Jennifer Connelly celebrates the 20th anniversary of Ang Lee’s HULK

Ang Lee’s 2003 Marvel film Hulk celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and to celebrate, Jennifer Connelly shared a social media post with a clip from the film and the following caption: “20 years!!! Happy Hulk Movie Anniversary (2003).” It’s so crazy that it’s been 20 years since this movie came out!

The Hulk is an incredible Marvel movie and it was way ahead of its time especially with what they were doing with visual effects at the time to bring The Hulk to life on the big screen. There was also the visual style of the film, which was great! Josh Lucaswho played Talbot in the film, previously spoke about Lee’s brilliance and the technological limitations they were working with at the time, saying:

“If people ask me who my favorite directors are, I’ll almost invariably tell you my number one is Ang. I don’t use that word genius, but I think he’s really up there as a brilliant, if not brilliant director. As you say, he was swinging for the beams [Hulk]. I don’t think the technology was where his brain was. And if you look at what he did with Life of Pi, he was able to knock it out of the park.”

He went on to expand on his thoughts, saying that Lee was frustrated that the film’s CGI technology wasn’t where he wanted it to be when he made the Hulk:

“I think the technology evolved, and he’s one of the people who pushed the technology to evolve. I know he was pushing the team of people who were at the Hulk CGI to do something that, technically, maybe he wasn’t able to to be at the level where he still wanted it. And so I think he was very frustrated with that movie because he couldn’t get what he wanted and what he had in mind.”

The actor also spoke about the film’s visual style and how it was made to look like a comic book. This movie is truly a true comic book adaptation. He said:

“The way he was transforming, the way the pages were turning. I mean, he was making a visual comic, and I haven’t seen anyone doing it the same way he was doing it — think about it, that’s 20 years ago, right ? So, there’s an incredible auteur director under this monster, one of the first Marvel films. I have nothing but respect for that.”

I think Lee’s Hulk is a very underrated comic book movie. A lot of people really don’t appreciate what Lee did with this film. Sure, it wasn’t as insanely polished as it could have been due to the limited special effects, but the entire narrative aspect of the film was top-notch.

If you haven’t watched Hulk in a while, you should revisit the movie! You might be surprised how good it is. Also, Lucas, Eric Banner, Jennifer Connelly, Nick Nolte and Sam Elliott were amazing in the movie!