"I think what they did, firstly they went and they gave it what the comic book was and the essence of it," says Roth, who has appeared in everything from Reservoir Dogs to the Planet of the Apes remake. "They took the real character, the fugitive on the road who is trying to escape from [himself and] trying to contain that, and they made that the core of the story. Then they also went to the graphic novels, they went to that darkness and that adult kind of thing for the look of it. And the points of reference that we had when shooting it was we wanted it to look like Alien, really … have that 'in the shadows' thing. I think it's shot beautifully as well. They're really, really clever, these guys."
The actor explains that while the gamma-powered Abomination was new to him, the green-skinned goliath known as the Hulk certainly was not.
"I wasn't familiar with the Abomination, but certainly was familiar with the Hulk," he laughs. "Hulk was the comic books that I got as a kid and the TV series, we grew up on that. That was what was on the TV when you came home from school; it was one of those things when you were trying to avoid doing your homework you were watching The Hulk. So I was very familiar with the series and with the story of him, with the nature of him. I understood. And what I like about the Abomination thing is he is really back there in the Hulk world. It was KGB, it was Cold War. And I think that translates perfectly to what we're going through now, just on a political level, and we're at war in the world. That's the sort of mindset of that character. So it seems to fit perfectly, and the whole thing of using human beings as weaponry seems very appropriate now. I think that's why it's worth getting it right. I think they did do it, they got it right this time. The character is a product of now as well."
Roth says that research was an important part of his preparation for the film, which also stars Edward Norton as the title character and Liv Tyler as love interest Betty Ross. The production provided the actors with discs featuring every Hulk comic book ever made, according to Roth, so the user could just "zap around and find" what he or she was looking for in the Jade Giant's history.
"Why that was useful to me I think was with regards to the dialogue and the way people talk in comic books," says Roth. "It's a different way of speaking and the humor is important. Humor always comes in a crisis moment so it's kind of wonderful to find those notes and throw them in there. So I used the comics quite a lot. But once you're up and running, you're up and running."
A respected thespian from Britain who first made his mark on American art-house audiences with films like Vincent & Theo and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover before truly breaking through as Mr. Orange in 1992's Reservoir Dogs, Roth has had a varied resume over the years, swinging between Hollywood project and higher-brow fare. But he says he's been dying to do a comic-book movie for ages now.
"I've always wanted to do one," he notes. "I was always very jealous of the guys who got to do them, you know, the X-Men stuff. But if it did come along, I wanted it to be kind of scary, dark, and real, and fun too. So this one actually fit all those categories. On top of which it's a full-on thriller. They didn't hold back. But I always wanted to have a crack at something like this and it's such fun for an actor. And that's where the Marvel guys are getting it right now, because they're going out to these young, kind of edgy directors and then those guys are going off to the character actors and that is making the films that much more interesting."
Roth points to the recent monster success — and The Incredible Hulk's brother film — Iron Man as an example of this new Marvel approach.
"If the audience is aware of who we are, the individual actors, they generally don't know what we're going to come up with next," he says. "And that I think feeds well into these films. If you look at [Robert] Downey [Jr.] doing Iron Man, that's a very inspired piece of casting. And that film works because of his personality as much as what Johnny is doing, Johnny Favreau, which I think is extraordinary. To come out of the gate with that, that was a hard act to follow. But it's actor driven. Isn't that extraordinary? That's great. When you look at Magneto and stuff like that, I mean, those guys are actors, and it works because of that."
As for the Blonsky character, he has been altered somewhat from his comic-book origins just so that he might fit within the modern world better. He now is an aging special-ops soldier who volunteers to be transformed into a monstrous creature in order to battle the Hulk, who is apparently unbeatable by conventional weapons and warfare. Roth says that there were many back-story and motivation discussions for his and the other characters with not just director Louis Leterrier, but also the film's star — and co-writer — Norton.
"My input was, because he's a soldier, let's make him that kind of guy that you drop in the jungle and go away and then come back a month later and pick him up," laughs Roth. "You don't really want to know what he's done! So that's why they brought him in the helicopter in a different kind of get-up; you get the sense that he's come from somewhere to something and he never stops and so when you see him in action he's a top-class guy. He knows how to fight, that's for sure. But back-story stuff… we had long, long, long, long, long discussions about where they came from, why they do what they do, who they are, and whenever there was something that came up, well, what's easy about having the writer and the actor be the same guy I suppose is they're right there. So if you've got a question, there they are. And we improvised and played around with the dialogue. It wasn't held particularly precious. It was just, 'There's your stuff, go with it, and if the dialogue as written works, use that. And if you want to make it your own, make it your own.' I found [Norton] to be very flexible."
The preparation for the role also involved military training for the actor with a group of Canadian experts who went by names like Icicle and the Bang Bang Brothers and who, according to Roth, "knew their s--t."
"They trained us, so first thing in the morning I'd go and shoot guns," he remembers. "And break into rooms. And talk weaponry with these guys. And then I'd go straight off to find out how to make the Abomination move. So it was a really fun time. I went out early specifically to work on the Abomination movement and to do the training. I think I was about five weeks early, just to get cracking on it. And it paid off."
Roth comes from a theater background where he's done a lot of "bizarre movement stuff," so getting into the groove of the motion-capture portion of his role wasn't tough at all. He also had the experience of having previously appeared in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, where he had to learn how to move like an ape, and he says that both of those experiences came in quite helpful when it was time to enact the Abomination's style of movement for the computer artists who would use his performance to create the final product on screen.
"The guy who was the movement guy on Planet of the Apes, who actually doubled me, we became good friends and I got him hired on to do the Hulk," says Roth. "So he plays the Hulk when the Hulk's the beast. And then the guy I used to double me as the Abomination, when I couldn't do movement stuff, he was one of the inventors of parkour, Cyril [Raffaelli]. [He] was just going to come in and do some fight stuff. And I snagged him and trained him up as me when I couldn't be there. It was a very, very cool relationship we had all around. I found it to be almost like an independent movie with just a huge budget. It had that independent spirit to it."
And yet, The Incredible Hulk does have that huge budget — much of which goes into creating the amazing visual effects that are the living, breathing Hulk and Abomination.
"[It was] the high-tech end of [motion capture]," says Roth of the process. "And when you're doing the face stuff, that was all new technology again, so you got more expression in the face. It was a paint that they put on you that was reflective, so that instead of, whereas maybe before it would be 35 sensors on your face or whatever, this was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. It has a more realistic quality I guess."
As for the inevitable question regarding a Hulk sequel, Roth says he's more than ready to return as the Abomination.
"I've already bashed [Leterrier] around about that," he chuckles. "I love the whole idea of working with Louis, too, because we have a lot of fun when we work together. We're quite playful about the business. We take it seriously and we get the job done, but we have a good relationship, me and him. I know that I was his first choice and it was a fight to get Marvel to say yeah at the beginning because obviously it's a character that they could have gotten any actor in to play. They had their choice, and he stuck with me which was very cool."
The Incredible Hulk opens this Friday.