THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS (1988)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*

Six years following the demise of the INCREDIBLE HULK teleseries, Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno re-united once more to play respectively the tormented scientist David Banner and his viridian alter ego. The first of the three TV-movies is said to have received strong ratings, which certainly led to the other two, both of which were directed by Bixby.

Allegedly Bixby himself invited Nicholas Corea to write and direct the Hulk's comeback, based on Corea's work during the teleseries. From what I can tell, most of Corea's work, confined entirely to TV episodes and telemovies, seems pretty mediocre, and RETURNS is equally pedestrian in both the scripting and direction departments. 

Instead of six years, only two years have passed since David Banner's last exploit. Working under an assumed name at a research center, Banner has managed to use his genius to midwife a device, the Gamma Transponder, ostensibly for the company's use but actually meant to let the scientist escape the greener side of his psyche. His greater calm may have something to do with having kindled a romance with a lady doctor at the institute. The Hulk-banishing project will soon be sabotaged by criminals seeking to employ the Transponder for unspecified evil purposes, but before the gang of crooks even gets into the act, Banner meets an old familiar face: former student Donald Blake.

Comics-mavens know Blake as a doctor who went traveling in Norway, found an archaic war-hammer and used it to transform into Thor, the mighty thunder-god of ancient legend. Much later, the THOR comic revealed that Blake never truly existed; that he was always Thor, transformed into a mere mortal by his godly father Odin as a punishment for arrogance. Corea seems to have worked with this trope somewhat to produce a concept suited for a possible Thor-series. Blake tells Banner than on an archaeological trip to Norway, he found the hammer as did the comic-book version. However, the hammer summoned into the twentieth century an ancient Nordic warrior named Thor, who is not explicitly said to have been a "real god." Nevertheless, Thor's father, who is still Odin but also maybe not a god, somehow bound Thor to the hammer as a punishment for arrogance. The skeptical Banner then gets proof of Blake's assertion when the latter summons Thor into being in Banner's laboratory. Thor, a big raucous brute, ends up wrecking some of the equipment, and Banner can't help Going Green.

The inevitable fight between the TV versions of Thor and the Hulk is passable, and only because of the limitations of the budget, though I was more entertained by Thor labeling the mute green goliath an "ugly troll." Belatedly Blake calls upon the hammer to send Thor back into limbo, and this act sets the pattern for the remainder of the movie, and for what would have been the pattern had Thor become a live-action series. Said pattern might be said to a combination of the Aladdin-and-genie tropes (owner of a magical device can summon a powerful being and also send him away) and the "troublemaking roommate" trope often employed on Bill Bixby's earlier TV-success, MY FAVORITE MARTIAN. 

The crooks intrude, attempting to steal the Transponder and kidnap its inventor Banner (they have an inside man who informs them of the device's real creator). The Hulk and Thor end up fighting the crooks, which proves a bore since neither superhero is invulnerable to gunfire, meaning they have to vanquish the gunmen by shoving big objects at them. Banner of course loses his chance to cast out his brutish side and he hits the road again, while Blake and Thor contemplate crimefighting in order that Thor may win free of Odin's exile.

I don't think that a Thor series based on Corea's script would have been very good. Blake is a zero, meant to operate as the superego telling the Id-like Thor not to do inappropriate things, and the actor playing Blake is stuck with a very unrewarding role. Eric Allan Kramer, though, really tries to put a lot of macho chutzpah into the role of Thor, and it's not his fault that Corea's unimaginative script puts a lot of cornball sentiments in his mouth. For the final time actor Jack Colvin plays Hulk-hunting reporter Jack McGee, but the character never crosses paths with either Thor or the Hulk, and so his contribution to the narrative is nugatory at best.