Hulk Vs

While Ginger took the kids to Richmond on Friday I got a night to watch a movie she has no interest in seeing whatsoever. In this case that would be Hulk Vs. It's a Marvel Entertainment animation movie.

It was actually suppose to be released as two separate DVDs at one point (one Hulk Vs Thor and one Hulk Vs Wolverine), but they decided to package them up together instead. I'm a bit surprised they didn't somehow put Wolverine's name in the title since with his movie coming out soon I would have thought this would have better sales if you tied it somehow to Wolverine's upcoming film. And frankly the Wolverine feature plays as more of a Wolverine Origin story than it does a Hulk story (Hulk just seems to be thrown in for no real reason other than to give Wolverine someone he can unleash against without being able to kill). And the Wolverine feature also features Lady DeathStrike, Sabertooth and Deadpool. Sabertooth and Deadpool (I've mentioned Deadpool before) are both characters in the new Wolverine movie also, so again, I would have thought this should have been a movie tie in. Deadpool plays as comedy relief and is definitely the break out character of the movie. Hulk refers to Deadpool as the "talking man" due to his incessant wisecracks, so you get some good "Hulk smash talking man" lines.

Possibly they combined them because the Wolverine feature is pretty short clocking in at just around 40 minutes. The Thor feature feels a bit longer. And whereas the Wolverine feature is a mini Wolverine origin the Thor feature is all out fisticuffs between Hulk and Thor. To make the match more interesting they remove the Bruce Banner aspect from the Hulk and let him just be a mindless engine of rage and destruction. This means Hulk doesn't really talk at all in the Thor feature and just smashes things (including, but not limited to Thor). I'll give the animation props for making the battle feel epic in nature. This is something that probably would never work as a live action film, but works pretty well in animated form.

The art in both features is very well done. And I'll add that I was really impressed with the soundtrack. It didn't feel cheap and thrown together at all, which is what I would have been expecting for something that was straight to DVD. All in all I liked both features. This isn't something I would let Quinn watch though since during the Wolverine feature there's a couple minor naughty words and lots of implied bloodletting (mostly the Hulks courtesy of Wolverine's claws). It's not a DVD I would necessarily want to own, but it made for a fine rental (provided, that is, you like the subject material, if comic book characters aren't your forte then this probably isn't for you).