@Greg:
I'm a fan of Norton but let's just say I'm glad they destroyed whatever his artistic freedom would have led to. I wouldn't have changed a thing about that film, it was DAMN good.
Hmm…I'm not quite sure you understand the situation.
What you saw in the film was Norton's modified script. He took the original script and completely rewrote it (and didn't get any credit for it at all).
If you have the Blueray or DVD, you'll see they cut out the entire opening of the movie. This was because they wanted to get to Banner's Hulk form as quickly as possible.
Wiki explains it better (and it was on the news before the movie came out)
Zak Penn, who wrote a draft of the first film in 1996, said the film would follow up Hulk, but stressed it would be more tonally similar to the TV show and Bruce Jones' run on the comic. He compared his script to Aliens, which was a very different film to Alien, but still in the same continuity.[9] He included two scenes from his 1996 script: Banner jumping from a helicopter to trigger a transformation, and realizing he is unable to have sex with Betty.[37] Penn wrote three drafts, before departing in early 2007 to direct The Grand. Norton, who had rewritten previous films he starred in, wrote a new draft, which pleased the director and the studio in establishing the film as a reboot.[38] Leterrier acknowledged the only remaining similarity between the two films was Bruce hiding in South America,[5] and that the film was a unique reboot, as generally audiences would have expected another forty minute origin story.[39] There were previous discussions to set the first act in Thailand.[40] Leterrier felt audiences were left restless waiting for the character to arrive in Ang Lee's film.[39] Gale Anne Hurd noted fans dubbed the film a "requel", a portmanteau of reboot and sequel.[41]
Norton explained of his decision to ignore Lee's origin story, "I don't even like the phrase origin story, and I don't think in great literature and great films that explaining the roots of the story doesn't mean it comes in the beginning."[8] "Audiences know this story," he added, "[so] deal with it artfully." He wanted to "have revelations even in the third act about what set this whole thing in motion".[3] The new origin story references Ultimate Marvel's take on the Hulk, which also had him created in an attempt to create supersoldiers.[42] Norton deleted Rick Jones and toned down S.H.I.E.L.D.'s presence.[15] He also added the scene where Banner attempts to extract a cure from a flower and his e-mailing with Samuel Sterns,[37] which references Bruce Jones' story.[43] Norton rewrote scenes every day.[17] Ultimately, the Writers Guild of America decided to credit the script solely to Penn,[44] who argued Norton had not dramatically changed his script. Journalist Anne Thompson explained "The Guild tends to favor plot, structure and pre-existing characters over dialogue." Before either Penn and Norton joined the project, an anonymous screenwriter wrote a draft and lobbied for credit.[37]
In regards to movie editing:
Seventy minutes of footage, mostly dealing with the origin, were not included in the final cut.[26] Much of this back-story was unscripted and the filmmakers were never sure of including it into the final cut, and had considered releasing some of these clips on the internet.[13] Editor Kyle Cooper, creator of the Marvel logo (with the flipping pages) and the montage detailing Iron Man's biography in that film, edited together much of this footage into the opening credits.[13] Leterrier explained a negative test screening, where flashbacks were placed across the film that the audience found too similar to Hulk, had resulted in compressing these to the film's start.[26] This replaced the original opening, where Banner comes to the Arctic to commit suicide. Leterrier said he did not want this scene to be lost amid the opening montage.[26]
Norton and Leterrier disputed with the producers over the final running time: they wanted it to be near 135 minutes, while the producers wanted the film to be under two hours. This was made public, and rumors spread that Norton "made it clear he won't cooperate with publicity plans if he's not happy with the final product".[63] Norton dismissed this, "Our healthy process [of collaboration], which is and should be a private matter, was misrepresented publicly as a 'dispute', seized on by people looking for a good story, and has been distorted to such a degree that it risks distracting from the film itself, which Marvel, Universal and I refuse to let happen. It has always been my firm conviction that films should speak for themselves and that knowing too much about how they are made diminishes the magic of watching them."[64]
