*Extreme thread drift alert*
By itself, I don't think it was a bad film (I thought the special effects were incredible), but I thought it really didn't come close to reaching its potential. It lost a lot of the heart and meaning I got out of the comic books. It was generally too complex, and I didn't find myself liking the characters much.
What would you think of this re-write:
1. Eliminate nearly all references to his father. Save it as back-story for a future film.
2. Spend more time at the beginning letting us see Bruce and Betty as a fairly happy couple. Let us relate to them and like them, but let us see that Bruce, while generally a good person, has issues with repression.
3. Keep the original theme of a destructive military experiment leading to his transformation. Keep the concept of the military first creating him and then trying to destroy him - It was a great theme in the comics that was diluted in the film.
4. When he first tranforms, keep some mystery. People aren't sure what's going on. Little old ladies are scared out of their support hose. There are news reports of a huge, green man stalking the streets.
5. Give the audience reason to like and feel sorry for Hulk. In the original TV pilot, there was a scene in which the hulk was trying to save a girl while her father was shooting at him. It was a great, defining moment. Have more shots of the hulk relating to animals, nature. Give the audience the sense that he is childlike and only harmful when attacked. Have something like the scene in Frankenstein with the blind man to show us the Hulk's softer side.
6. Make Ross more of a jerk and the real bad guy. Let him symbolize the worst of the military mentality. He created the Hulk, then, not knowing anything but mindless violence he attacks him leading to more destruction by the Hulk in response. It was an elegant, symbolic theme (that can be related to many historical conflicts - consider the US military supporting Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein originally, creating monsters and then later battling those monsters) in the comics that was largely lost in the film.
I just think that would have made a much better film.