Ang Lee's Hulk was as big a commercial success as it was a critical failure - which is the obvious reason behind the Ed Norton reboot the Incredible Hulk. As a reboot, all of the Ang Lee material is - of course - totally disavowed and we have a fresh start... new actors, new origins and so on.

Ol' Bruce has been on the run for sometime and he's hiding in Brazil. He's doing just fine at that until he accidentally gets blood into Stan Lee's POWER THIRST. It seems Stan Lee's job is now to appear in ALL Marvel films in increasingly gratuitous cameos... Although, this one is still not quite as toe curling as his appearance in Fantastic Four 2.

Anyway, as you can guess. Stan Lee's "gamma poisoning" is instantly equated with Brucie, so General "Thunderbolt" Ross sends his crack team to the bottling plant - including veteran Emil Blonsky. As you'd guess, the capture operation goes tits up and Banner gets angry and then proceeds to trash the team, much to Blonsky's chagrin.

As you can guess, the Hulk does a bunk and Bruce finds himself in Central America. Having been rumbled in Brazil, he decides to go in search of the data that will allow him to cure the raging spirit that dwells within.

Blonsky points out to General Ross that the mission went tits up because of a big green MONSTAH! Ross informs Blonsky that Banner IS the MONSTAH, which leads to Blonsky volunteering for some of your Captain America flavoured super soldier formula. Which comes in handy when he goes to take down Banner for a second time.

Because, there's nowhere else for Bruce to go and get the data than the university of his sweetheart, Betty Ross. There's some of the usual messing around before the military rumble them. What follows is a fairly awesome Hulk vs. military scene on the university campus... Blonsky tried to take on the Hulk one on one... BAD IDEA. He ends up so many shards of broken bone in encased in flesh. If you didn't see that coming... well...

Of course, thanks to magical super soldier formula - he fixes right up and goes for another dose. During the interim, Bruce and Betty go to see the secret Internet contact that he had, who proposed a cure... they go through with said cure and it seemingly works but Banner finds out that "Mr. Blue"... then it turns out that he's actually your run of the mill mad scientist and wants to do the most diabolical of all things HELP PEOPLE! The fiend.

Brucie can't bear the thought of his misery helping to cure disease and the like and insists that all the blood - how Mr. Blue created all this blood is never really explained... presumably he has a blood-o-matic or some such. Anyway, before Bruce can do anything he gets pumped full of tranquillisers and taken into custody.

Blonsky decides now would be a good time to get pumped full of Banner's blood and becomes Abomination while Mr. Blue get some accidentally creating an obvious means for The Leader to make an appearance.

Anyway, Abomination gets his super villains goody bag and finds out the first thing super strong supervillains do is head downtown and start tearing the place up. This leads to some amusing momentary confusion wherein they think the Hulk is loose again. Once they deduce it's Blonsky, Banner decides to jump out the helicopter in the hopes that the cure didn't actually work... jeez, what an optimist. (Un?)Fortunately, the cure was about as effective as crystal therapy and as such we get a protracted fight between Hulk an Abomination that is pretty much everything that the Ang Lee film lacked. The Hulk schools Abomination and then flees the scene - the end... well, except for the gratuitous Stark cameo with further allusions to the Avengers film.

All in all, it's a solid superhero blockbuster. You've got your superpowered bad guy - no Kryptonite mountains here! - you've got your drama, action and big explosions... all in all, this is pretty much everything Ange Lee's Hulk wasn't. The origin story gets about three minutes... and we aren't landed with it at the start... it's a nice change from the seemingly obligatory origin stories that are hoisted upon all superhero films... the obvious problem with an origin is it means you're lumped with a big impediment to pacing. Just look at Spiderman, encumbered by the necessity of setting up Peter Parker. The Incredible Hulk has no such obstacle... and it's nice to see that they didn't feel it necessary to impose it on the story. There are a few nice references in there for those watching - Lou Ferrago as a security guard, giant purple trousers... a few other references. Everything you want from a superhero film or a summer blockbuster and well worth the price of admission.