The Incredible Hulk Returns

Dir: Bill Bixby, Nicholas J. Corea

1988

***

Joss Whedon's Avengers Assemble is one of the biggest films of all time. It's huge amounts of fun and sees the first big screen live action appearance of all of Marvel's Avengers together in one place at one time. A dream come true for comic fans. However, almost a quarter of a century earlier, two of the Avengers stared together in what was quite the TV event of the year for me and my school-friends back in 1988. The Incredible Hulk TV series starring Bill Bixby and Lou Farrigno was cancelled in 1982 after viewing numbers dwindled. It was hoped that after six years a TV film may ignite just enough enthusiasm for the series to make a comeback, however the truth the film was made was really down to another idea the studio had. NBC still had the rights to most of the Marvel characters but had done nothing with them. The Incredible Hulk Returns was really a back-door pilot for a Thor series. The idea of having Thor and the Hulk fight it out in a TV special was a real highlight of my childhood, but the result was one of my earliest memories of pure disappointment. Nostalgia is a temptress in a red dress though and looking back at it over a re-watch recently I actually liked it much more than I did then. Thor's origin story is nothing short of rubbish. Having what is essentially his ghost controlled by a slightly awkward young adult (one of Banner's ex-students) whenever he hold his hammer and shouts 'Odin' is even less believable than the idea that Thor is a god. In trying to avoid a difficult and unbelievable story, the studios developed something even more ridiculous and stupid. It was a bit lazy to get Hulk to sell it to the audience, it didn't work either, but to be honest, Eric Allan Kramer's Thor was pretty good and easily something I would have watched. The big fight between the two is a load of old slow-motion rubbish and the fact they team up doesn't really make any sense given the Hulks basic understanding of anything but it is pretty cool when you look back at it. Ridiculous nonsense, poorly written and directed but actually lots of fun.