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Kim Hollis: The Incredible Hulk fell 61% to $21.6 million, while The Happening fell 67% to $10 million. Both of these are disastrous results, but which one surprises you more?

Pete Kilmer: Disastrous? Disappointing certainly for the Hulk, but that kind of drop is to be expected these days isn't it?

Tim Briody: I didn't see The Incredible Hulk crashing that badly, that's for sure.

Scott Lumley: Without a doubt, the Hulk surprises me more. The reviews on this are quite good, and it's being compared favourably to Iron Man. I'm thinking there are two reasons this is falling as fast and as hard as it is. First of all, this is turning into a very 'Superhero' summer. Iron Man, The Hulk, Hellboy, Hancock, The Dark Knight... that's five major superhero themed films in the span of less than three months. That's crazy. It's awfully cool if you're a comic book fan like I am, but it's a tad bit of overkill. These films are all (with the exception of the Hellboy sequel) getting a lot of advertising too. I think people are waiting on Hancock and The Dark Knight and they're willing to leave Hulk and Hellboy in the "To be rented later" column.

Also, while I appreciate the script putting in the Abomination as the primary antagonist, this film is still far too 'Thinky'. This character is all about 'Hulk Smash!', and there is still not enough of that. For crying out loud, the commercials are still giving us shots of Hulk beating up HELICOPTERS. Believe me, I don't want any reminders of how badly the first movie sucked. Yeah, I know some of you guys liked the first film. I did not, and the majority of the movie going public is right behind me. And yes, I am far too aware of the irony that I am sitting here as a pseudo movie critic and complaining that there was far too much plot and character development in a movie.

You really don't get too many opportunities when making movies to throw plot and character out the window and focus on the CGI and the brawling and crap blowing up and the Hulk is a character tailor made for this. The studio needs to get the CGI down pat, get a script together for Hulk vs Thing and slot it somewhere it's not going to have to compete with 385 other superhero titles.





Dan Krovich: The drop off for The Happening had to be expected, and ultimately with the movie that was delivered Fox has to be pretty pleased with what they've gotten out of it. The Incredible Hulk is a definite disappointment, though. They didn't make another Hulk movie just to moderately top the final gross of the first one.

Joel Corcoran: A 60% drop seems kind of routine these days, so I think the Hulk's drop is disappointing, but not disastrous. I just wish The Happening had fallen more. A 67% drop is definitely a disaster, but probably not enough to ensure that M. Night Shyamalan never touches a camera again.

Eric Hughes: The hit Incredible Hulk took was large, but I think it was to be expected when taking its word-of-mouth into account. Yes, 2008's Hulk is superior to the one released in 2003, but it certainly isn't superior to Iron Man. Paramount took a relatively unknown superhero (in comparison to the bigger names) and made him into a star on screen. For The Incredible Hulk to perform well at the box office, the end product had to be better than Iron Man if Universal hoped to get people to pony up for the summer's second superhero. Guess what, The Incredible Hulk wasn't as good, and the drop was over 60%. So, I'm more surprised at The Happening figure, in that I assumed the fact that people flat-out hated this movie opening weekend was going to translate into a fall higher than 67%.

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