‘Hulk’ connects with audience

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Why another Hulk? The comic-book geeks running Marvel Studios have an answer: $54.5 million.

That’s how much money “The Incredible Hulk” hauled in over opening weekend, the big green guy’s latest adventure coming just five years after his previous Hollywood adaptation was quickly laughed out of theaters.

Despite the sour taste of 2003’s “Hulk,” Ang Lee’s Shakespearean overload of superhero angst and cartoonish visuals, the new movie’s debut proves there’s an audience for a dorky scientist who turns into a bellowing green ogre when people tick him off.

“I think it resoundingly does put that question to rest,” says Marvel Studios boss David Maisel. “Hulk has smashed that question.”

The real question is not why another Hulk, but why the idea of the Hulk even works to begin with.

It’s one thing for Robert Louis Stevenson to create “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which presented a truly terrifying beast within as an allegory for the evil we all keep in check.

But an over-muscled green lummox like the Hulk? Could anyone but a fanboy really dig this guy?

Clearly, the box-office figures for “Incredible Hulk” go beyond hardcore comic-book fans, for whom Hulk stands second only to Spider-Man in the vast Marvel Comics universe (Superman and Batman are vassals of rival DC Comics).

Yet while the Hulk pulled his weight at theaters, no one expected him to approach the numbers put up by Spidey, whose three flicks had openings ranging from $88.2 million to last year’s record $151.1 million for “Spider-Man 3.”

No one even expected the Hulk to come close to last month’s $98.6 million debut of “Iron Man,” based on another Marvel character well-known to comic-book fans but hardly a household name among general audiences.