Hulk fighting Wolverine sounds like a stretch. There really have no reason for them to fight each other. Not to mention Hulk would just destroy Wolverine in a second. Considering that Damon Lindelof needed to do something special to make “Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk†shine. It doesn’t. Simply put, the Marvel Knights and Shout Factory turned the comic book mini-series turned motion comic should have stayed on the printed page.
The story does start well. Nick Fury asks Wolverine to kill Hulk because the big green monster killed millions of people in Manhattan. Meanwhile, Bruce Banner, still hungover over Betty Ross dumping him, travels the world trying to find ways to control his anger. He finds himself in a monastery in China where he learns how to become one with Hulk.
The story is all over the place. It has no cohesive narrative or sense of focus. It hops from one event to another that happens at one time then to another that happened days or weeks prior to that. This jumping from time and place almost makes the story confusing as to when each event happened and, more importantly, why they happened.
Some of the dialogue and events read like they were meant for a completely different, a more comedic story. One major example is when one character is thought to have been selling the Hulk serum to the Chinese when in reality that character just bought a bootleg “Star Wars†DVD before the “new movie†came out. This seems like something you’d see in a slapstick teen high school show on the Disney Channel.
The art by Leinil Francis Yu looks really ugly and awkward. As a regular comic it may have looked fine but as a motion comic it looks terrible. The characters’ movements are nothing more than their mouths moving like badly synched 1960s anime and their heads moving from time to time. When the characters have to do something more complicated, like swimming, it looks so cheesy it’s hilarious. One such scene is Hulk swimming. Poor facial expressions also plague this motion comic.
The faces look so lifeless that even if they’re supposed to show anger it doesn’t look it. Again, they may look fine in the comic version, but here something went wrong. One of these examples is when Hulk flies into a rage his facial expression has zero emotion in it. Top that with one of the most awkward line sayings and viewers will drop to the floor laughing. Even the terrible “Watchmen: The Motion Comic†got that part right.
The only bright spot here is the voice acting. The voice actors did a competent job in their roles and have brought them to life. One plus is Wolverine sounds exactly like Wolverine from the 90s “X-Men†cartoon. At first Hulk’s voice was hard to understand but later on it became much clearer as the voice actor improved.
“Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk†is by far one of the worst motion comics to date. Poor art, character movement and story hurt this adaptation. Fans are better off just reading the comic and basing their opinions on that.
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