Wednesday, August 17, 2022

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - A Normal Amount of Rage

Originally introduced back in 1980, She-Hulk has been around the Marvel Universe as a member of various teams include the Avengers and the Fantastic Four but her greatest success came from the 1989 series by John Byrne who kept the character in Hulk mode permanently, allowed her to break the fourth-wall and talk directly to the writer, and often had fun satirizing the hero genre and pushing the limits of the Comics Code. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law attempts to find a way to bring that sensibility to the screen while offering an earlier version of Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) who, like her cousin Bruce (Mark Ruffalo), can transform between human and Hulk.

The opening episode of the series introduces us to Jen and hugely-simplified accident which exposed her to her cousin's blood and made her a Hulk (no life-saving blood transfusion here). Searching for a tone and settling on something closer to a sitcom that what MCU has offered in the past, what both Bruce and the audience discover is Jen is far better at controlling her Hulkness than Bruce was at the beginning. There's no other consciousness she's fighting and she keeps her personality while in Hulk form which is dubbed She-Hulk by the local media after she returns from training and Hulks out in court to stop a rampaging Titania (Jameela Jamil).

As in the comic, this version of Jen will break the fourth-wall. However, rather than complaining to or about the latest situation to what the writer has gotten her into, this version of Jen talks to the audience setting up flashbacks or making commentary on her dopey male colleagues. It's an important difference that doesn't offer the same irreverence that Deadpool brought to live-action. The opener is very much on set on the introduction to her character, and new changes she's apparently far better equipped to handle than her cousin (and others she may not be) does feel a bit disconnected to the episodes that will follow which are more about Jen finding her place in the world after becoming She-Hulk.

  • Title: She-Hulk: Attorney at Law - A Normal Amount of Rage
  • IMDb: link

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