for a movie to cost 150 million to make and do publicity it has and will,in the end, do a bigger overall box office then First Hulk movie.

Funny part this wil lend up being Ed nortons biggest grossing movie he has starred in.

I’m surprised that Marvel won.

My opinion (and I won’t research all the numbers exactly, just as I remember it):

while xmen 3 might have made around the same money as one and two in the end it harmed the franchise, and marvel and all its future movies for being a step into just that direction - overly action oriented, blandly directed and careless where one and two hat a deeper, slower tone, that worked and contrasted the action beautifully. A movies numbers have many reasons, form the style chosen for posters (hulk looses on this, no clarity, nothing simple and intriguing), how it’s precessors and precessors in style touched the audience, when it starts, just a mood in the audience at that point of time to a tone that’s set with marketing as well as the lead. And when it comes to the lead different people bring different expectations and factors in the formal (the comments on cloony recently where hilarious - those movies would have done much worse without him).

The reason ang lees movie flopped and was badly received (two different things, see fantastic four), was as I see it the studio meddling with him. The finished movie clearly has no line in tone and tries everything at once. There is a lack of vision and this vision I believe is more important (but not as easily discussable as pace) than anything else, you can tell if it’s there and it fuels your enthusiasm but it’s hard to point out.

Eduard Norton.. I guess all commenters on this blog can recognize as star power is somebody like brad pitt, eddy murphy and.. that’s it. Actors in relation to movies and box office are more complex, saying because A starred in B and B flopped it’s reasoned to A is like last times statement that the gaming industry overtook the entertainment business. Learn to read numbers and play out scenarios without certain factors! Movie A might have sucked worse without the actor, movie B flops despite because the month was saturated and C has the problem that all recent action films sucked so bad nobody cares, with D it’s just the posters that brought no tone and curiosity along (see Pixar posters for how to do it right, color, character and plot wise. See their trailers on how to do trailers as well.)(And see DreamWorks, their approach and to which reception that in total leads to with the an audience).

Action and being fast paced alone is nothing. It bores to death if it can’t contrast to something. And there are so many versions of being fast paced form clearly readable ones to boring messes. Borne Three is a example of perfect directing.

I think: Forget your standards, look an which movies have succeeded and you’ll find ten thousand reasons for why a movie can succeed, but in the end it’s a bit of luck, the right tone, the right time and heart does matter (see enchanted, Pixar, xmen 1 and 2 etc.). With heart I mean knowing what a movie is about and letting this carry the movie. And I’m not saying you can’t trash a movie with too much character and slowness, take superman returns, just horrible, and word of mouth ruined that movie. But that’s because it overdid it, not because a slower pace is bad. Opposed to that: Ang Lee, tiger and dragon: succeeds in having a somber pace contrasted to beautiful action that shines to everything else being so clear in tone and vice versa.

And last not least: if a movie flops it doesn’t mean it was done wrong, the same movie with different marketing or released to a different time might have succeeded perfectly. And if you can’t take risks but try to play it save your just going to bore your audience to death and they’ll head somewhere else. People want excitement! (which isn’t action per se.)

Ok, I’m fully aware of above being a bit unstructured but maybe some people might get the one or other reasonable point from what’s said above.

In the end: Trust your instincts, educate your instincts, believe in the long run, be kind and patient and leave bitterness to others.

When will Hollywood learn without a good story you have a film that opens big and then slips to 5th or 6th in week two - never making back it’s money. Oh wait, with the way accounting in Hollywood is done no movie ever makes back it’s money.

Ultimately, I think this debate is fruitless. We’ve had director’s cut DVDs for years - Norton’s version will see the light of day someday. He should concede the Marvel cut to the theaters for a higher residual on his cut’s “ultimate hulk-smash edition” DVD.

Frankly speaking, aside from the FF movies and parts 3 of X-Men and Spider-Man, Marvel has been truly committed to finding a great balance between its commercial needs and quality storytelling. Something that will be quite evident again this summer with Iron Man.

Sure, this movie was rushed into production and its internal problems have probably only added to flawed film to begin with, but to claim that Marvel has been ignoring character development completely is something I can’t agree with and, as a fan myself, don’t feel let down by Marvel.