She-Hulk: Attorney at Law review: a lean, green, uncanny valley machine - The Verge

Disney Plus’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law — out August 18th — uses its irreverent sense of self-aware humor and an overabundance of cameos in the best way possible.

She-Hulk herself isn’t a telepath, but Disney Plus’ She-Hulk: Attorney at Law knows exactly what you were thinking when you first saw its statuesque heroine in all her uncanny VFX glory, and it appreciates all the feedback. While She-Hulk’s frequent forays into the uncanny valley feel like an undeniable sign of the less than ideal conditions its visual effects were produced under, the show as a whole is a surprisingly refreshing spin on Marvel’s small screen character studies — one that feels like the precursor to something new yet very familiar.

After multiple Phases full of hero origin series like Daredevil and Moon Knight that gradually teased out how their titular vigilantes became super, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law switches things up by immediately dropping you into the deep end of Jennifer Walters’ (Tatiana Maslany) life with little warning. Much like her counterpart in the comics, She-Hulk’s Jen is an exceedingly talented but pathologically sheepish lawyer whose entire world is upended by a freak accident that leaves her with a set of superpowers very similar to her hulking cousin Bruce Banner’s (Mark Ruffalo).

Smart Hulk and She-Hulk meditating together on an island.

    Image: Marvel Studios
  

The exact circumstances of how the MCU’s Jen — normally a mousy, easily frazzled woman Maslany plays very down the middle — wakes up super strong, more than a foot taller, and a striking shade of green are somewhat different than how it plays out in the comics. But enough of the source material’s beats are present to make it clear that She-Hulk’s well aware of its own absurdity, and the show wants you to get in on its jokes about itself. Almost from the moment Jennifer’s introduced, she’s already breaking the fourth wall to insist that She-Hulk isn’t exactly a superhero show and that nothing about her life has to change even with her newfound Hulk powers because she’s always in complete control.

This, of course, couldn’t be further from the truth, and She-Hulk’s first few episodes are in large part a comedic study about what happens to an ordinary person who suddenly becomes an “enhanced individual” in the MCU. But instead of simply framing Jennifer as yet another brooding hero who has to self-actualize before taking a codename and putting on a costume, She-Hulk presents her reluctance about becoming a known super quantity as something crucial to understanding who she is. Hulk powers or not, Jennifer prefers fighting in the courtroom alongside her paralegal Nikki Ramos (Ginger Gonzaga), where she knows they can use their legal prowess to change lives in ways that none of the Avengers ever could. Even more importantly, though, Jen’s genuinely not all that interested in being a superhero even though it’s what the entire world and her own TV show expect from her.

More than any of the big-name heroes or villains Jen crosses paths with in a professional capacity, it’s managing people’s ideas about who and what she is that gives her the most trouble throughout She-Hulk’s first season. Regardless of whether she’s dealing with her sexist colleagues or her well-meaning cousin, scarcely anyone in Jennifer’s life really trusts her ability to make smart decisions. But that’s not quite the case when she’s in her She-Hulk form, and even though that double standard understandably pisses Jen off, it’s once she starts using it to her advantage that She-Hulk really starts to pick up.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/17/23299874/she-hulk-attorney-at-law-review

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