a 67% critical score but a higher audience score at 78%.  Iron Man 2 comes in next with 72% both critically and from audiences.  These are the three lowest-scoring movies based on Rotten Tomatoes.

However, a comparison with other Marvel movies (outside the MCU) paints a different picture.  The 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie starring Eric Bana received a 61% score from critics and a painful 29% from audiences.  None of FOX’s Fantastic Four movies have rated higher than 37% critically (Rise of the Silver Surfer rates highest, with the most-recent movie rating just a mind-boggling 9%).  The three lowest-rated X-Men movies are X-Men Origins: Wolverine (38%), X-Men: Apocalypse (48%), and X-Men: The Last Stand (58%).  The two lowest-rated Spider-Man movies are The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (53%) and Spider-Man 3 (63%).  Daredevil, Elektra, and even all three Blade movies have lower ratings.  One more:  both Man of Steel and Batman v. Superman are lower.  So even when Marvel Studios makes a bad movie, it’s still better than everyone else’s bad movies!

And with that out of the way, we can get down to business.

The Civil War Conflict Has Been Built into the MCU All Along

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Here we are, 4 weeks away from the wide release of Captain America: Civil War.  This movie has been hotly anticipated ever since Disney announced last year that the third Captain America movie would not have the subtitle “Serpent Society,” but instead would be titled Captain America: Civil War.  However, to think that the MCU Civil War has only been building for a couple of years would be to ignore the facts.  It’s not like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers just decided one day that they wanted to disagree about something, picked the Sokovia Accords, and duked it out.  No, this conflict over accountability vs. freedom has actually been built into the very DNA of the Marvel Cinematic Universe virtually since its inception.  You might say that these heroes were always destined to come into conflict, either with each other or with the government; the time and place was the only question left to be answered.

Frankly, this Civil War has been a long time coming.

Skye's New Therapist--An Avenger?

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Warning:  Spoilers for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. episode “One of Us” (2x13) (and for The Incredible Hulk, though I’m pretty sure everyone’s seen it who’s going to see it!)

In Tuesday’s episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., “One of Us,” Coulson and May brought in a psychiatrist from Culver University to meet with Skye and evaluate her control of her abilities and her emotional state following the traumas of meeting her father, being captured, gaining powers, and seeing Tripp die.  The psychiatrist, May’s ex-husband Dr. Andrew Garner, observed Skye on the Bus, talked with her, and watched her in action in the field.  His evaluation was… not promising.

According to Dr. Garner, Skye is not controlling her powers; she’s actually directing all the force inward against her own body.  Consequently, when she was burying her powers in Wisconsin, she hurt herself by rupturing capillaries in her hands and causing hairline fractures all down her arms.  Because she’s not controlling her powers well, Dr. Garner gave S.H.I.E.L.D. two prescriptions:  Skye needs to be seeing a therapist (not him), and she needs to be away from S.H.I.E.L.D. and all its attendant stresses.

That got me thinking:  Who could be Skye’s therapist?  I think I have the answer!