THAT'S 'INCREDIBLE' 'HULK' FILMMAKERS, COMPUTER ANIMATORS AND CAST LABOR TO BRING COMIC BOOK'S SENSIBILITIES TO SCREEN.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

They hired the best filmmakers, cast respected actors, worked like demons to fill the script with intelligent ideas and serious themes.

But in the end, they knew, the only thing most people were really going to care about was how the big, green smashing machine looked.

And indeed, it hasn't been easy to convince the world that ``The Hulk,'' the $150 million Universal Pictures production based on Marvel Comics' conflict-riddled man-monster, will look the way people want when they finally get to see the finished product in theaters Friday.

Folks have been complaining about what they saw in a Super Bowl teaser commercial last January. To make matters worse, an unfinished workprint of the film was leaked onto the Internet last week, which set off a series of negative reviews of the uncompleted footage.

If this really worries the people responsible for fitting the all-computer-generated anti-superhero convincingly into frames opposite such flesh-and-blood co-stars as the formidable Nick Nolte and ``A Beautiful Mind'' Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly, they're putting up a good front.

There's even an amusing explanation.

``I think the biggest surprise that people had was that they were sort of expecting a Lou Ferrigno-looking Hulk,'' says the movie's visual effects supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic's nine-Oscar-owning Dennis Muren. He is, of course, referring to the bodybuilder who played the Hulk in green makeup on the CBS television series from 1977-1982.

Nostalgic viewers will catch a glimpse of Ferrigno as a security guard walking next to an older guard played by Stan Lee, the Marvel editor who created the Hulk with artist Jack Kirby in 1962.

The movie is more the comics' than the tube's Hulk. And more than either, really, it's the vision of Ang Lee, the art-house director of ``Sense and Sensibility'' and ``Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.''

``Right along with the comments of 'Why's he looking like that?' and 'Why's he moving so quickly?' were 'He's too big!' '' Muren recalls. ``They were all seeing a smaller character, and we knew that that's not what we were doing. We were doing the comic book, and Ang had a whole different idea. The design was not a muscleman, it was more like a big creature able to do everything - but able to do it to the level of a person.''

Taiwan-bred, New York-based Lee was as aware as anybody that his ``Hulk'' movie would rise or fall on the quality of its CG star - so much so that he even cast a relative unknown, Eric Bana (``Black Hawk Down''), in the key role of the repressed biology researcher, Dr. Bruce Banner, who turns into the rampaging Hulk when he gets upset.

Most of Lee's experience, however, had been as a director of intimate character studies. Three years ago, ``Crouching Tiger,'' his aestheticized Chinese martial arts movie, proved that Lee also possessed a sophisticated cineaste's eye. He wound up combining both talents to literally direct ILM's virtual reality animators toward the most emotionally expressive character ever digitized.

To do that, he moved into the company's Marin County facility for seven months during the post-production period. That way, when Lee could not explain to the CG artists how he wanted a certain take to look, he showed them.

``There are numerous animators and, usually, nobody to direct them,'' explains the auteur, who discovered that CG artists modeled off of stuntmen or, worse, themselves. ``It drove me crazy, so finally I had to do it,'' he says, noting he knew how things were to fit in.

``I was pretty much desperate to show them what it is,'' Lee admits. ``Because with actors, you can talk to them, and then they feed you back with their performance. They can get analytical. But Hulk as an actor doesn't talk back. ... There's reality in him, so everything you had to bring out was a very difficult thing. I think it would have been easy if he was just a creature, but if you identify with him in a human context - which is the purpose of making the movie - then it's a lot harder.''

From human to CGI 

As for the human beneath all of that emerald muscle, Bana contributed hours of photo and videotape posing, as well as some shambling around in a motion-capture suit, to the animating effort. But he's not jealous that his cyber-alter ego is getting most of the attention, good or bad.

``I actually liked the fact that even though you're kind of the lead, there's plenty there to take away from you,'' the easygoing Australian actor says. ``In a day-to-day sense, you're not really consciously aware of it. You're aware of the pressure of Bruce Banner having to work, otherwise we're all in trouble. ... I knew that ILM would be chasing what I was doing in a lot of respects. And when I saw the film, that was the thing that I was most thrilled about; I felt like they had totally managed to drag character into that CGI figure.''

Bana's contribution, however, could only go so far.

``We had done a lot of stuff on the last Harry Potter film, worked out a lot of the problems with the skin and getting the little creature, Dobby, in that right,'' ILM's Muren explains. ``But the look of the Hulk, we waited until Eric was cast, just to learn his muscle structure and his bone structure and his eyes. When he could, Eric acted out the performance, but he couldn't do that very much because Eric is 6 feet and this guy's 14 or 15 feet tall, so he would have to act completely different.''

Confused Hulk fans should know that one of Lee's key concepts is that the madder the monster becomes, the bigger he grows.

Fighting blind

``All of the events that happen to my character are actually self-perpetrated, they are me doing it to myself,'' explains Josh Lucas (``Sweet Home Alabama''), who plays Banner/Hulk's nemesis Glenn Talbot in the movie. He's talking about a sequence, the live portion of which was shot on a Universal Studios soundstage last summer, in which an unsuspecting Talbot tries to rough up Banner in his Berkeley home - only to discover the verdant surprise of his life.

Which at the time, of course, was only a glimmer of 0s and 1s in ILM databases.

