Marvel’s Hulk Absolutely Tortured Its Director: “Ang Lee Had Tears in His Eyes”

At the time, it was certainly a bold decision for Universal Pictures and then “Marvel Enterprises” to go with Ang Lee. Granted, there had been critically successful directors such as Sam Raimi helming major CBM properties, but Lee was coming fresh off the epic and imaginative Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (and would go on to win the Best Directing Oscar for Brokeback Mountain). Yet according to Lucas, Lee had a deep connection to the titular jade giant. 

“It was an interesting choice for Marvel to choose an auteur at Ang’s level, but if you look at Ang Lee, he has some personal connections to the Hulk. He’s a quiet, scientific kind of mind. He’s a very gentle soul who has this deeply powerful, creative, and overwhelming urge to create. Not just great art, but transcendent, difficult art. All of his movies, they’ve done that – Crouching Tiger obviously, Brokeback, each one of them.” 

Creating “difficult” art can obviously come with challenges, but as Lucas recalls, the experience for Lee went beyond even that.

“He poured his soul into [Hulk], and you could see that he was exhausted. It looked like he went to war.” 

As Lucas tells it, there were a few times where that “gentle soul” within Lee, much like the tortured part of Bruce Banner’s (Eric Bana) character, was the cause for some of the inner turmoil during the production of Hulk. There are more than a few specific occasions that Lucas remembers quite clearly, including one instance when the cast and crew were at Industrial Light and Magic. During an early screening of the post-production work, Lucas remembers Lee telling him “this has been one of the most painful experiences of my life.”

Lucas delves further into Lee’s mindset, revealing that wasn’t the only time the director seemed tortured. Coincidentally, Lee could have perhaps used a little more Hulk to go with his Banner-like qualities. According to Lucas, it appeared that studio influence or other factors were pulling the film away from Lee and his true vision, and that Lee was perhaps not advocating for that vision enough.