THE INCREDIBLE HULK: TIM ROTH

NEW YORK -- "He's not a bad guy, he's a good guy."

That's an attitude that prevails among many of Marvel Studios' film villains, and it's one that Tim Roth applies to Emil Blonsky, aka Abomination, in The Incredible Hulk.

"He's a very, very good soldier," Roth told The Continuum at the recent New York Comic Con. "He is a guy who is just excellent in many war situations. He's the kind of guy you can drop behind the lines, leave him on his own and he can get out of trouble. He's that kind of guy, but he's come to the end of his career. It's over now. He's still active, and they still call him, but he can see it's going to end.

"And then he catches a glimpse of something that's not supposed to exist in this world and that propels him on to something else."

Blonsky is subjected to the Super Soldier serum -- "He wants to extend his shelf life," Roth said -- which results in the transformation into the Abomination.

Roth noted that because the Cold War is over, the movie version of Blonsky is different from the comics version. There's still a shadiness to him, though.

"He has an irreverence," said Roth, who got to keep his tattoos for the character. "The character's not exactly very good with authority. And so he's bringing a sense of mischief."

How did Roth become involved with The Incredible Hulk?

"They asked me," he said matter-of-factly. "It's been a couple of years just doing very different things. I just want to spread and do some very different stuff and experiment. And this came along. And I've never done this sort of this. And I liked it."

In terms of the computer-generated Abomination, Roth said he was involved with how the character moves. "We wanted to separate the Hulk and Abomination," he said.

Roth said he didn't get to work with Incredible Hulk star and screenwriter Edward Norton too much.

"What's happening is I'm chasing him and he's running," he said. "And when he stops, he's big and he's green. But we spent a lot of time working before filming on back story, and he's very, very detailed."