As it stands right now, this year's The Incredible Hulk will most likely gross slightly more or less than Ang Lee's Hulk worldwide. The latter walked away with roughly $245 million, while the former is currently sitting at $220 million ... though it's still making the international rounds. In an article over at The Hollywood Reporter, they ponder why the new (and improved?) Incredible Hulk was considered a success when the 2003 Hulk wasn't (THR noted it was "widely dismissed as a commercial failure").

Both Marvel and Universal are saying they're happy with the way The Incredible Hulk performed at the box office, though there's been no word on a sequel and chances are we ain't gettin' another one. Critically, the two Hulk films aren't very far apart: Rotten Tomatoes has Ang Lee's Hulk at 61%, while The Incredible Hulk is currently sitting at 68%. Fan-wise, I feel it was fairly well-received because a) folks were still coming off the Iron Man high, and b) expectations for the new Hulk were pretty low. Thus, when the film turned out to be kinda, sorta pretty good, it gave us a reason to cheer ... finally ... for an Incredible Hulk live-action movie.

But now that we've had some time to step away from The Incredible Hulk (at least here in the states), what do you think: Was the film a success? And how do you define success? If they choose not to make a sequel, does that mean the film failed ... even though it took in well over $200 million at the box office? Sound off you green freaks ...

I've gotten excited over teaser trailers without any footage. I've even gotten excited over teaser posters with nothing more than a title (and the words "coming soon") on them. But I never thought I'd get excited over a mere title graphic alone -- no trailer, no poster, no nothing, save for a logo and a release year. Well, that's what just happened. I got all giddy over a post on MTV Movies Blog featuring a bunch of new logos for the next four Marvel Studios release. There's Iron Man II, Thor, The First Avenger: Captain America and The Avengers, all written in mostly familiar fonts (if you're a comic book reader, that is).

The logos were unveiled at the New York Licensing Expo, from which we've also seen new promotional materials from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, from Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins and from Where the Wild Things Are. This latest image may not be as exciting as those, but if you grew up with any of these titles, you may still be as excited as I am by seeing their logos. I'm pretty glad they didn't go with the arched, red, white and blue striped logo for Captain America, and I really hope they stick with the plain old Roman numerals for Iron Man II and avoid any subtitle or alternate title. Also, The Avengers logo is just how I remember it.

Two complaints, though, coming from an old, old Thor reader: first, I much preferred the original Thor logo, with the torn-paper look; second, I wish Marvel would rethink their avoidance of "The Mighty" part before the character's name. After all, look what happened with the simply titled Hulk. Are we to assume the first Thor will be a disappointment and we can then look forward to a reboot titled The Mighty Thor?

So, will we be seeing this compilation of logos as a four-in-one teaser poster in theaters soon?

I thought the horror geeks were a pretty demanding lot, but they've got nothing on the comic book stalwarts. Give these guys safe, obvious, conventional superhero flicks like Elektra, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, and The Punisher -- and they complain. Rightly so, in my opinion. But then a filmmaker comes along and tries to buck that trend -- by bringing a decidedly untraditional approach to such an oft-told tale -- and those fans still find a way to get angry. I'm speaking of Ang Lee's Hulk, of course, a film that seems destined to be considered a "failure" for all eternity. And I think that's just lame. People talk about Hulk like its one step above Catwoman, for crying out loud!

Yes, the movie most definitely has its flaws, its missteps, and its slow spots (and really, who thought "mutant poodles" were a good idea?) -- but I'm of the opinion that Mr. Lee struck a very engaging balance between his affection for the source material and his intent to try something ... different. So while Hulk does offer your standard "origin story" and requisite battle scenes (most of which are pretty spectacular), it seems pretty obvious that the director was shooting for something both playful and "artsy" at the same time. Perhaps I'm just being a little bit charitable, given that The Hulk is my all-time favorite Marvel character -- but I tend to think that would make me a little more critical, all things considered. And since I've seen Hulk at least four times now, I'm well aware of what I consider to be its flaws and its assets. Clearly I think the latter outweigh the former. (Plus it stars Jennifer Connelly, don't forget, and she's my Kryptonite. Seriously.)

