RayCarsilloWrites.com

Originally Published: February 12, 2010, on 1050ESPN.com (now ESPNNewYork.com)

While growing up, I was never really fascinated with the Hulk because the character never had the depth to draw me to him. I loved the fact that the madder he got the stronger he got, and the cheesy catch phrases were great to imitate (“RAY SMASH!”; “RAY STRONGEST THERE IS!”), but beyond these, the Hulk was always a B-level character in the grand scheme of things.

My frustration only grew with Hulk as he was depicted the same way over and over again in horrible movies that were later remade with bigger names into better movies with the same basic story, and we can’t forget the horribly overpriced straight-to-DVD animated features.

But in 2006, there was hope. Over the course of a little more than a year in the Incredible Hulk’s third volume, came the Planet Hulk storyline, an arc that has been the Hulk’s shining moment in his nearly 50 years of comics (with a close second being the storyline that came out of the Planet Hulk story arc, World War Hulk). This was the first time, the Hulk, and not Bruce Banner (or a merging of the Hulk’s body and Banner’s personality), was the personality with layer upon layer of depth and development. The Hulk was thinking, strategizing, speaking in complete sentences. And after years of being limited, the Hulk had become not only the center of his own planet, but would soon become the center of the Marvel Universe.

These glorious storylines drew me to the superhero who liked purple stretchy pants like never before. Of course, Marvel would screw it all up and have a horribly anti-climatic end to World War Hulk and make him stupid again, but for a time, Hulk was the top dog.

Realizing that many casual comic readers had also been drawn to the Hulk across these story arcs, Marvel animation (who always seem to want to feature the Hulk in something, some way or another) decided that the Planet Hulk story arc would make a fantastic DVD movie. And so, I present to you Planet Hulk.

With the cover art done by Alex Ross to grab prospective buyers’ attention, and voice acting veterans like Liam O’Brien as Hiroim and Kevin Michael Richardson as Korg signing on board, this is easily the best animated feature starring the Hulk that Marvel has done. A full hour and 21 minutes also makes it one of the longer comic book based animated films to come out in a long time. Of course, I thought that with everything Marvel would have had to cram into the DVD to make it as true to the original series as possible, I thought they would have been pushing 100 minutes, but Marvel found a way to streamline the story and still keep in all the best parts of the Planet Hulk comics.

The basic premise is that the Illuminati back on Earth (comprised of Black Bolt, Namor, Iron Man, Professor X, Mr. Fantastic, and Doctor Strange) have come to the conclusion that the Hulk is simply too dangerous to remain on Earth and so they gas him and send him on a spaceship towards a desolate planet. Of course, Tony Stark sticking true to form, has to gloat in a recording explaining the situation to the Hulk when he wakes up, and in the Hulk’s fury, he knocks the navigation system out of whack and crash lands on a planet ruled through fear by a man simply known as “The Red King”. To keep his subjects in line and entertained, the Red King holds gladiatorial matches in a coliseum in his capital city between natives of the planet and those unfortunate enough to crash land on his barren world. Not taking too kind to being a slave, Hulk fights back. We then watch as our hero evolves and strategizes against the Red King as he fights for not only his freedom, but for an entire planet’s.

Although not perfectly true to the original comics (Silver Surfer was cut due to legal issues and was replaced by Beta Ray Bill), it did add little snippets that brought together some aspects of the Marvel universe very nicely (such as Thor’s origin story, although slightly perverted by Beta Ray Bill’s presence, leading to how Korg ended up as a gladiator). It also trimmed down Hulk’s “Warbound” party due to the fact that 81 minutes was simply not enough time to give everyone’s back story, have Hulk develop a relationship with all of them, and then have him kick lots of alien butt.

The animation was beautiful and flowed very smoothly, especially in some of the epic fight scenes that were re-created straight from the comics. The voice acting was top notch and the musical score set the mood perfectly from the action sequences to the more emotional moments.

At the end of the day, this was the best Hulk story ever done and that alone made this the best Hulk DVD ever made. Considering some great extra features like a full episode of Wolverine and the X-Men (the same old story of “Hulk vs. Wolverine vs. Wendigo” though, more of the same tired garbage I was mentioning before, but a full extra 22 minutes of animation isn’t something to scoff at either) and several behind the scenes mini-documentaries and motion comics and my only real problem with this was the fact that Marvel couldn’t get over the legal issues that constantly seem to be plaguing them nowadays and get the Silver Surfer into this.

Planet Hulk gets 4 out of 5.

-Ray Carsillo