The Incredible Hulk loses his cool in the latest big-screen incarnation of the popular Marvel Comics character. (Warner Bros. Pictures)Man gets angry. Man turns monster. Monster likes to smash. Man wakes up with ripped pants. This, presented in the sort of nutshell that will infuriate comic-book aficionados, is the story of scientist Bruce Banner and his green-skinned alter ego, the Hulk.

Concocted by Marvel Comics’ original main men Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1962, it’s a premise that shouldn’t be especially unwieldy for a movie adaptation; the sagas of Spider-Man and the X-Men are positively Tolstoyan next to the Hulk’s perpetual cycle of repression, rage and demolition. Sure enough, much of New York City (actually a thinly disguised Toronto) is reduced to rubble in The Incredible Hulk, a new screen incarnation of the comic starring the overqualified likes of Edward Norton, Tim Roth and William Hurt.

The story hasn’t been away for long. Five years ago, Taiwanese-American auteur Ang Lee made a rare misstep with Hulk, a courageous, impeccably crafted yet sluggishly paced hybrid of comic-book blockbuster and more sensitive-minded drama. The movie was too good to flop as hard as it did. (Keep in mind that a $132-million US gross can still rate as disastrous.) But it was doomed by Lee’s strenuous search for a subtext that either wasn’t there or didn’t require any excavation. (Casual visitors to the Marvel universe may wonder whether it’s worth making a nuanced tragic figure out of a character whose catchphrase is “Hulk smash!”)

While Lee recovered from this misfire – he’d rack up awards for less FX-driven films like Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Lust, Caution (2007) — the failure of Hulk had a serious impact on Marvel. The movie was a rare underperformer during the company’s decade-long ascendance in Hollywood, which started with Blade (1998) and peaked with the billion-dollar Spider-Man and X-Men franchises. The Hulk’s own franchise prospects were too promising to be abandoned. This time, producers would make sure the story wasn’t stymied by any of Ang Lee’s artsy, uncommercial hoohah.

Dr. Bruce Banner (Edward Norton) searches for a cure to the gamma radiation that unleashes his alter ego, the Hulk. (Warner Bros. Pictures) The new film – financed, like fellow summer blockbuster Iron Man, by Marvel’s own movie studio — is directed by Louis Leterrier, the Frenchman who helmed Jason Statham’s Transporter action flicks. If The Incredible Hulk were merely two hours of car-crushing and building-smashing, viewers might have been better rewarded. Then again, even as a summer FX spectacular, the new movie leaves a lot to be desired. In between lacklustre action scenes that rely too heavily on the not-so-wondrous wonders of digital technology, it offers the depressing sight of normally exceptional actors struggling to give texture to a threadbare script and definition to characters who don’t even have the fullness they exhibit on paper.

To be fair to its creators, this isn’t necessarily the movie they wanted to make. Over the past few months, it was widely reported that the longer, more story-driven cut of The Incredible Hulk preferred by Leterrier and star Ed Norton had been re-edited and shortened by action-hungry producers at Marvel. The result certainly moves faster than Lee’s languorous effort, but it’s far less compelling and imaginative as a piece of filmmaking; despite its velocity, the movie can be punishingly dull. On the scale of recent Marvel movies, it occupies the same lowly rung as the Fantastic Four flicks. Bombastic yet enervating, it has few of the virtues that made Iron Man such a crowd-pleaser. (Even the camp humour of Ghost Rider would have improved matters.)

The vim and vigour of the early scenes suggest that this Hulk might not have fared so poorly if Leterrier and Norton had had their way. Efficiently dispensing with the backstory of Banner’s gamma-ray mishap in a credits sequence, the movie begins with Banner (Norton) holed up in a Brazilian favela, keeping a low profile while trying to find a way to curb his highly destructive temper tantrums. General Ross (Hurt) and Special Forces soldier Emil Blonsky (Roth) soon track him down and nearly capture him before Banner turns into the Hulk; this sequence turns out to be the film’s most effective set piece, simply because the monster is kept largely out of view. The more we see of him, the more the movie resembles screens from the inevitable tie-in videogame. Oddly, the FX design was superior in Hulk — Lee was more successful at integrating the green guy in live-action environments. And with its extensive use of comic-panel-like frames and a more vibrant colour scheme, his movie certainly had more visual zip than Leterrier’s pedestrian take.

Betty Ross (Liv Tyler) is at a loss without her boyfriend, Bruce Banner. (Warner Bros. Pictures)Liv Tyler serves time as Banner’s moony-eyed love interest, Betty Ross, but for the most part, Norton is too busy glowering into the middle distance to create much in the way of romantic chemistry. Roth is a more energetic presence, especially when Blonsky begins toying with the same biotechnology that made Banner such a he-man. But aside from a few cute moments, like when Banner flubs his signature line (“you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”) due to his inelegant Portuguese, Zak Penn’s script is a graceless effort that fails to engage either the actors or the audience. Says Blonsky after his first encounter with the Hulk, “It threw a forklift like it was a softball!” That banal gee-whiz-ness also infects Banner’s description of his transformation: “It’s like someone poured a litre of acid into my brain!” Actually, that sounds like way more fun than having this movie pound away at your synapses for 112 minutes.

Toronto’s many lovers and haters across Canada may be excited to see so many landmarks (e.g., the corner of Yonge and Dundas Streets, the University of Toronto’s St. George campus) get thoroughly defaced, but in terms of urban mayhem, The Incredible Hulk is a petty achievement next to the panic-stricken visions presented by Cloverfield and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. Moreover, the movie is too lumbering and repetitious to appeal to viewers outside the cult of Comic-Con-ventioneers who’ll savour the cameos by Stan Lee and Lou Ferrigno (the muscleman star of TV’s The Incredible Hulk) and the final-scene teaser for future projects by Marvel Studios.

The problem here isn’t just Hulk fatigue, but the whole genre. The superhero movie’s stranglehold over the summer season is unlikely to end any time soon – new adventures for Batman and Hellboy are out next month, while Marvel has an Iron Man sequel and vehicles for Thor and Captain America in the works. What I wouldn’t give for fewer men in tights and more Jason Bournes at the multiplex. Meanwhile, Banner and his big buddy remain stubbornly impervious to Hollywood’s efforts to turn them into viable movie stars. Whereas Ang Lee’s Hulk was too smart for its own good, The Incredible Hulk can’t even manage to be big, dumb fun.

The Incredible Hulk opens Friday, June 13.

Jason Anderson is a Toronto writer.