Unfortunately I live in the 3rd world (Canada), and we’re not permitted to see the MTV.com exclusive trailer for the upcoming Edward Norton Incredible Hulk flick. However with that said, there are still pictures on websites out there, including the one that I am referencing here which show grabs from the trailer. So far everything I’ve seen looks pretty horrible.

Ang Lee’s Hulk wasn’t good, but it wasn’t horrible either. The father/son storyline was heavy handed and kind of dumb, Nick Nolte was a strange choice. However, the one thing they got right in the movie was the Hulk. He was hella cool, and every time he was on the screen, he looked spot-on perfect. This new Hulk doesn’t carry the same weight, and looks more like a pretty-boy wrestler than a super-charged gamma irradiated freak.

What I’ve seen so far of the acting doesn’t look very good either (there are a few brief snippets on the various interwebs out there). Ed Norton, whom I normally like, looks like he’s channeling the late Bill Bixby, and the rumours of his dickery with the script are kind of unsettling.

What really sucks about this is that the other two Super-Hero flicks this summer look great. The Dark Knight looks to be spectacular, with Bale vs Ledger being the main event of the summer. Iron Man arguably has the greatest comic book cast of all time with four major Oscar winners in the four main roles. Trailers for these flicks have left people on the edge of their seats.  You also have Speed Racer, Wanted, and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army all vying for the title of Best Comic Book Inspired Movie of 2008.

Hulk, not so much so.

We can’t see this in Canada because MTV will not allow Canadian IP’s to view their content.

MTV.com placed the IP block on Canada so that the CTV owned MTV.ca could actually get some traffic. The original idea was for all MTV.com traffic to be redirected to MTV.ca, even though the content on each site is completely different. Under the new Chum/CTV regime I notice that MTV.ca has become even more crippled and irrelevant to the whole digital media conversation. Too bad too, because it once had some promise. Similar deals have been done by CTV with other US networks like NBC, CBS, and ABC so that CTV can lose money on errr, I mean give advertising away, errr, I mean SELL advertising on broadband video.

The trailer will be attached to Doomsday, which I plan on going to see next week. I’ll report back on whether or not it’s any good.

Cool side bar, it looks like they shot one of the major fight scenes on Yonge Street in Toronto, you see the Zanzibar here, as well as the Teletime electronics shop in some of the shots. It looks like they redressed the “Adults Only Video” to be the Apollo Theatre (which I think was used in Cinderella Man as well). In some of the shots you can see the Sam the Record Man discs down the street.

The photos contained within this post are intended to be used in commentary and critique. This is protected in the United States under the “fair use” law, and in Canada under the umbrella of “fair dealing”.