The Hulk, The Hulk, ...
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So, garbed in a wired motion-capture suit that recorded his movements, Lee performed everything from the raging ''Hulk smash!'' to a swooning Hulk in love. Finally, Lee had found a venue that gave him permission to unleash his bottled-up emotions. ''It felt f---ing great,'' laughs Lee, whose catharsis cost him a bout with tendinitis. ''It was very therapeutic. I realized -- this is why I needed to do 'The Hulk.'''

But for the ILM staffers who toiled on ''The Hulk,'' Lee's hovering presence -- and peculiar vision -- wasn't always so flipping great. ''It's been hard on the crew,'' confirms ILM's F/X wizard Dennis Muren. Lee -- who initially regarded the animators as button pushers, not artists -- admits to having been ''quiet and nitpicky.'' Halfway through the process, the producers asked Lee to give the staff a pep talk. He agreed. ''I needed to let them know I was a different kind of person,'' says Lee. Later that day, while reviewing the animation work, Lee shouted ''AWESOME!'' after the first shot hit the screen. The room exploded in laughter.

Whether moviegoers will yell ''awesome!'' when ''The Hulk'' opens remains to be seen. ''We have a good chance the audience will invest real emotion in this guy,'' says Lee, who plans on taking a vacation before considering a sequel. (He's not bound to it, though Bana is.) But in Lee's mind, the film is already a hit. ''When the movie comes out, maybe nobody will think it makes any sense. I can't tell. I'm sure it's not a regular movie,'' he says. ''But I'm very proud of it. It's been a rich, fulfilling experience, and nobody will take that away from me.'' (With additional reporting by Scott Brown)

Read more about the making of ''The Hulk'' in the June 6, 2003, issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine.

Originally posted May 27, 2003 Published in issue #713 Jun 06, 2003 Order article reprints
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