Imagine Dr. David Banner tripping along dystopian urban streets
in the year 2019, which was not so long ago. Coincidentally, it’s the Los
Angeles of Blade Runner, a city with
106 million people, most of them cavorting-about with their spacey umbrellas
perpetually sprouted. There are talkie-ads the size of skyscrapers and flying
cars and embittered replicants, artificial people who intend to visit some voracious
vengeance upon the malevolent corporation which designed them.
In this future, the camera follows Sean Young, Rutger Hauer,
and especially Harrison Ford. (“Harrison Ford?” says Dr. David Banner.) Yes,
Harrison Ford, which is really aggravating, so Dr. David Banner hulks, his mouth
agape, his eyes resembling the green of lightning. The buttons on his shirt pop
free, one at a time, and he shreds the legs of his blue dungarees to inhabit
them perchance as a perfect pair of cutoff jeans. “Rawwr!” he says.
By now, Dr. David Banner hulks every fifteen-twenty minutes.
So much so, the makeup artists tire of scrubbing off the green pancake, and
slopping it on, scrubbing and slopping, until it’s just Lou Ferrigno walking
around as an ill-clad drifter, a kind of Mr. Green Universe Meets the Crowded Indifferent
Future of California. There’s no more need for Bill Bixby, who is seen smoking
apple tabac and attending dubious matinees. His anger no longer matters; he’s
cured of his gamma radiation overdose.
When all of a sudden, Lou Ferrigno espies Pris Stratton, a
basic pleasure replicant who could be The Incredible Hulk’s spirit animal. They
are both pancaked, they are both raccoons, they are both shorn in the same
shaggy hairdo. Pris is really Daryl Hannah. She dunks her hand without pain
into water that boils a dozen eggs. Perhaps she desires a magnificent sprawling
omelet, the ambient heat of the whipped eggs and southwestern ingredients. “Rawwr!”
goes Lou Ferrigno.
If Daryl Hannah was capable of
love, then she’d have already crushed Harrison Ford’s face between her thighs,
his head bouncing down the stairs like the meatball in the spaghetti song. We
know more about the future than ever before, and it continues to predict the
demise of Pris, kicking her legs and howling for help. The Incredible Hulk trudges
toward a second transformation, green and dumbfounded, and in that way, Lou
Ferrigno resembles all of us, trapped in the lonely squalls of our acrimony.
