Hulk’s Teeth
June 5, 2011 9 Comments
Having finally caught up with the Edward Norton version of The Incredible Hulk that I had DVR’ed 2/3rds of maybe six months ago, I have to say something on the plausibility of the “Hulk” transformation here. I find it implausible. There I said it.
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking “duh. A guy transforms into a giant green monster due to ‘gamma radiation’, and you call it implausible? It’s a comic book concept. Duh!” And, other things involving me being an idiot. But hold your horses. Can you answer me something:
Why/how do the guy’s teeth get bigger?
Maybe it’s because I grew up with the TV show (and not so much the comic book), but till these CGI movies I had really never thought of the Hulk as someone 2-3x the size of a normal human. I’d just thought of him as a guy the size of Lou Ferrigno. You know, a guy with big muscles. I’m not even sure whether Lou Ferrigno was any taller than Bill Bixby. And the notion of transforming, due to whatever ‘science mishap’, into a green-skinned guy with giant muscles, who can smash things, was always somehow tolerable to me, as these things go.
But the notion of transforming into a guy twenty feet tall, or however tall he’s supposed to be, with a head to proportionally match, does not. This brings me to my question. Far as I can tell from the video-game-quality CGI, the Hulk’s size is proprtionally bigger than Edward Norton/Eric Bana’s size in basically all respects. It’s not just that his muscles got bigger in the sense of having taken super-steroids or something. He gets way taller – sometimes, it seems, way way taller. Let’s say the factor is 2.3x. (Who the hell can say…one major annoyance of both movies is a seeming inability to keep the scale consistent.) This means that all his bones got longer: 2.3x longer femur, 2.3x longer tibia, etc.
His head, of course, must expand to match. If it didn’t, the CGI Hulk would look ridiculous, a giant body with a regular-sized head. But it doesn’t look like that. We can therefore assume that his head – skull, jawbone, the flesh around it – expands by roughly the same 2.3x factor.
Now look at any scene where his teeth are shown. The teeth appear to be the right size for his (suddenly way oversized) head. There’s only one thing this can mean:
As part of the Hulk transformation, all your teeth get bigger: they get longer and they get wider. Then when things die down, all the teeth shrink again.
Seriously? Why? Why would the teeth do that? And how?
This issue has survived the ‘reboot’ and bothered me through two movies now. Am I the only one? Surely I can’t be the only one.
I suspect this is one of very few issues in which — since I can see both sides — I represent everyone.
It certainly is an Arsenio Hall “Thing that makes you go hmmmmm,” but it cannot be any more than that, and I hope you’re not losing a whole lot of sleep on this. What happens if a Jedi Knight ignites his lightsaber and then I shoot at him with a real freakin’ gun? He’s powerless to do anything except heat up the lead with the plasma in the blade before it comes into contact with his body, right?
Whenever Superman lands somewhere, he must be covered with a crispy coating of smashed & sizzled up insects, right? I’ve got dead bugs all over my arms & legs from riding my bike through American River Canyon, and the fastest I went was about 27mph. Oh and if Superman knows Lois Lane is in trouble and her GPS coordinates are such-and-such, what in the world can he do with that information? Wouldn’t he need to take a device along before he flew off to save her?
In all these things, there are degrees of plausibility.
I can invent a story (especially since I don’t really know any actual novelization ‘canon’, etc.) about the history of the Jedi that makes the lightsaber vs. bullet issue not bother me. Maybe the Jedi & lightsabers just developed at a time by which metal-projectile-weapons were so antiquated that no one ever even thought of them. It’s true that in the Star Wars movies, someone with a Gatling gun may have had an ace in the hole (like the Harkonnen using ground artillery on an Arrakis defended by hi tech ‘shields’ in Dune); but no one thought of that, and none had even been built for millenia. So, the lightsabers survived as the weapon of choice. It was a local equilibrium….
As for Superman, maybe the red-sun-nurtured cells and different, um, mass? of his body led it to create its own super-thick and high-gradient boundary layer that would turn his body into an airfoil that pushed bugs harmlessly around it. As for Lois Lane’s GPS coordinates, I don’t know where that even came up (the comics? Smallville?) but it seems pretty well established from various plots that Superman can navigate over long distances, maybe using the sun, stars, whatever. Otherwise how does he ever find his way back to the Fortress of Solitude? If nothing else, he can fly up into space and look down at the earth to get his bearings.
Obviously all of this is nonsense, but to my mind there’s a difference between nonsense that is fun and quasi-believable, and nonsense that grates on your mind and won’t let go. Hulk’s teeth are just in the latter category for me.
I don’t know where that even came up (the comics? Smallville?)…
Oh, forgot to get back to this one. It was the movie. The 2006 movie.
It was the movie. The 2006 movie.
That explains it. I’ve successfully blocked most of that film from my memory.
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This is a post that is both more and less than is apparent, and involves an admitted difference between “suspension of disbelief” and “simple fantasy.” It is, in fact, worthy of a longer and more detailed examination.
The topic of scale, in simply changing all sizes upward or downward is not, and cannot be scientific. Voices for instance, would become either deeper or shrill and squeaky as their length varies and vibration rates obey laws of frequencies. Ratios between surface areas and encompassed content change, especially in bubbles or other round shapes, to the point that sufficient oxygen to support the interior cannot be passed through the minimal surface area or its opposite restriction; Weight to length ratios result in cross section alterations insufficient to support such longer bones, etc…
It’s a comic book, duh.! is correct but there are many valid questions for examination about why these things are not scientifically possible…
Teeth are bones. His bones grow. He gets extradimensional mass from some unknown place.
What you really should be asking is, “Why doesn’t his hair get thicker?”
I actually think his hair might get thicker. It’s hard to tell from the CGI.
Agreed that teeth are bones so the larger teeth shouldn’t bother me any more than the larger bones do. But, they just DO. It’s probably because they’re visible and the (internal) bones aren’t. Who knows what’s going on with the tibia? But the teeth are right there. You can’t avoid them.
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