I said goodbye to Urbana Sunday, after a fun-filled time at the 10th annual Ebertfest. Saturday's schedule was packed with a marvelously diverse slate of films, starting off with Ang Lee's Hulk. Now, I am admittedly not a comic geek, and I like smart, artsy films, which is probably why I'm in the minority in enjoying Lee's take on the Hulk story.

I've never understood the hate for this film; there are some great shots in the film and it's artistically beautiful. Plus, I like how Lee explores the father-son and anger issues underlying the origin story in the film. The audience at Ebertfest, at least, was very enthusiastic in their response to Lee's film; it may well have been the most positive audiene reception he's had for Hulk since its inception.

Here are a few pics from the fest, more after the jump ...

Roger Ebert's January announcement that he was going in for another major surgery began a long and disquieting silence. As the reviews he had written in advance started to run out, with no updates on his health and more and more of the content on his website being contributed by its steadfast editor Jim Emerson, some people began to worry that something was very seriously wrong. March saw the announcement that Ebert would reappear for his annual Overlooked Film Festival in Urbana-Champaign, but there was still no word from the man himself.

Yesterday, much to my relief, a typically funny and self-deprecating message from Roger appeared on his site and in the Sun-Times. It confirms his planned appearance at Ebertfest in late April, and, better yet, announces that he will return to reviewing movies shortly afterward. The bad news is that the surgery didn't restore his ability to speak, which will for the moment preclude Ebert's return to his TV show where Richard Roeper has been valiantly trying to hold down the fort. (Is anyone still watching?) That aside, though, the dispatch is overwhelmingly good news.

I often wonder what studios look for in their hired guns. Case in point: Jeff Wadlow, director of the tolerable Cry_Wolf and the miserable Never Back Down, who, according to The Hollywood Reporter, has been tapped to direct The Tomb for Summit Entertainment. The Tomb is billed as a prison-escape movie with a MacGyver-like protagonist who uses smarts and ingenious devices to escape from a high-security prison that he himself designed. Summit hopes to make the action-packed film into a franchise cash cow.

I've seen both of Wadlow's movies (the first of which, Cry_Wolf, was made with the money he won in the Chrysler Million Dollar Film Competition), and his m.o. seems clear: slick, blandly good-looking, montage-heavy genre flicks. So in some ways it makes sense for Summit to pin its franchise hopes on him: when you're gambling on a movie, inoffensive competence behind the camera may be your safest bet. Like any cinephile, I wish studios would be a bit more adventurous (and thus cringe whenever a bold move -- putting Ang Lee in charge of Hulk, for example -- backfires at the box office), but as a business decision it's perfectly rational.

Somehow this feature slipped right by me -- hopefully, it slipped by you too so that this post's existence is justified.

Now that the dust has settled on the new trailer for The Incredible Hulk, you might have a few questions about it -- like "What's up with Abomination?" or "Who's that guy?" or "Why does it look all unfinished?" Just don't ask "Why didn't I like it?" because there are no answers for your worries, my friends.

Well, director Louis Leterrier has answers. In an Empire exclusive, he takes viewers frame by frame through the trailer and explains what is going on, why he did what he did, and that, no, the effects aren't done. Oh yeah, and that the final fight between Hulk and Abomination will be a doozy: "Our final battle – unlike a normal movie where the final fight scene is six minutes long, ours is 26 minutes long! So you get 26 minutes of two monsters pummelling each other through New York City, jumping up and down, ripping helicopters from the sky and stuff. You know, lots of green blood on the street, splashed all around. So it's pretty cool."

26 minutes? Wow, I think I'm tired just reading that, let alone watching it. Still, at least this isn't a movie where the Hulk rips Wolverine in half -- then we'd never get an ending at all ...

Universal has to be really hoping The Incredible Hulk is better received than 2003's Hulk, because according to Edward Norton, the 2008 comic book adaptation is expected to be the first of many. The actor talked exclusively with Total Film magazine and had this to say: "To me the whole thing was to envision it in multiple parts. We left a lot out on purpose. It's definitely intended as chapter one." (Quote retrieved from Ace Showbiz.) You may recall that Norton himself wrote the final draft of the screenplay for The Incredible Hulk, so he would know what was "left out." He could also be hinting that he means to write the sequels as well. But what happens if this version of the Marvel comic is not successful? Will it feel incomplete if it ultimately exists as a dead end?

