Thoughts on Marvel's She-Hulk: Attorney at Law

"Utter shit!"  

"This show is terrible!"  

"Marvel is going downhill!"  

Etc., etc., etc.

Is that what I'm expected to say?

The thing is, I kind of like She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.  I watched episode 7 last night and while yes, this show has problems, it's not that bad.

I have to be real here and say I haven't seen all of the Marvel shows.  I watched the Netflix series up to The Defenders.  I watched bits of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  I tried and failed with Agent Carter and The Inhumans.  I didn't bother with Runaways, Cloak and Dagger and Helstrom.  I probably won't bother with Adventure Into Fear either.

As far as the Marvel Studios shows go, I enjoyed Wandavision the most.  I thought the ending of that show was weak, but it was a good setup for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which should have, in my opinion, featured Scarlet Witch instead of Doctor Strange.

I couldn't get into The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Moon Knight.  I still think Loki is terrible.  Hawkeye bored me, and I've only seen parts of What If...?  I might see Ms. Marvel, but then again I might not.  I loved the comic book series, and I'm worried the show will ruin my memories of the comic.

And She-Hulk?  I grew up reading those comics, but I haven't read any of them since I was little.  I was fascinated by the Hulk, and those She-Hulk comics were often a nice sidestep into other aspects of an evolving process of hulkification.

(Whatever that means.)

But yeah, I kind of like She-Hulk.  It's very dumb, but for all its dumbness it's entertaining.  Tatiana Maslany is a great actress, and despite plot holes and other problems with the writing she remains convincing as both Jennifer Walters and She-Hulk.  Is the CGI in the show awesome?  NOPE, but I will say that the CGI in episode 7 looks better, and that moment where Jennifer is at Blonsky's retreat struggling with the dichotomy between Jen and She-Hulk really sold the character for me.

No, I don't know why she didn't just turn into She-Hulk, jump a few miles away and get better cellphone service, and no, I don't know why her car getting smashed was such a monumental problem, but that moment in the group made the show very relatable, and it's a better moment than the best moments in many other Marvel shows.

Which is not to say that the pacing in this show isn't an issue.  Whoever's writing the scripts seems to be in a godawful rush to get to each episode's conclusion, almost as if they either didn't know how to reach that conclusion or they didn't want to be writing the script in the first place.  The actors involved are game enough, and the rom-com vibe could have worked, but this show really needs to slow down.  That big, season-ending conclusion needs to be earned.

I just hope they tap the brakes for the last two episodes.  No need to have some world-ending villain appear out of nowhere.  She-Hulk's struggle can remain a personal one, and bringing in some ridiculous bad guy so close to the end of the series will probably do more harm than good.

For what it's worth I'd like to see more of She-Hulk in a feature film.  With better CGI Tatiana Maslany can easily carry the role, and this is one instance where a character's diversity really will make a cinematic universe both more inclusive and more interesting.

Related Entries:

"The Vision" by Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Others (2017)

"Marvel 1602" by Neil Gaiman, Andy Kubert and Others (2013)

"Marvel Greatest Comics: 100 Comics That Build a Universe" by Melanie Scott and Stephen Wiacek (2020)

Thoughts on Zack Snyder's Justice League

Fun Fact 1: They wanted to include She-Hulk in The Death of the Incredible Hulk TV movie, way back in 1990.

Fun Fact 2: Later still New World Pictures planned on making a She-Hulk movie, with Brigitte Nielsen as Jennifer Walters/She-Hulk.  There are photos here.

Sad Reflection: And what about Marvel's other (more) interesting female superheroine?  What about Spider-Woman?  You'd think Sony would make a Spider-Woman film a priority, but no, no plans for Jessica Drew as yet.  Maybe they're doing us a favor?

Update: After writing this I watched the first episode of Ms. Marvel and the first three episodes of the Netflix Punisher series.  Ms. Marvel lost me at the end of the first episode, while that extended torture/interrogation scene in Punisher just started to seem ridiculous.  I'll definitely watch the remaining two episodes of She-Hulk, but I'm not sure about Ms. Marvel and Punisher.

The FoX-men No More? FoxTastic No Longer?

