HULK (2003)
CHARACTER: Dr. David Banner (Nick Nolte)
Don’t get us wrong, we love us some grizzled, crazy Nick Nolte, which is why we blame director Ang Lee for letting the acting vet go totally off the reservation for a head scratching OTT performance as Bruce Banner’s amoral poppa David. Especially egregious is a 5+ minute confrontation scene between the two Banners in chains that plays like a bad experimental off-off Broadway play, complete with spotlight and Nolte shouting for the balcony before he munches on a power cable.
THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN (2003)
CHARACTER: Tom Sawyer (Shane West)
Forget for a second that Tom Sawyer was never a character in Alan Moore’s comic book, because there’s a lot that’s different in this film from the superior source material (like everything). Let’s just focus on how annoyingly generic he is, taking few if any traits from Mark Twain’s books and simply transplanted as the token American action hero cliché in a movie that was already clichéd enough. No wonder Sean Connery never did another movie.
Unlike Hulk, our next film is a superhero classic that could have been a masterpiece, along with an actor that ruined TWO movies!