It is hard to imagine just how much better The Incredible Hulk will be than Ang Lee's film, which really only failed because of a badly rendered Hulk and a truly awful climax. The title character will still be computer animated and the story could still have a disappointing denouement (we've never really witnessed Norton's writing skill before), and it's not unfair to say that Louis Leterrier is not quite as talented a director as Lee. Norton seems quite confident that he's going to deliver something possibly comparable to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins in quality and tone, but it's easy for comic book geeks to be skeptical. Only 3% of Cinematical readers expect The Incredible Hulk to be the best comic book film of 2008. While that's not surprising since we've also got The Dark Knight and Iron Man to look forward to this summer, it still makes me wonder how many moviegoers expect The Incredible Hulk to be any good at all. So, I ask you:

In this day and age you can do anything with special effects. But can you do it well? I believe that you can, but Hollywood doesn't seem to be in agreement with my belief. Studios continue to put out movies with special effects that disappoint, and I think it is disrespectful to audiences. Either figure it out, or leave it out. Every time I see a bad effect in a movie, I know it could have been done better, or more imaginatively, and it frustrates the heck out of me. The worst is when I see a bad effect in a movie with mostly great effects, such as in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

A visual effect doesn't have to be great or even realistic as long as it works with the story and is believable -- I'll take Harryhausen or Henson over most of the CGI attempts lately. Unfortunately, Hollywood seems to half-heartedly strive for greatness and realism with every movie, and more often than not it fails to achieve either. In my thirty years I've seen some terrible visual effects, some only terrible in retrospect, some only terrible in perspective with what else has been done. I'm not usually surprised by bad effects, though, because I've developed a cynicism about effects, particularly about CGI, that causes me to expect the worst. Nonetheless, I've picked seven movies that did actually surprise me -- a lot.

1. King Kong (2005)

In The Return of the King, Peter Jackson has some bad effects shots, but at least they're just shots. In his next film, King Kong, he has bad effects sequences. And as with The Return of the King, they are all the more apparent and all the more frustrating because there are actually some great effects shots and sequences in King Kong (it did deserve the Oscar). The worst example in Kong is the dinosaur stampede. At first the sequence is tolerable because the dinos are rendered beautifully and the weak green-screen compositing is not any worse than what many of us grew up with. But as the sequence progresses, the interaction between the actors and the computer-generated dinos looks too fake, too much like something made long ago, before computers were even used. Both the part on the cliff and the part where the animals fall over each other are sloppy and unacceptable. It is a completely ironic sequence, too, since it begins with an exchange about movies looking real. At least someone thought to score the thing sped up with "Yakkety Sax" or it wouldn't be completely useless.

News bites for the day before Friday:

• IESB has shared a juicy little rumor concerning the next Incredible Hulk installation. According to one of their readers who has an in at CW -- Peter Gallagher, whose OC series is just about to wrap, has been up for a part in the next installment. According to the source, his shooting schedule had to be juggled to include some sort of test for the movie. Could he be one of the villains (The Abomination or Thunderbolt Ross)? Or, is there a chance he'll take over the infamous man-that-turns-green himself? While he's a much different pick for the part of Bruce Banner, I'm a bit intrigued by the thought.
• Oldboy director Park Chan-Wook's latest film, I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK, is going places. After its first non-Korean screening at the Berlin Film Fest, it won the Alfred Bauer prize for innovative film-making and our Erik Davis gave it high marks in his review. Now, the movie has been chosen to close the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin on March 17. If you're curious for more, I shared the color-intense, quirky trailer in November.
• With each passing day, iTunes seems to do more to make itself irresistible -- not only to music fiends, but avid moviegoers as well. Since January, we've brought you news of their deal with Paramount, then Sundance Shorts and finally, Lionsgate. To further their involvement in film, iTunes has partnered with IFC Entertainment to offer a selection of indie films in their store. The selection will include their 2007 Independent Spirit Award nominees and previous noms such as Me and You and Everyone We Know -- for the low-low-low price of $9.99! Or not. (Is it just me, or is that a bit high for an iPod-quality video, when you could pay similar for a previously viewed DVD?) Thanks to tuaw for the news.