Audience Reactions to the Incredible Hulk (2008)

This morning, I attended the midnight premiere of The Incredible Hulk. I thoroughly enjoyed the enthusiasm and candor of the other audience members. Throughout the film, they were very reactionary. They gasped and groaned, cringed, laughed, and exclaimed.

When Hulk and Abomination battled, every one of us sat on the edge of our seats with our mouths agape. We didn't breath unless we were gasping, groaning, or cringing. Maybe we chuckled a little too.

The humor was subtle and sarcastic enough that we could actually laugh at it. It wasn't as overwhelmingly cheesy and annoying as most movies. I think some of the audience even missed some of it. It was quite refreshing.

When the credits started to roll, the tension in the theater exploded. All at once, everyone started cheering and clapping.

They stood up and started talking. The entire theater was abuzz. People didn't leave. They were too excited. They formed small groups all over the room to talk. They didn't talk like they did before the movie either. They were all speaking at the same time, right over the top of each other, about three times as fast as normal. It was unlike anything I've ever heard before.

The first person to speak enthusiastically exclaimed The Incredible Hulk to be the "funniest thing I've ever seen!" The film was constantly sprinkled with in jokes and sarcastic humor.

The theater was about 20% female and 80% male. Within the first minute of the credits every single female within earshot of me (there were at least 5) uttered the phrase "And I was like Oh My God!" excitedly.

It was also generally agreed that the movie was "sick." To be specific, "So sick!" "The sickest thing ever!" and "That was SO sick!"

Other comments included repeating "amazing" and "incredible" over and over, "Just beating the crap out of each other!", "best movie I've ever seen," and considerable excitement at the level of detail and incredible number of fandom references. I'm not sure if the hardcore fans even caught them all the first time around.

I did hear one negative echoed by a few people. The ending scene is a gratuitous plug for related movies. It's out of place and relatively pointless. To quote the audience members, it was "lame."

The other negative was a lack of bonus footage at the end of the movie. Don't bother sticking around. There's nothing during or after the credits. Everyone waited, and everyone grumbled when they finished.

By the time I was back out in the lobby, the conversations had begun to change. People were milling around everywhere debating Marvel fandom. They weren't just talking Hulk. They were all over the board.

The audience members continued to mill around the lobby until the manager told them to leave. It was after 2am, and he wanted to go to bed. At least a fourth of the patrons milling around started discussing where to go for breakfast, as they were too "pumped" to go home.

I had a surprise out in the parking lot. People certainly were pumped. They were so pumped, they were recreating the more intense fight scenes in the parking lot. There were three separate friendly brawls taking place when I exited, and one young man was bleeding from his forehead on the sidelines. He and his friends were still laughing, so it couldn't have been that bad, but it was an unusual reaction to a movie.

Something else I noticed was the children. Several parents had taken school age children, not twelve or thirteen year olds but seven and eight year olds, to The Incredible Hulk. I'm not sure what they were thinking at the beginning, but regret was the unanimous emotion on the way out. None of the kids looked like happy little kids that just saw an awesome superhero movie. They looked upset and mildly traumatized. The parents were all glowering and either dead silent or grumbling about how they wouldn't have brought the young children if they'd know what the movie was like. I'm making a point out of this one, since this parenting behavior seems to be a trend lately. This is definitely a movie to SEE before you decide if it's appropriate for your child. This one isn't barely PG-13, but clearly deserves the rating on many counts.