Retro Nerd Girl Movie Reviews: Planet Hulk 2010 Movie Review

From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a quick spoiler free film review for you.

Today I'll be reviewing the movie Planet Hulk released in 2010.

Starring:
Rick D. Wasserman, Lisa Ann Beley, Mark Hildreth

Directed by:
Sam Liu

Genre:
Animation, Action, Adventure

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG-13

Budget:
N/A

Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
6.8

The Synopsis is:
The Hulk is exiled from Earth by the Avengers and accidentally ends up on the planet planet Sakarr, and placed into a gladiator arena to fight for his life.

My first memories of the Hulk is the TV show starring Bill Bixby, which I enjoyed as a kid. It thought it was pretty amazing for its time. Over the years, I never got into the Hulk comics. Although I like the Hulk, I didn’t really find the character fascinating enough to seek out more about him and I never had the incident of coming upon a copy of the comics to read. When the film’s came out, I wasn’t excited about them, mainly because of the CGI, and I thought his origin story was not going to be any kind of new territory. And after seeing those films, I was right.

I’m a casual fan of the Marvel Avengers, enough to understand who the characters are and maybe even their origins, but not knowledgeable about all their many adventures over the years.

After seeing the poster for this movie I was intrigued. Planet Hulk… what a title. I wondered what it was going to be about… perhaps a planet full of people who were large, green, and angry…. Or perhaps an experiment gone wrong where the Hulk’s DNA was used to create a planet of similar creatures.

But, mainly, I was expecting a very generic story for the Saturday morning cartoon demographic, pre-teens and teens.

Then, with the arrival of Thor Ragnarok released in 2017, lots of resources hinted that the movie loosely adapted Marvel Comics’ Planet Hulk story line in issues of The Incredible Hulk #92 - #105 from April 2006 – June 2007.

At that point I thought it was time for me to see this Planet Hulk movie and discover its secrets.

Boy, were all of my expectations wrong!

I knew this was going to be a film involving a gladiator arena, but I had no idea that they were going to be as mature as the comic book would be. That was a total surprise for me.

The film really delivers high tension at a high threat level from the bad guys in this film. My hands were cold. I was breathing heavy. I had an elevated heart rate. I was concerned. I was worried.

I didn’t watch this movie passively.

So to set things up, we see Hulk arrive on Sakarr and placed in a gladiator arena with a group of captives to make a team. Together they are forced to fight a slew of other much powerful captives, by controlling them with a chest plug.

Of course the Hulk wins many of the challenges, but just when you think the story can go nowhere else, another formidable challenge is placed in front of the group and some of them are quite intimidating.

In one of the very first scenes they establish a character that is a really cool leader that you expect to be a mentor to the others, commander Lavin. The film kills him off immediately in the story. Like BAM! There are stakes and characters die in this film, horribly. This is not a cartoon for the kiddies.

It gets dark. It gets so dark… and I liked it… a lot!

That surprised me.

I feel as if one of the key reasons to like this film is for the staging of the action. I just found myself thinking, wow that was totally cool, at nearly every scene. Better than any action movie I’ve seen in a while because I can actually see what the characters are doing, because it’s a cell drawing animation. I can’t tell you how much I loved it.

It’s not cinematic to me, but really feels like a TV movie production. You can see the same quality on TV, but one thing that you don’t get are the mature tone to do with the action and I really appreciate that.

With so many characters in the film, I felt as if there might have been some really interesting backstories not featured in the film and the ones we got were to reference a specific part of the story. There is a little bit of a disjoint there, but it’s strange that I didn’t mind it too much because, I did care about the characters, the movie wanted the audience to care about.

I felt very connected to them. The characters that were left out of a backstory weren’t any less interesting, because as characters should, they all played a part in the current story be it positive or a stupid move.

I found myself yelling at characters and cheering for the Hulk at times.

The villain in the story is the Red King and he is so nasty, you hate this guy so much by the end of the story. I haven’t hated a character this much in a long time. He’s got no backstory, or deep underlying purpose to his cruelty other than to get what he wants. His evil deeds alone, is all you really need and his creativity to stay on top of every move the good guys make. You almost feel suffocated by his intensity.

See the story is written so well, to me because the good guys are actually being as smart as they possibly can… except for maybe one character, Elloe.

The bad guys are also being mostly smart too, so the failures hurt and victories are earned. There are so many jaw dropping moments that, blew me away along with pacing that would not quit, no matter what!

Wow, I am so impressed with this film.

The Hulk was the biggest surprise for me. The Hulk is a cool character. You gotta love the hulk. He’s the strong silent type. A man of few words.

This story, uses the Hulk in the best way he can be used in a story as a gladiator and a hero so he can get out all of that anger.

What I like about the Hulk in this film is how much of a hero he feels like. He communicates excellently, logically, and even wisely. I love that because I always wanted to know what the Hulk was thinking when he grunts. Here, you get to find out.

I also enjoyed his big arc in this film. Loved his character and am a huge fan now. I want to see more.

I really enjoyed the character of Caiera and her character arc, who was an amazing shadow warrior with power of the the old strong. It's not explained what this all means, but she is nearly as strong as the Hulk and can withstand his attacks. I would have liked to have known how she had such power and strength. How does her powers really work?

Her backstory was truly in depth and touching, giving her character integrity. She plays a great companion to the Hulk as they transform from enemies to friends and then it is implied that they become a romantic couple. It's a bit of a stretch, but they way that they bond makes sense within the telling of this tale.

I was shocked that there were so many people that didn’t like the film, but luckily there are just as many people who love the film, splitting the general populace of audiences.

But that's how it works right, you have the fans that rave about how good it is and the non fans that say, meh, it was OK. And I know why. If you have read the comics there isn’t much that will shock you seeing this film. I may seem as if it is lacking the same effect because there was so much left out from the comics and changed to legally produce the film.

I saw some of the panels for the Planet Hulk comic story line and boy is it magnificently drawn It also took several issues to tell this story building suspense and excitement through the duration. So this film is a massive downgrade from that incredible work. I’ve took a sneak peek at some of the series and I am curious about seeing the entirety of it. I am also interested in seeing more Marvel and DC animated movies. It’s open a whole new world of exploration for me.

The cool part about it was that while I was watching the film, I didn’t feel I needed to know everything about every and every character, but just focused on what was on the screen and how it related to this telling of the story. That really worked for me. I am definitely a bigger fan of the Hulk than before I saw this and I can’t wait to see this again and again.