‘Hulk Hogan: Actual American’ assessment: Netflix’s four-hour puff piece

these of Netflix Hulk Hogan: a real AmericanBryan Storkel’s four-part tribute to the wrestling legend, shouldn’t be a documentary for many who significantly care about “good” documentaries.

It is a documentary for individuals who care about Hulk Hogan – however who actually solely care deeply concerning the admirable components of Hulk Hogan’s legendary life and can absolutely be happier with a mediocre documentary that emphasizes these components, slightly than documentary that gives substance or depth.

And Hulk Hogan: a real American is totally this mediocre documentary, so get pleasure from!

In different phrases, listed below are three key information factors concerning Hulk Hogan: a real American: First, the title is totally severe and isn’t an interrogation of what it means to be Hulk Hogan and what it means to be a “actual American”, for higher or for worse. Second, the documentary is produced “in affiliation” with WWE Leisure, which has a profitable partnership with Netflix. Third, the President of the USA seems within the documentary — a lackluster look that might have induced a director with journalistic instincts to surprise, “If I am interviewing the President of the USA and he is a awful interview topic, is it OK to chop out the President of the USA?” As an alternative, it’s right here ample and insubstantial.

The reality is I am most likely the one Netflix subscriber watching Hulk Hogan: a real American primarily due to the title Storkel. The director and his spouse Amy labored collectively on this entertaining and foolish movie. The Outlaw Pez and the current SXSW premiere I used to be bombarded at Harvey’stwo documentaries that chronicle eccentric, larger-than-life characters with a particular model and admirable empathy.

Hulk Hogan: a real American has no considerable model to talk of and, as a substitute of empathy, he has admiration; they don’t seem to be the identical issues – a minimum of not if you happen to’re attempting to create a nuanced portrait of an advanced life. The fourth episode of Hulk Hogan: a real American even Werner Herzog presents a thesis for a a lot better documentary than I want Herzog had made.

“Within the lifetime of Hulk Hogan, what’s actuality? What’s the actual fact? Oddly sufficient, the feelings are all the time true, regardless of how loopy and implausible the story could also be. And the seek for fact provides us dignity, provides us that means,” Herzog says, precisely the best way you’d anticipate him to say it.

The suggestion right here – and within the collection’ Netflix logline that begins “Earlier than he was Hulk Hogan, he was Terry Bollea” – is that this. Hulk Hogan: a real American will delve deeper into performativity, American superstar and the cult {of professional} wrestling. As an alternative, Hulk Hogan: a real American is generally about Hulk Hogan, not the human being beneath the bandanas (Terry additionally likes bandanas) and yellow tights, and lets us perceive that Terry Bollea was basically Hulk Hogan with the amount turned down 15 to twenty %. As revelations come and go within the seek for fact, the state of affairs is disappointing.

Hulk Hogan: a real American does very effectively with the straightforward components of Hulk Hogan’s life and fame – the unprecedented rise and extended plateau, throughout which he was probably the most recognizable and maybe most beloved males in all of well-liked tradition.

Boasting copious quantities of residence movie footage and early wrestling paperwork, in addition to exhaustive entry to Hogan, together with the ultimate interviews he performed earlier than his loss of life in July 2025, the documentary traces his journey from outsized Florida bassist Terry Bollea to early wrestling figures together with The Tremendous Destroyer, Terry Boulder and The Unimaginable Hulk Hogan. (No point out is manufactured from the authorized settlement between Hogan and Marvel concerning the use and presentation of the Hulk title, a footnote I’ve all the time discovered very amusing.)

I am an 80s boy who watched a whole lot of wrestling from that interval, in addition to its Saturday morning animated collection. Hulk Hogan’s rock’n’roll wrestling and its varied commercials and cameos saturating the media, so I’ve no hassle stoking nostalgia for The Hulkster and the rise of Hulkamania. Lots of the largest names within the Hogan sphere died comparatively younger, and it is onerous to not miss Andre the Big, Randy Savage and Roddy Piper, amongst others.

