“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” reveals its mission statement in the middle of episode one.
Jennifer Walter’s cousin, Bruce Banner, cautions her about controlling her anger. Her answer says, well, everything.
“I do it all the time. When I’m cat-called in the street, when incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me, I do it pretty much every day because if I don’t I’ll get called ’emotional, or difficult’ or might just literally get murdered.”
The show’s woke meter just hit red, and we haven’t gotten to the empowering scene where a colleague replaces Jen’s high heels with more sensible pumps.
Anyone wondering how woke the MCU will go in Phase 4 gets their answer here.
What’s missing? Laughs, for one, and the sense that we’re itching to spend more time with this professional victim.
The first episode deposits Jen (“Orphan Black” alum Tatiana Maslany) in the courtroom, but before long she’s breaking the fourth wall to explain how she became part lawyer, part superhero.
That’s a tic taken directly from the comic book source material, but it’s hardly innovative in 2022. Still, it plays into the loose comic tone defining the Disney+ property.
A freak accident while driving with cousin Bruce (Mark Ruffalo) – permanently stuck between his human and Hulk persona – transformed Jen into She-Hulk. Bruce tries to caution her about her new reality, leaning on his own life experiences in the process.
She’s a superhero now, and she better get used to it.
Jen isn’t like Bruce, though. She has more control of how she transforms, and she lacks the uncontrolled rage that made the original Hulk so much fun.
Can we go back to that, MCU overlords? Please?
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The first episode finds Jen and Bruce butting heads over her immediate future. It’s silly and rarely comical, and it reveals Jen to be both brittle and unpleasant.
Maslany proved her chameleon-like gifts in “Orphan Black,” but even she can’t make Jen appealing early in the series. She’s not Captain Marvel-level smug, but it’s close.
Bruce fares badly, too. Ruffalo is always solid, but his character’s unwillingness to see Jen’s arguments plays out like a lame narrative shortcut.
There must be tension here, therefore Bruce is thick-headed to the core.
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We do get two superhero-style moments. One involves Bruce and Jen brawling over one of their many arguments. It’s fine, nothing more.
The other? A brief appearance by future villain Jameela Jamil, who looks ridiculous and barely makes an impression.
That’s Titania, an influencer/supervillain, and we’ll be seeing more of her soon.
Those sweating over the troubling CGI can find some issues here, but it’s more than acceptable for a TV series and no longer a distraction.
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There’s plenty of meaty material here, from a superhero balancing her work/life balance to Jen’s future mission – defending supervillains.
The industry that collectively wants to cancel Donald Trump out of the public sphere wants us to cheer on an attorney protecting super-thugs.
On paper, that might be interesting.
Debut episodes have plenty working against them. We don’t know the sweep of a series yet, nor the full measure of the main characters.
“She-Hulk: Attorney at Law” is off to a lousy start any way you look at it.
Damn, when did people become so deep. Look way into a story of fiction. This isn’t real and if this show triggers you, your too damn sensitive. It’s just a tv show it’s not gonna change the world. Do you even live in the real world or do you all just exist in the metaverse now. Go outside.
It’s funny to me how hypocritical the anti woke movement has become, now adopting the most obvious examples of triggered in the internet space consistently. For all those complaining about she hulk out doing hulk and hulk warning it’s not that easy….do you honestly think that’s not the point? That she absolutely will not be humbled at some point dramatically. Ur commentary on the defense of criminals is rich…which ultimately makes it vapid. The point again is that we don’t look at things all the time as binary black and white issues. The villains have been accused of being too simple and lacking nuance. Welcome to nuance. Abominations take on being used by government is particularly poignant. And why the hell do we care if there are some girl power centric moments….anyone remember when such was applauded as just a natural narrative, when spice girls ruled the charts and it was just nice sentiment and this shows inspiration ally mcbeal attempted to wield it? Quit whining about anything. Or if you’re going to just admit you pander to an easy audience…with little regard for actual criticism.
I watched the first episode a second time just to see how much I may have overlooked. I think as ubiquitous as all the woke, female empowerment stuff just becomes white noise after a while. But the thing that kind of struck me was that the cgi character has little to no muscle definition, which is really apparent when she’s on the screen with Banner’s Hulk. But she is built like a brick s**thouse, something that is even referenced favorably in the trailers, as she enjoys other women tell her how awesome her derriere looks. Isn’t that sort of “anti-feminist?” Aren’t they worried about the “male gaze” here? Or does that not apply when the character is cgi? Because rad-fems certainly go after the comics and video games for their portrayals of women. Just seems a bit inconsistent to me.
The female orc in the commercial for Raid Shadow Legends the MOBILE GAME looks vastly more realistic (and more attractive) than She-Hulk. There’s no excuse for how she looks it’s critically bad, like Xbox bad. The angry feminism was a surprise (I never predicted they would use a sledgehammer quite that big) and they basically edited Titania out of her own grand entrance lol. This is a dumpster fire train wreck.
Haven’t watched yet cuz the cgi in the overview looked like it was from the 90s but Disney + is really hit or miss with the shows. while Wanda vision and loki and moon night were interesting and character developing later ones like Hawkeye and miss marvel really missed the mark on story. miss marvel had a lot of sorry about Pakistani history which was nice but it did nothing to descr8be the whole bad guys, who they were or what was going on, that bulk story felt completely missing and same with the red dagger guys. when they killed the main one u didn’t care cuz u weren’t invested in him AT ALL
Kevin Feige seems to think cramming a square peg through a round hole and covering the result with glitter will pass muster. He’s really taken the MCU down a very long, boring road. Ms. Marvel was by far the worst, and it sounds like She-Hulk is going that route too.
Are all the new women super heroes going to have the sarcastic, coy, Brie Larson demeanor? Too bad.
So tired of this. I was subscribed to Disney+ but after the Hawkeye fiasco (and others, too, but Hawkeye was especially lame) I cancelled.
If you are determined to create superwoke feminist/POC heroes then do so and let them rise or fall on their own. It is a total BS move to build up these fourth rate characters by tearing down established top tier characters.
FYI, Clint Barton is old, tired, half deaf, and had been trying to retire from the Avengers since Age of Ultron.
How is showing his human frailties “tearing him down”?
Do you even know anyone over 50yo?
Perhaps Renner shouldn’t have accepted the role.
I’m guessing you pee sitting down – how close am I to the truth?
“Do you even know anyone over 50yo?”
You evidently have an ageist view of people over 50.
It’s only the males that get torn down now, that’s the point. Female characters are too strong to have any journey, growth, or comeuppance for characters flaws. Hawkeye the show wasn’t even about Hawkeye. Falcon and Winter Soldier was about racial politics. She-Hulk is about feminism. Obi Wan was all about Leia. Boba Fett became a sensitive beta. Do you wonder why they keep losing money on all these shows?
Funny. If everyone was trying to compare themselves to Chuck Liddell,.I might get the idea that he is… Superior?
Feminists are dumb
It’s unlikely to help this series with some of the MCU’s remaining hardcore fans that She-Hulk is apparently immediately better than the Hulk at everything, continuing Disney’s trend of making female characters better than male legacy characters in nearly every IP.
You obviously didn’t read the source material, lol!
So? Since when did canon source material matter to screenwriters (e.g., Tobey Maquire’s Spiderman origin didn’t have web shooters, various Batmans (Batmen?) were anti-gun).
I read the source material. There was never any reason to make her “better” than The Hulk at anything. The She-Hulk is not as ferocious as Banner when angered (and thus more intelligent) because she received her power from a blood transfusion — not a nuclear-testing explosion.