She-Hulk — The Failure is Complete
She-Hulk Attorney at Law is finally over and thank God for that! Putting myself through that show was worse than a day at Abu Graib. Where do I even begin with this one? Disney Marvel shows seem to be a never ending race to the bottom. Consistently shitting on legacy characters and deconstructing them into oblivion. All this is done in a desperate attempt to launch the next product, err I mean show, and keep the sludge flowing. But where does this sewer finally end?
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As bad as Marvel shows at Disney have been so far, prior to She-Hulk, there seemed to be at least some attempt at telling a coherent story and some semblance of quality control. First let’s start with the woke messaging of the show. When Jennifer Walters, played by Tatiana Maslany, the cousin of Bruce Banner, becomes contaminated with the blood of the Hulk, her body undergoes a radical transformation into the She-Hulk. This deviated largely from the comics origin story where Hulk saves her life by infusing some of his own blood. This is woke Disney at its finest and we simply cannot have a man save a woman, ever. And unlike Bruce, Jen has absolute mastery of her ability to change forms and exists as one self-identified being. There is no struggle, no moral lesson, just good old fashioned narcissism.
In a week where we had some actually good material coming out of Disney with Andor and Werewolf by Night, both of which I reviewed positively, She-Hulk has to come along and vomitted all over the room.
It’s like any time Disney builds up some positive sentiment, they have to come back and ruin it all with woke garbage. Now, the writing and creative direction of this show may have been set before Disney’s new CEO Bob Chapek. Chapek has recognized that this woke garbage is losing the company money and he’s taken to cleaning house. But Disney’s problems are so pervasive, that it will take some time for him to fire all the woke activists.
Writing problems aside, the show made no effort to even make the visuals look any good. The series starts out somewhat decently with the effects on Bruce and Jen. There’s a texture to their skin and some attention to detail. But once Bruce leaves the show, the special effects go right down the toilet. Once Jen becomes a high powered lawyer for super heroes, the effects take a dramatic downturn. Not only is the skin texture gone, but her shade of green is completely different. I watched this on several different screens just to make sure it wasn’t my TV.
And it’s not just the look of She-Hulk, but her movement is entirely artificial. As She Hulk she is nearly seven feet tall. There should be some weight to her frame of pure muscle. But instead, she seems to float around every scene, failing to make contact with her surrounding environment.
The content of the story itself leaves a lot to be desired. The show touts itself as Ally McBeal meets the MCU, but it’s anything but. The writers even admitted to never having written about the law before and it shows. Having watched some lawyer based shows before, I can honestly say, these writers have no clue. Their attempt at humor really just boils down to degrading men rather than uplifting women. Shoe horning in cameos and MCU references is fine, but when you degrade beloved classic characters like Wong and Daredevil into these hapless half-wits, you lose most of your core audience. These writers are writing for an audience that doesn’t exist. Single women in their late 30s aren’t going to be watching this. The original She Hulk comic wasn’t popular with girls but with teenage boys obsessed with She Hulk’s chest.
I know that not all stories have to be curated for every viewer. However, if a show is marked as a comedy, it needs to be funny, and having every joke degrade the other male characters in the scene gets old really quick. How about writing some actual comedy that makes some intelligent social commentary. For example, in a recent episode of Beavis and Butt-Head, they are picked for jury duty and the entire episode becomes a hysterical allegory for our broken legal and justice system. See that’s the difference between intelligent writers like Mike Judge, and these woke Disney writers. Mike Judge can actually take a real life situation and apply it to the characters and settings of his show. These Disney writers have no clue what’s going on in the real world and end up making things up that are patently false and unrealistic.
The story attempts a bold move by trying to be more than a simple comedy and including social commentary on the experience and existence of the modern woman. But it’s written by single cat ladies who were never successful themselves. So instead they take to shitting on everyone else. They write Jennifer Walters out to be a complete narcissist who can do no wrong and is automatically good at everything without having to struggle for anything.
This doesn’t make for a relatable character. People want to see themselves in a character. People in the real world have struggles and everyday problems that they have to overcome. They can’t relate to a character that’s automatically awesome at everything. Moreover, it’s really difficult being around a person that shits on everything and everyone around them as Jennifer Walters was written. It’s toxic and no one wants to be around that, let alone watch it on TV.
The action in the show is used sparingly, so we can’t even get a decent comic book based show. The camera work and cinematography are shoddy at best and it feels like a clunky Warner DC show than the quality MCU we’ve grown accustomed to. As for the season finale, it felt like a very cheap cop-out to subvert the main narrative with a meta joke that was more confusing than actually funny. It left me scratching my head thinking, that wasn’t really funny. It’s quite sad actually.
Overall, She-Hulk Season 1 had all the wrong things going for it despite having had decades of material to pull from. The show never picked a firm narrative as it pivoted from comedy to action, to failed social commentary, to rom-com. Marvel used to be a good escape. It used to be a world you could be pulled into with characters whose journeys you felt like you were a part of. She-Hulk is so incredibly poorly written, that no functioning human with a brain can relate to this show. And it’s a shame because, Disney has had some decent successes lately with the likes of Andor and Werewolf by Night. Here’s hoping Bob Chapek can get rid of the woke activists and get Disney back on course to making quality material like they used to.
If you like this review, check out the video review on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lPxaLEI3pI&ab_channel=OffTheCover