Someone on pen-l quote someone that the only people who are Freudians these days are Marxists. Since that doesn't seem to be true, the only Freudian these days is Ang Lee, the director of "the Hulk," or perhaps the scriptwriter.
The id plays a big role, as the force unleashed when the main character, Bruce Banner, gets angry. He turns into a big green fellow who doesn't promote frozen vegetables. (The Hulk only has one line in the whole movie.) This irrational inner child isn't just the product of early experimentation with the immune system's biology and with gamma rays (when they're not messing up man-in-the-moon marigolds), but also due to the primal sin of the father with the mom (I'll leave out the details). (This kind of phenomenon is why Freud coined the word "overdetermined.") When not Hulk-ized, Bruce is nice, but extremely repressed. Of course he has to be, given the Hyde he turns into.
the "good guy" is Betty (played by Jennifer Connelly, who seems to get younger in every movie), who tries to cure the Hulk with love -- and partially succeeds.
There are two bad guys. One is the Atheon Corporation, which rhymes with the Raytheon corporation, the military/industrial company that sold my university the horizontal sky-scraper where my office sits. This corporation -- represented by a smarmy blonde yuppie fellow -- is part of the Pentagon's privatization policies and messes up everything as part of its lust for profit (and to show Betty who the real man is). Just desserts are delivered. The director's anti-profit motive message probably motivated him to give all his profits to the homeless, but I haven't seen any evidence that this happened.
The other bad guy is more in the Freudian mold, the father (played by Nick Nolte). He's not really evil at first, but very messed up psychologically. To make him truly evil, the director has him launch an anti-patriotic rant at the end (dissing our troops!) even though it didn't fit with the rest of the plot in any way. Given this, it's appropriate that the other "good guy" is Betty's father, a 4-star Army general.
Perfect popcorn movie. It's ideal for teenagers (which is why I saw it: my son was interested).
Jim
