While the ever edifying “fer”/”agin” fracas wages in the wake of the The Incredible Hulk‘s teaser debut, I figured now would be a good time to point out that director Louis Leterrier is doing a picture-by-picture breakdown of the trailer for Empire Online. Regardless of your opinion on the teaser, it’s a must-read; Leterrier is surprisingly open re: certain narrative details and the particulars of the final battle.
And, yes, we are seeing a portion of the final Hulk/Abomination donnybrook in the trailer, but it’s only a sliver of what Leterrier claims is a twenty-six minute smorgasbord of “monsters pummeling each other through New York City, jumping up and down, ripping helicopters from the sky and stuff.” He also promises “lots of green blood on the street, splashed all around.”
I’ve a copy of Edward Norton’s 5/13/07 draft of the screenplay, and none of this surprises me. Well, the twenty-six minutes maybe: the big brawl lasts about eight pages in the script. Then again, there’s always room for embellishment once you start pre-vising these things. And you’ve got no choice but to top the big, brilliant, San Francisco-bound Hulk-out from Ang Lee’s film. But why they got to bust up Harlem like that?
Leterrier also mentions that Banner transforms in “minute three” of the film, which, again, follows the script. Oh, and it sounds like none of the f/x in the trailer are 100% “finished”. Read the rest at Empire.