1,369 lightbulbs

By now, the tallies are in. We all know how much of a smash hit (ahem) Marvel's The Incredible Hulk is. My lady and I checked it out on Monday night, and though I wasn't a devotee of the comic, I was a huge fan of the TV show. (For those over a certain age, check out the old open to the series here.) Some may not remember that this is a franchise reboot. Edward Norton's presence adds a lot of heft, and the script is pretty good. The beginning of the film (not just the open) is great stuff. But once he Hulks out, the IQ level drops. Rather than heightening the intelligence and taking its viewers seriously (a la Batman Begins), the new film is very faithful to the comics and TV show (even casting Lou Ferrigno as the voice of the Hulk), low on sophistication and high on kick-assery.

But what of the previous incarnation, Ang Lee's Hulk? Everyone seemed to agree that it stunk to high heaven, citing the mutant dogs, over-complicated (and false) origin story, bad CGI and the ludicrous ending. (To be fair, the new film gets the origin story wrong, also - but it at least echoes the TV-show version. Ang just made some shit up.)

Like the Hulk, I'm a bit of a lonely man on this: I didn't think it was half bad. (OK, the ending was ludicrous.) Finally, someone agrees with me:

Lee's Hulk, by contrast, isn't really all that important to the future of the world, and isn't even much of a hero.

If this sounds gloomy, it is. The tone of Hulk was a common problem for critics, who were expecting more upbeat summer fare. The screenwriters had "forgotten the simple joys of pop," Ty Burr wrote in the Boston Globe. "And isn't that why we pick up a comic in the first place?" Yet while Lee deviated from the specifics of the Hulk comic, he actually made a movie that was very much in keeping with the tone of the source material. In the original comic-book story line, Bruce Banner is relentlessly hounded by the U.S. military and is nearly always on the run. Instead of embracing his powers, as most superheroes eventually do, he tries unsuccessfully to get rid of them. Lee didn't fill his adaptation with clever winks to the fanboys, but he did manage to capture the hopeless, monster-on-the-run tone of the original comic.

The new film is everything Lee's wasn't - chock full of winks to the fanboys (watch for the tribute to the late Bill Bixby), faithful almost to a fault and easily consumable.

Just what America always wanted!

But I want my superheroes with a little more depth. The story of the Hulk is a sad one, and that wasn't fully reflected in the film. I like my superheroes more like Batman Begins. Or Marvel's other offering this summer, Iron Man, which features the finest portrayal of a superhero ever by Robert Downey, Jr. (Oscar-worthy. No joke.) Even Superman Returns, which I thought was vastly underrated and the best homage the genre's ever seen.

But if you like 'em quick-and-easy, you might like this (it's safe for work, despite the freeze-frame):

UPDATE!

Roger Ebert agrees with me, too.