Legal arena goes green as latest MCU venture plays superhero for laughs
She-Hulk: Attorney At Law splashes the screen with fervor and angst as the newest project from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It follows the adventures of belittled lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), who struggles to balance superhero and courtroom conflicts after being infused with the powers and blood of her cousin, Bruce Banner A.K.A the Hulk. Other notables include Mark Ruffalo reprising his role as everyone’s favorite mean green fighting machine, Benedict Wong, stealing the show, per usual, in his seventh outing as the sorcerer supreme, and Tim Roth returning as Emil Blonsky in a much less hostile appearance.
The show favors a more episodic, story-of-the-week structure, rather than one continuous story like other Marvel titles. The thread that binds them all together is the drama of Walters coming to grips with her new, unfortunate circumstances. Throughout the course of the first four episodes, she has to reconcile with the modern day troubles of being a woman with power, specifically represented with the immense responsibility of being a Hulk. The show comments on gender roles, misogyny, and power dynamics in a usually engaging way, all while cramming in fun ties to the larger MCU and joyous moments between endearing characters.
She-Hulk has been the center of quite a controversy as a certain fraction of the fanbases defiantly cries out against the representation of feminist ideals, labeling it as “woke,” which is just a juvenile and ludicrous fallacy. This even led to a plethora of enraged delinquents review bombing the show in its infancy. It’s become so severe that, according to Forbes, “more than a third of all reviews for She-Hulk are one star” (Tassi, 2022). Many insecure rubes have targeted this show due to the mention of gender politics and the presence of a main female character. This has led people astray from the actual faults of the show to focus on misogynistic lunacy instead.
Maslany carries the laughs with quick, dry wit and excellent comedic timing, thus cementing her as the one and only actor to inhabit this character. Her energetic performance motivates the most hilarious moments and brings a warmth to the cold and formulaic clichés that have defined the MCU for too long. That is She-Hulk's greatest strength; it provides a joyous look and much smaller scope to help enjoy the behemoth the MCU has become. By focusing on smaller scale events and people, She-Hulk allows further room to breathe without Infinity Stones or Multiversal complications.
However, this choice does cause the pacing of the story to stall and leads to questionable story developments that cause frustration. This can be clearly observed in episode three, where potentially engaging character moments between Blonsky and Walters are overshadowed by magical elf hijinks. This rather poor story structure leads to a lack of stakes. While the characters are cute, few actually go deeper than the shallows, which causes the audience to not be invested in what happens to them. Most of these issues can be attributed to only half the season being released. The beginning of the show seems to stall in the mud and twirl its hair for the first few episodes without establishing a compelling conflict. The main antagonist, if one can even call her that, lacks any development and only has appeared for a cumulative four minutes. This focus on becoming the MCU’s first sitcom leads a majority of screen time to be dedicated to humor. Besides the initial shock and awe of the jokes, it leaves the audience feeling hollow and unphased.
Another major aspect as to why it feels so disconnected and empty are the rudimentary special effects surrounding the main character. Many hyperbolic statements have compared the visual effects to video games or other less realistic forms of media - which is immensely over exaggerated. Now that is not to say that the effects are ahead of the curve, because they most certainly are not. She-Hulk doesn’t feel real; she doesn’t feel tangible. She moves without the weight and presence of other characters. The animation is quite bizarre, feeling janky and robotic, giving the uncanny valley effect similar to the animation of the early 2000’s. This issue continues to separate the audience from the characters and story.
She-Hulk provides a good step forward for superhero content. It omits the big, dumb, action blockbuster tropes that have defined the genre for the last decade. Instead, it utilizes the cute and quirky nature of the character to its advantage and creates a unique style. However, it does not go far enough to capitalize on this potential, resulting in a bland facade rather than actually standing out. As the show goes on, it will have chances to redeem itself and push past these faults but that hope has slimmed down significantly over the past few weeks. Overall, She-Hulk’s mediocrity mainly stems from the monopolizing company to which it is beholden, one that favors quantity over quality.
by Marcus Miller
Published October 3rd, 2022
Oshkosh West Index Volume 119 Issue 1