My perfect Hulk movie, I imagine, would be a far cry from most people's perfect Hulk movie, because my perfect Hulk movie would be extremely light on action. As in, I really wouldn't want there to be a big action set piece for a climax, and one, maybe two action beats throughout the whole film.
I don't really care about action. In fact, I usually find it quite boring. To me, it's just things happening on screen, and I really desperately need to be emotionally invested in some way before I start to enjoy the action. To me, a good action sequence is one where the action comes from a place of motivation, where the action comes from characters attempting to achieve or thwart something that matters to them, that I can identify, and that I care about. It's why I hate the light saber duels in the prequels, because the characters really aren't fighting for anything besides a generic notion of winning, and nothing about the fight is particularly visceral or personal.
Furthermore, the most interesting things to me about The Hulk have very little to do with actually seeing The Hulk on screen. For me, it's all about Banner as a character. What he's going through, and how The Hulk burdens him. The details of how Bruce hides from he authorities, how his condition weighs on him emotionally, the moral dilemmas he faces, the things he has to sacrifice for the well being of others, that's the stuff I come to the table for. The Hulk is just the catalyst for that. I remember one particular Hulk run that I was fond of where we almost never saw The Hulk. We only really saw the moment right before Banner changed and then the aftermath. I always thought that was really neat.
Ultimately, to me, The Hulk isn't a superhero story. It's a werewolf story. And in a werewolf story, the centerpiece isn't seeing the werewolf. It's seeing how the human deals with the werewolf.
And when we do see The Hulk, again, I'm generally less interested in the action spectacle of The Hulk and more interested in seeing the raw humanity of The Hulk. I like seeing how Bruce's personality filters through that state of being. I like seeing the balance of how much being the Hulk changes who Bruce is and how much it doesn't. I like seeing The Hulk in situations where he has to interact with humans in a non-smashing capacity, or when he has to run for his life from his pursuers. When the Hulk fights, I'm more interested in the Hulk as the cornered animal, not the Hulk as the superhero.
And, I want to stress that I generally do not consider Bruce Banner and The Hulk to be two separate entities, and I prefer interpretations of the character that think the same way I do. I prefer to see The Hulk not as a separate person with a separate personality who just happens to share Bruce's body, but Bruce Banner in an altered state of consciousness.
So, with all of that said, my ideal Hulk movie would be a relatively quiet one. The Hulk would show up maybe twice in the whole film, in at least one of those instances without any real action, and it would mostly be about Bruce dealing with the burden of being The Hulk. The Leader would be the main villain, wanting to harness The Hulk's power for his own evil schemes, but the climax of the film wouldn't be a huge action spectacle where The Hulk fights a Hulk-ified version of The Leader or one of The Leader's giant robots or something, and would not involve the destruction of a town or city. I'd want it to be more cerebral, with a lot of dialogue between Bruce and Stern and a lot of exchanged ideas, perhaps even have Bruce save the day as himself without transforming as a little character win for him.
Granted, I totally understand that this would not be most people's preferred Hulk movie and I totally get why. Just my two cents.
Cheers.