Lots of Hogan’s friends make appearances, from Jesse Ventura, on his greatest habits to an unconvincing diploma, to Jimmy Hart, Bret Hart and Ted Dibiase, whereas a number of different contemporaries characteristic in a prolonged “Individuals discover out Hulk Hogan is useless and shake their heads sadly” montage within the finale. However for all of the respect individuals give him, only a few of those contemporaries are as frank or voluble about Hogan.

Linda, Hogan’s first spouse, is an thrilling and fixed presence, as is his son Nick, however his daughter Brooke is nowhere to be discovered. It is one factor for the documentary to say that it desires to introduce us to Terry Bollea versus Hulk Hogan, however there are only a few individuals right here who truly know Terry Bollea – and for many of its first three hours, the doc simply conflates the 2 with out reservation.

An even bigger absence is anybody with the final title “McMahon”, particularly Vince. Brooke Hogan and Vince McMahon are heard in unattributed audio, simply sufficient to make individuals who aren’t paying consideration really feel like they participated within the documentary, regardless that they undoubtedly did not. Varied WWE personalities, together with Bruce Prichard and Paul “Triple H” Levesque, are readily available to speak about Hulk’s significance to the corporate and model. Levesque even has event to debate the choice to fireplace Hulk following varied mid-10s controversies, however when he says he fired Terry Bollea and never Hulk Hogan, it comes throughout as a distinction with out a distinction.

At one level, it turns into exceptional how hesitant the documentary is in the case of something actually problematic or troubling about Hogan’s life and picture. His long-running authorized battle with Richard Belzer over incident/assault in opposition to Belzer’s Sizzling properties? Talked about and acknowledged, however I am undecided you perceive why it is notable. His testimony throughout Vince McMahon’s drug trial in 1994? Introduced primarily as proof of Hogan’s heroism and, resulting from McMahon’s absence, flown via in a means prone to confuse anybody in search of a significant takeaway. A sexual assault cost in 1996 and a countersuit for extortion? Definitely not included.

These are biographical particulars that might come earlier than the documentary’s formal “fall” phase, which makes up the majority of the disjointed and closely glossed over 78-minute finale. This episode covers the Gawker costume in a superficial and one-sided means that doesn’t make any voice of the Gawker aspect and by no means mentions the title “Peter Thiel”. The documentary has no selection however to acknowledge the “racial slurs” side of the intercourse tape story, however if you happen to’re undecided what these “insults” truly have been, nobody says it and the audio is not performed. Hulk has a full 10-year second marriage that the documentary largely pretends did not exist, whereas the affair that contributed to the tip of his marriage to Linda is handled as a one-off affair of remorse, much less talked about than Linda’s personal retaliation affair.

Every little thing that was darkish in Hogan/Bollea’s life was healed by his third spouse – in addition to the invention of Jesus and Donald Trump. These two occasions are handled as parallel, though the latter is extra triumphant than the previous; Donald Trump is a mumbling speaking head right here and Jesus shouldn’t be.

Hogan’s loss of life, which stunned everybody – together with the filmmakers – is acknowledged as a minimum of considerably a product of the skilled wrestling life-style, nevertheless it additionally imposes a finality and reverential tone that does the documentary a disservice.

There’s one thing poignant about all the pictures of an getting old Hogan supported by youthful wrestlers within the ring, however unable to retreat from the highlight resulting from monetary wants and contractual obligations. There’s a model of this documentary that would critically study the toll wrestling took on Hogan and his prematurely aged and deceased colleagues. Maybe this documentary would have mirrored on the decades-long exploitation of those males (and a few ladies) and the way it would not have occurred if skilled wrestlers had efficiently unionized within the ’80s. However that might have required Hulk Hogan: a real American admitting that one of many wrestlers who allegedly opposed this unionization effort was Hulk Hogan.

There is a good, no-nonsense documentary about Hulk Hogan, skilled wrestling, and the formation of turn-of-the-century American id (and the rise of Hulk’s buddy to the White Home). As an alternative, we get this memory-filled, corporate-backed hagiography stuffed with gaps. THE Hulk Hogan: a real American the audience might be happier this fashion.