Review: Hulk Vs. Thor (2009)

Cover art for "Hulk Vs. Thor".

"Hulk Vs. Thor" is an animated film that followed on after 2008's "The Incredible Hulk" (which I review in episode 134). The premise of the plot, or at least the promise, was that by some means the Hulk and Thor, the Norse god of thunder, would do epic battle.

What we got was a weakly based story of Loki, Thor's step-brother, teaming up with Amora, the Enchantress, and turning the Hulk into a remote controlled beast with Loki driving. The Enchantress uses her magic to extract Bruce Banner from the Hulk, turning the Big Guy into a mindless automaton that Loki then drives to the gates of Asgard to beat up his brother.

Now on that point (about Banner's extraction) the story was....okay. I liked that the art tried to make Banner look like Edward Norton, so it had some continuity to it with the big screen film.

But what I hated about that is they then kill off Banner and, since he's in Asgard, his soul is condemned to Hel, the land where those who die an unheroic death spend eternity. And in that land Banner exists in a wish-filled world where, like Picard in the Nexus from "Star Trek: Generations" (which is another podcast), he's married to Betty Ross and has a son named Bruce, Jr.

YAWN!

Hulk and Thor battle in the forests of Asgard.

I was just very unimpressed with the story. The Hulk, once breaking free of Loki, just goes about smashing anything in his way. But somehow he manages to head straight towards Odin's chamber where the Alfather is taking his annual power nap. And it takes the re-merging of Banner's soul (and not the physical body that the Enchantress extracted) with the Hulk for this rampage to end.

All in all this was a waste of nearly an hour on a story that, in the end, was cheap and felt like it was only there to bring a pre-existing movie franchise together with one that was to come in two years. And on our buy it, borrow it or don't bother scale, I'm going to rate "Hulk Vs. Thor" a don't bother. There's really nothing new or interesting to see here, and the path to the ending was pretty boring.