Louis Leterrier Discusses Hulk Trailer

Incredible Hulk move direcotr Louis Leterrier discussed the new movie trailer with Empire Online :

" That’s Ty Burrell on the left playing Leonard Samson. Samson is a very famous comic-book character in the realm of Hulk. He’s the psycho-therapist who thinks he can cure Bruce Banner’s (Edward Norton) “illness” through psycho-therapy. And there’s a little bit of a one-on-one in our movie. Bruce’s struggle is the whole story of our movie — Universal did a really great job in putting this teaser together because it gives you the main information. That guy doesn’t want that superpower. It’s like Spider-Man: “My power, my curse.” He really doesn’t want that — it’s too big for him. This is Prometheus having the fire and not wanting it anymore. He opened the door to an uber-power and wants to get rid of it."

" You’ll see Bruce Banner transform in minute three. (Laughs) Minute three! That’s what’s good about it and it was really important when I was accepting the movie. We're not treating it as an origin movie but: Bruce Banner stepping into his chair and the gamma bomb and everything. He’s the Hulk already, with the Hulk within him, and you get to understand how he came to be in this situation, his struggle in life, the other characters surrounding him and the enemies that he deals with and fights with."

" That’s how he tries to control the beast within: breathing exercises, Brazilian jujitsu, stuff like that. We pick him up in the movie when he’s in Brazil and he’s trying to keep the monsters at bay, literally. Both the monster inside and the army chasing after him to harness his monster — to create a supersoldier. So he uses Brazilian jujitsu and yoga and meditation techniques to keep the monster inside of him, And, also, if someone picks a fight with him, he’s using that Brazilian jujitsu because jujitsu and aikido are more elusive martial arts — he’s deflecting the blows so he can run away and not get involved. He’s not a superhero, he’s not Jason Bourne. He’s the anti-James Bond, the anti-Jason Bourne. He’s really the guy that doesn’t want the fight. Unfortunately, as you can see from the teaser, he sucks at avoiding it!"

" This is the first big Hulk-out and it’s guys picking a fight with Banner and cornering him. We’ve got this huge action sequence in a bottling factory, which has got everything a good fight needs: soda, glass and big metal tanks. (Laughs) No, it’s cool. It’s really like Ghost And The Darkness, the feel, where you only glimpse Hulk and it’s really scary. Like Alien, where you think you’re seeing the Hulk but it’s not the Hulk — it’s a tank. You think you’re seeing a tank and it’s Hulk. I mean, there are some nice, interesting things. It was a nice test to start the visual effects with this scene — to get a beautiful silhouette of the Hulk and beautiful textures for his skin, things like that."

" General Ross (William Hurt) has a great line in the movie: “Banner was an accident and something went really wrong — or really right.” He loves that thing and he wants to control it, to harvest it. He has another speech where he talks about the splitting of the atom: fire, the universe opens and there is a new force — and somebody has to step up to the plate and not cower away from this thing but grab it. He’s the Ahab of this story, this alienated guy craving that power. He’s alienated himself from the army and his family, because he’s obsessing about only one thing: the Hulk, the Hulk, the Hulk."

" Tim Roth is Emil Blonsky, who becomes Abomination. He’s an ace, but he’s an ace that is kind of over the hill. I really wanted to work with Tim Roth; he’s an amazing actor and he’s extraordinary on the screen. When I met Tim I was like, “God!” He was so good and had so much energy that I said, “Blomsky must be Tim Roth.” I had to push — Marvel, Edward, everybody was hesitant to get Tim, but he really added a new dimension to the character. He is the opposite of Bruce Banner — he’s a fighter, he’s a machine, he’s a very effective, cool-as-a-cucumber soldier that is over the hill – 38, 39 years old – has finished his life as a soldier, should be a Colonel by now and has never accepted that failure. He loves being a fighter, loves being on the field."

" I really wanted to justify [Abomination’s] appearance. I really wanted to wrap my head around the original scaley-with-big-ears monster that was in the comic book, but I couldn’t justify it. The guy isn’t crossed with a fish; he’s not crossed with a lizard. Just like the Hulk he’s an über-human — his body, everything, grows out. And the way he gets injected with the serum, he’s shot in the skin and the muscles, and shot inside the spine. That makes his bones grow thicker and bigger and longer, making him a super-weapon. So he’s got that spine that flares out, which becomes a weapon. He’s got elbows that stick out and become these martial arts, Chinese knives — things that can slash back and forth. He’s got this tongue thing and the heel-spikes… so he’s a killing machine. It’s pretty cool, it’s funny. He’s got bones sticking out, so it becomes like an exo-skeleton which he uses as armour..."

" ...What might throw you off [about Abomination’s colour] in the trailer is that there’s fire. Since there are lots of layers of skin and he’s kind of transparent, he reflects whatever’s around him. Since both he and Hulk are gamma monsters, they both have to be gamma green. He’s brand-new, he’s a new monster, so he’s unstable and not perfectly green, but he’s still very green. If you look at him in broad daylight, he looks like the animation from the comic book, that darker, deeper green. If I were to show you a picture of the Hulk in that street at the end, when they’re running at each other, there’s so much fire around them that he looks like an orange monster. But he’s not an orange monster — he’s green."

" Betty (Liv Tyler) is obviously his love interest, but because it’s not an origin story she’s also his soulmate. She is the only woman. He can have potential new loves — like in Brazil, you’ll see this beautiful girl that flirts with him – but he has one love and that’s Betty and he’s not focusing on other people. Betty is the one. But she’s not only his saviour; she’s his demise. Like every good female character in a comic book, it’s because of her that the hero is chased by the villain. And by coming too close to her, he’s going to risk getting caught."

" [We released the trailer quite late because] no shots are finished yet. That’s why we took so long to release the teaser, because unlike the other movies coming out this summer, our main character relies on so much calculation and technique. None of the shots in this trailer are finished shots, but I think it’s decent enough and it shows the audience what we’re going for. There’s a different version of the teaser that will only be shown in movie theatres where you see a close-up of the Hulk’s face as he comes out of the darkness and cries to [Betty]. A full close-up, like full-screen. And until we had that shot right I didn’t want to release it. That’s why it took so long for us…I never saw that Superbowl spot [that drew criticism of Ang Lee’s film for showing Hulk unfinished]. I’ve asked for it and they’ve said, “No, no, you don’t want to see that.” (Laughs) Anyway, I would have never allowed anything to come out that I wasn’t happy with."

" This sequence is toward the end of the movie. But our final scene, 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. For me it was one of the most exciting elements of making the movie: ‘I have two monsters fighting in New York City, that’s going to be fun.’ You know, how do you come up with fun, original stuff? And you’ve seen just the beginning of the face-off, with the monsters running towards each other — BOOM! — they smash into each other, and then craziness ensues. Some humans try to get out of the way but no, they can’t… there’s a little bit of collateral damage! (Laughs) There’s a bit of a bodycount. Not on account of the Hulk — the Hulk’s a saviour — but Blomsky is ruthless."