I went to see the Hulk movie on Friday. It was quite enjoyable, despite an incomprehensible final battle… I was eager to see how Ang Lee (of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Sense & Sensibility fame) would approach a comic-based movie. As many reviews have pointed out, the Hulk is the “deepest” movie of the comic-movie genre. I find this quite ironic, given that the Hulk is the most “brainless” character in comics… Anyway. What I also found interesting was that the Hulk was the most comic-like of all the comic-based movies. That is, it used multiple panels, and various other camera/effect work to given the viewer some sensation of comic-book-ness.

Sadly, my guess is that the Hulk game does not provide any of the “deepness” from the movie - despite looking like a pretty cool game. Would be nice if game designers were able to better mix action with “deepness”. Perhaps the upcoming “Creating Emotion in Games” book will help in this regard…

On a related note, as I was waiting for the previews to roll, I thumbed through the freebie movie mag Tribute. There was an interview with Angelina Jolie about the next Tomb Raider movie. I thought that her language about “playing” the character was interesting. I am sure there’s a bunch of fancy academic ways to look at player/viewer/actor agency, empathy and fun stuff like that…