THE AMAZING BULK 2012
The Amazing Bulk is a strange and questionable movie that came out in 2012, in what appears to be a direct to video release. Upon watching the entire movie, I can see why it never came to theaters.
The movie is a spoof of The Incredible Hulk, with lots of cheese, and really bad graphics. The entire movie seems to have been made with free, or mostly free assets, many of which seem to be completely out of place in the film. Then again, I had a hard time understanding what was supposed to happen in the first place.
The movie starts out with a scene of the city at night, in what appeared to be 3D graphics. It looks like something from an early 3D studio from the 90’s, before much of the form and body shapes were perfected. Instead of this being a film entirely in 3D, or computer graphics, we see actual people walking in front of a green screen for the entire film.
This is a strange but hilarious choice, and in some ways, clever. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie use a green screen this way, and I think there’s a reason for that. But strangely, I give the director props for trying.
The beginning starts out with a woman, who I guess we’re supposed to assume is an escort, walking alone at night. She stops in an alleyway, and as she tries to light a cigarette, she gets mugged, then killed. A big purple freak shows up, and yells?, at the mugger, the mugger shooting the freak, and then dying. The purple freak, who we already assume to be The Amazing Bulk, then runs away.
The story then goes to the main character Hank, who works in a lab that looks mysteriously like a high school science lab. He has an assistant named Sam, and the two try working on some experiment with rats, but it never pans out. The rats always seem to explode, every time. One day, Hank’s girlfriend comes by and they run around and frolic during lunch hour. Hank plans to propose to Hannah, but wants to get her father’s blessing first.
Later, Hank goes to Hannah’s house, where she lives with her father, a General in the Army. The house is also CG. When Hank asks the General for his blessing, he gets all angry and Hank ends up leaving. Later, Hank and Hannah go on another date to the carnival, and you see them take a green screen roller coaster ride. In a strange way, I thought that the actors did a pretty good job, considering how they had to literally act like they were on a roller coaster. I wondered if they felt silly while doing things like this, while recording the movie.
After the carnival, the couple go home, but take the subway, and get mugged. The mugger takes Hannah’s earrings, and the ring that Hank was going to use to propose. Stupidly, he tries to fight the mugger, and gets knocked to the floor. The mugger eventually leaves, and Hannah gets mad at Hank, rightfully so. In real life, that could have actually gotten him killed. After this, we see the couple driving home. This was strange to me, because I thought they were taking the subway? Anyway, Hank drops Hannah off at her house, then he goes back to the lab.
At the lab that night, Hank manages to finally create a serum that works, turning a plant purple. He then uses the serum on himself, and becomes The Amazing Bulk. The beginning part of the movie happens again, and here we see that the mugger who shot the escort in the opening was the same guy that took the engagement ring. The same thing happens, and then the next day, Hank wakes up in his room, with purple goo on his tank top. For some reason, he magically has a tribal tattoo on his arm. This is never addressed.
The cops show up to his house, and give him his wallet back, but the male cop is suspicious of Hank. They follow him, and he ends up at the crime scene. Then a huge fight happens, Hank turns into the Bulk, and while terrorizing the city, Bulk flips a car and it smashes the female cop, killing her. Hank turns back into a human, is caught, then taken to jail.
Meanwhile, there are various scenes in the film, somewhere, elsewhere, about a quirky couple, Dr. And Mrs. Kantlove. Similar to something like the Joker and Harley Quinn, the couple are gross to look at and weird. They like to blow up stuff, and the Dr. Seems to have erectile dysfunction.
Back to Hank, he’s taken by the General to a “Top Secret Facility”, which has a sign depicting how top secret it was, and we see a silly scene where Hank is being wheeled down a hall in a wheelchair. These scenes in the movie where a character is supposed to be running or walking is so silly, because it’s clear the actors could only stand in place while filming. It looks so cheesy, and reminds me of something from an 8th grade play!
Of course, in the secret lab, the General has Hank experimented on, and I noticed that the costume the General wore hasn’t even showing the right rank on it! The General tells Hank he can marry Hannah, if he kills Dr. Kantlove, because the doctor had been blowing up important landmarks around the world. Hank goes to Kantlove’s lair, which is just a silly looking fairytale castle thanks to the green screen! As The Bulk, he stomps on the cronies and Kantlove, but when he leaves the castle, the General turns out to be evil, and tries to bomb Hank.
Hank turns back into The Bulk, and then pulls a Forrest Gump, running long distance around the world it seems, avoiding the General’s bombs. I found it funny that Hannah’s father was an Army General, and yet there was an Air Force bomber trying to destroy Hank.
The movie seemed to use every single free 3D asset they had, to pad out time for this end sequence. I was in complete awe, at just how it kept going, and going, Bulk running forever. There were just random things thrown into this movie, various 3D models walking and crap. It’s very, very, GONGO. I would nearly expect this to be on Adult Swim in the middle of the night, especially back when I was in college.
This is definitely one of the worst movies I have ever seen, and I know that I say that a lot; but this is seriously one of the worst ones. I could not stop noticing how much the actor for Hank was scowling during the film. Was he supposed to scowl that much? Or is it how he felt while making the movie?
If you like good movies, this is not for you. But if you enjoy trash, I recommend checking it out. It’s the type of movie that’s so bad, you have to show your friends.
3/5 slimes
My video: https://youtu.be/XJFrFUbQ5xs
