I don’t know how I got to be the hipster contrarian on this blog. I mean, okay, I do know. It’s because I keep writing hipster contrarian blog posts. But it’s not stuff I’m just making up to be incendiary. I actually feel this way. I guess I’m saying all this so you’ll know I’m not just saying what I’m about to say out of hand, just to incite controversy. This is my real actual opinion. Probably there is something wrong with me.

Here goes: I think Ang Lee’s Hulk gets dumped on way more than it deserves.

Yes really, I’m coming out in defense of the movie where the Hulk fights a monster hulked-out poodle.

In fact, lets start there, shall we? Hulk fights a monster hulked-out poodle. How crazy is that? How surreal is that? What kind of person do you have to be to put something like that on movie screens around the world?

Apparently the answer to that question is Ang Lee. The same Ang Lee who directed Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The same Ang Lee that would go on to direct the visual feast that was Life of Pi.

Now before we go too much further, I should say that I don’t think Ang Lee’s Hulk is a great movie. I would be hard pressed to argue that it’s really even a good movie.

But I can’t help but respect it. I can’t help but respect what it’s going for.

I can’t help but respect it because Hulk is a work of art.

Now let me clarify: often, saying something is a “work of art” is a blanket statement of praise, but that’s not how I mean it here. When I say Hulk is a work of art, I mean that it was conceived and executed with a particular end in mind, made though a desire to evoke some emotion, crafted carefully by a creator with a vision of what his work could be. Art comes from somewhere primal and personal, and sometimes, as we see here, that primal and personal vision doesn’t line up with what audiences want to see.

Look at the dark energy of the opening credits, consider the composition of multiple shots together in one frame meant to evoke the visual style of a comic book. And don’t even get me started on the ending. If I’m being honest I’m not even sure what happened with that ending, but it was weird and unsettling, and even if I’m not sure if I liked it or not, I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t make some kind of impression.

Maybe the best way to illustrate my point is to take into account the other contender for the throne. Five years after Hulk smashed its way into and out of theatres, Marvel put the big green guy up at the plate again with The Incredible Hulk. (This is supposedly a reboot, but they pick up with Banner exactly where Hulk left him in Mexico and only make minor changes to the storyline from the first film, which I argue makes it a more of a cop-out sequel.)

The Incredible Hulk made more money than Hulk and was generally better received by fans and critics. But to me personally it felt like two hours of pandering. Though maybe pandering isn’t quite the right word. The Incredible Hulk just was. There wasn’t anything terribly wrong with it, it was a decent summer blockbuster hitting all of the summer blockbuster buttons of plot and spectacle, but it seemed like it wasn’t really trying. It took no risks with its story and characters, did nothing visually we haven’t seen in a hundred movies before, and generally got a thumbs up for not being that bad. It’s standard fare from Louis Leterrier, director of several other not-terrible-but-also-not-great films such as Now You See Me and Transporter 2. It’s the kind of film that isn’t going to make anyone’s top ten list, but it’s so inoffensive and samey that no one’s going to be able to work up anything like real hatred for it.

The Incredible Hulk (in my ever-so-inflated opinion) is not art. It’s a cash grab.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with making money. Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan, Stephen Spielberg, all the great auteurs, work in the hope that their films will be financially profitable. The distinguishing difference, at least to me, is that while money is certainly a concern, it isn’t their first concern. Their first concern is to bring a film into being that excites them with its possibilities, that thrills their soul with its very existence.

This then is my defense of Ang Lee’s Hulk. It is not a great film. Nor did it see critical or financial success. But it strove for something higher than mere inoffensiveness and acceptability. And even if it never attained that lofty goal, I have to respect it for trying. Because in the end I would rather see a failed work of art than a successful product of commercialism.