It looks like Disney's going to buy Fox - or at least part of Fox - which means - if this whole deal is completed to everyone's satisfaction - that the X-men, the Fantastic Four, and whoever else will be returning to Marvel.

This is pretty good news.  Not that I have too much of an opinion about it, but just the same I'd LOVE to see the Fantastic Four done right.  I don't really have a big problem with the Tim Story movies - aside from the fact that they ruined Galactus - but the idea of Reed Richards, Susan Storm, Johnny Storm, and Ben Grimm (not to mention the Silver Surfer!) showing up in a Marvel movie has me excited.

If you don't follow comics that much (and how many do lately?), a lot of the seminal Marvel stories feature one or more members of the Fantastic Four.  Marvel has thus far avoided including references to them in movies like Civil War and the upcoming Infinity War, but it's great that they (probably) won't have to dance around this particular loophole in the future.  Anyone who knows comics will be glad at the thought of Ben Grimm facing off against the Hulk, or of Reed Richards causing trouble for Tony Stark, or of the potential cuckolding Reed faces at the hands of whoever wants to bang Susan Storm.  I don't regard the Human Torch as being quite so essential to any comic book saga, but sure, he's great too.

And the X-men?  They're a thornier problem, though of course I'd love it if Marvel took another crack at their origin story.  It's not that First Class wasn't an excellent movie, I just think Marvel would have a lot to add to that story as well.  FINALLY we can admit that yes, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are Magneto's children, and FINALLY a studio can approach the X-men's origins without worrying overmuch about copyright infringement.

But the downside to all of this is the (possible) inclusion of mutants into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  And while I don't think that Kevin Feige is in a hurry to "water down" what Marvel has painstakingly built, the idea of combining the X-men and the Avengers at some point is going to be a powerful temptation.

The trouble being that if you have this group of people who get their powers from a mutant gene, then the non-mutants don't seem so remarkable.  Is Hulk cool when you have a Juggernaut?  Is Captain America cool when you have Wolverine?  Certainly seeing these characters on screen together is something that we all want on some level, but even in the comics Marvel is very, VERY careful about how (and how often) they do it.  You don't see Spider-man popping up that often in the pages of X-men.  You don't see Professor X hanging out that much with Doctor Strange.  Sure, these things happen, but the better writers know that when it comes to combining these properties, less is definitely more.

Not that I wouldn't love to see Deadpool make fun of the Avengers.  But he could do that in "his own" movie, and it wouldn't fracture the integrity of the MCU too much.  And yes, seeing Wolverine as an Avenger would be great, but if the cost is mixing too many mutants and non-mutants together then I'd rather they avoided it.

It is fun to think about though.  If this deal goes through, the future of both the MCU and the X-men cinematic universe is wide open.  A Dark Phoenix Saga featuring the entire MCU?  That would definitely beat the hell out of whatever Fox is making now.

Tron

I have seen Tron so many times that I've lost count.  I like it because it's a good movie.  I also like it because many of my childhood memories are connected, in some way, to this film.

Before I go on, I should say that, yes, I've seen Tron Legacy, and yes, I was immensely disappointed by it.  The cutting edge FX used in the sequel may have paralleled the original, but the first Tron is a great adventure movie.  The sequel is, in comparison, just dumb.  I say this as someone who was ready to give Tron Legacy a chance, as someone who wanted it to be good, but within the first ten minutes I realized that the second Tron was going to be a let-down.

The first Tron is much better.  The acting's not bad, the score is GREAT, and the plot is good if you don't think about it too hard.  Tron also says a lot about the early 1980s, and where technology was headed back then.  This was in the era of arcades, when we were all busy pouring quarters into Pac-man, Ghosts and Goblins, and yes, Tron.  There wasn't just one arcade game to go along with the movie, there were TWO.

And this is where my childhood creeps into the picture, because I was about 7 years old when this movie came out.  I was also one of those kids pouring quarters in Tron.  My parents took me to see Tron in the theater, and it blew me away. 

I also owned the Tron action figures, if anyone remembers those!

I would heartily recommend Tron if you haven't seen it already.  You may not have enough nostalgia working in your favor to love this movie, but odds are you'll at least like it.