``That's me smashing myself with wires through those walls,'' Lucas recalls, grimacing. ``Me smashing myself against the railing. Me throwing myself through the air against the ground over and over and over, with Ang and I both talking about how to make it as violent-looking as possible. And so all of that is this ballet of being in this room with wires connected everywhere, where you're trying to figure out how to make it look like someone is doing it to you as opposed to you doing it to yourself.''

Matching the digital Hulk to live action wasn't ILM's only concern. Everything from getting the right shade of green - at one point, they realized the color was so vibrant that it took away from Connelly's performance as Banner's ex-girlfriend, Betty Ross, in her tenderer scenes with the creature - to exactly how viewers would respond emotionally to the Hulk smashing hulked-out dogs was mulled over, lab-tested and often re-animated.

``They're monster dogs; it's comic book!'' Muren huffs, knowing some animal lovers are still going to squawk. ``But we talked about that. We talked about a lot of things. Like his pants - there were all sorts of things going on with that.''

Tight situation

In the end, the eternal question of why, unlike the rest of his clothing, the Hulk's shorts rarely tear off when he grows was settled, if not exactly answered, by the notion that Banner wore elastic stretch trousers.

And as if these and a million other intrinsic visual problems did not have to be worked out, Lee and his longtime producing partner, James Schamus, decided to cut as many scenes as they could into multiple split-screen panels.

``The initial pitch was, 'Let's try to create a brand-new language for mainstream, blockbuster cinema that is inspired out of the comic books, that allows you to do things that, really, nobody's ever done before,' '' says Schamus, who also came up with the story idea that added an Oedipal struggle between Banner and his mad-scientist father, played by Nolte. ``Create a movie screen that has the kind of energy and excitement and imagination of the old comic book panels and make it function as cinema.''

Whatever current unhappiness there may be about the look of the Hulk is being dismissed.

``It's the fact that the Super Bowl spot was half a year ago,'' Schamus says, shrugging. ``I like to think that back then, the Hulk was a zygote, and now he's a teenager. I mean, that much more work has happened since then.''

Detail-worrying Lee just hopes that it works for audiences.

``I desperately tried to make as honest a translation as possible from comic book to my medium, cinema,'' Lee says. ``Fans should be happy that I take it so seriously.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

History of the Hulk from comics to TV

THE COMIC:

``The Incredible Hulk'' Vol. I

First issue published: May 1962

Last issue published: March 1963

Total number of issues: 6

Created by Stan Lee (writer) and Jack Kirby (artist), the original comic sold for 12 cents in 1962, but can be found valued as high as $35,000 in near mint condition.

``Tales of Astonish'' Vol. I

Hulk's first issue: September 1964

Last issue published: March 1968

Total number of issues featuring the Hulk: 42

The Hulk returns in ``Tales of Astonish'' No. 59 battling against Giant- Man. The next issue, No. 60, split the comic into two sections, the first half a story starring Giant-Man and the second starring the Hulk. The Hulk continues through the remainder of the series while Giant-Man is replaced by Sub-Mariner in issue No. 70.

``The Incredible Hulk'' Vol. II

First issue published: April 1968

Last issue published: March 1999

Total number of issues: 374

The Hulk officially takes over ``Tales of Astonish,'' which is renamed ``The Incredible Hulk.''

!``The Hulk'' Vol. I

First issue published: April 1999

Last issue published: March 2000

Total number of issues: 11

The word ``Incredible'' is dropped from the title, and the series is restarted at No. 1. This series was short lived and was never embraced by fans.

``The Incredible Hulk'' Vol. III

First issue published: March 2000

Latest issue published: June 11, 2003 (No. 55 ``Hiding in Plain Sight'')

Total number of issues: 55

The ``Incredible'' is reintroduced into the title, and the series is currently still in production. The promotional issue released Wednesday goes for 25 cents.

THE TELEVISION SERIES:

``The Incredible Hulk''

Premiere: Nov, 7, 1977 (available on DVD along with the episode ``Married'')

Finale: May 12, 1982

Starred: Bill Bixby as David Banner (the comic book character was named Bruce Banner), Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk, John Colvin as Jack McGee

Total episodes: 82

Total TV movies: 3. ``The Incredible Hulk Returns,'' ``The Trial of the Incredible Hulk,'' (Both available on DVD) and ``The Death of the Incredible Hulk''

Tidbits: ``The Incredible Hulk'' was actually canceled before the show's fifth season began in the fall of 1981. It happened so suddenly that Johnson never had a chance to film a series finale, which would feature David on trial for the murder of Elaina Marks.

THE CARTOON SERIES:

Series 1: September 1966 (39 Weekly six-minute episodes)

Series 2: September 1981-October 1983 (13 weekly 30-minute episodes)

Series 3: September 1996-October 1997 (21 weekly 30-minute episodes)

- Addison Pate

CAPTION(S):

4 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) After Internet piracy, rumors abound about the big green guy. Now everybody is Sizing up the Hulk

(2) Under the direction of Ang Lee, Industrial Light & Magic's Hulk gets bigger as he gets angrier.

(3) The green-tinted scientist-turned-Hulk made his comic-book debut in 1962.

(4) On the 1977-82 TV series, Billy Bixby played David Banner, and Lou Ferrigno was his alter ego.

Box:

History of the Hulk from comics to TV (see text)