Hulk vs comprises of two "epic" battles (and I use quotes lightly and meaningfully) as he faces off with Wolverine and Thor, two other Marvel comics staples that he's faced off against many times - indeed the introduction to Wolverine was in a Hulk comic by Len Wein - and what happens when SMASH! becomes the proverbial name of the game here. But there is and there isn't so much smashing all the time. This may be good in some cases, but when the cover emphasis such a SMASH EVERYTHING IN SIGHT thing with the Hulk, it becomes a minor let-down when the Hulk and Wolverine only face off for about, oh, ten minutes out of the relatively short 36 minute running time, and while there is much more Hulk SMASH in the Thor movie, it also isn't as much fun as Wolverine really is.
Why is this? One thing that Wolverine gets right, and it's fascinating to see the short animated film get this right and not at ALL in the theatrical 2009 feature, is Deadpool. He's introduced here as being apart of the Weapon X program, and as the '(Mercenary) with the Mouth', he's awesome here. He's witty and sarcastic and kinda mean but in a fun killer way (kinda like one of the Warner brothers from Animaniacs or something, I got a Yakko vibe off him), and whenever he's on screen he steals the show even away from someone like Wolverine who as animated here can hold his ground too. The basic idea is that Wolverine is brought to the woods to stop a "monster" from tearing stuff up, sees Bruce Banner, he hulks out, they fight a little... and then it goes into this Weapon X sub-plot, more about Wolverine's origin (sort of) and other things, and while Deadpool made it better and it became more entertaining, the Royal-Rumble aspect seemed lacking until near the latter part of the short.
The Thor short is a little more clever in its set-up: here, Loki, Thor's nasty younger and jealous brother, brings Bruce Banner to Asgard for an express purpose, to have him Hulk-out and kick Thor's ass while under his control (he has some kind of magical power to do this, don't ask me why). There is an odd-sorta-interesting twist that didn't make a lot of sense (then again I've yet to read a lot of Hulk comics) where Banner is actually pulled out of the Hulk's body with magic once he turns into the Hulk and then watches with horror as the Hulk (un, not Banner-Hulk, just Hulk-Hulk) not only tries (but obviously doesn't) kick Thor's ass into oblivion, but Asgard as well.
I did like that aspect about Hulk being let loose by Loki's incompetence and arrogance and that Thor was the only one to stop him, but it also doesn't make for a lot of fun as everything is taken so seriously. Some of the animation in this segment is also better than in Wolverine, so there is that. Bottom line, for Hulk/Wolverine/Thor fans, there's a little of something here for you all, and for the Hulk/Thor combo there's a lot of action and destruction - almost too much, but where would Hulk be without being such a destroyer of things - but each film also suffers from some problems. So it's worth checking out, and since it's on video only there's no other way to really see it, but unless one's a die-hard or starting to really get into Marvel animated work (and to be fair they're underrated up against work by DC animated) it's not worth rushing immediately to see.
