My disappontment with Summer blockbusters mounts. Though Iron Man was pretty good, The Incredible Hulk is a gamma-ray-saturated turd. Whoever made the decision to keep all of the exposition under the opening credits is clearly an asshole. Though an asshole in his own right, Ed Norton’s complaints about the film’s final cut seem warranted. At this point, can’t we just take it for granted that CGI is awesome and that the Hulk will look like a Hulk would really look if Hulks were real and we don’t have to spend all of this time destroying Manhattan (which is the new “Black Guy in a Horror Film” — whenever it shows up you know it’s a goner for sure) and maybe we can get just the smallest peek at what the central relationship (ostensibly between Banner and an incongruously dim-witted molecular biologist) looked like before our protagonist got all Hulked? Once we know the Hulk looks good, do we have to keep seeing him look good in the same way over and over?

Cloverfield had the right idea. Since CGI creatures who do nothing but scream and break things get boring after about 20 minutes, keep it under wraps as long as possible and then just end the movie once we see pretty much everything the creature can do – like dropping horrifying, giant parasites off of its skin. Nathan Lee of The Village Voice writes that Cloverfield is about the destruction of post-9/11 neo-yuppiedom, but it’s also about the consummate New York fear of bed bugs. True, no story at all, much less exposition, but at least it knows what it is.