She-Hulk: Attorney At Law – Season 1 Review – IGN

There was a lot of intrigue when She-Hulk: Attorney At Law was announced. After all, Jennifer Walters is the leader of the A-Force, the all-female Avengers team. Now, we may not be in A-Force territory just yet (let’s go, Kevin), but She-Hulk has proven that with a sitcom format, some serious swings, and plenty of cameos and fourths. wall breaks, the world is Jen’s oyster.

The trio of Kat Coiro (executive producer and director), Jessica Gao (executive producer and head writer) and Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk/Jen Walters) isn’t the only reason She-Hulk: Attorney At Law succeeds , but they deserve the lion’s share of the credit between them. Coiro and Gao knew exactly what they wanted to bring to the table with Jen, and there’s no better person on the planet to play her than Maslany (so please take that as a tribute as well to casting directors Sarah Finn and Jason B. Stamey). He’s immediately confident in his irreverent tone, and Jen easily wins our hearts with chronic relatability and instilling an unwavering desire to root for her success.

A sitcom is the perfect vehicle for someone who just wants to be invisible and do their job by suddenly becoming a giant, green, indestructible bomb. Using humor, Gao and the creative team were able to highlight some of the more ridiculous parts of everyday life as a woman while showing the difficulties of having superpowers forced upon you in a way that we hadn’t seen before.

The use of the sitcom format does not break down until the finale, and the same can be said for the fourth wall breaks. Until this latest episode, Jen’s eye contact with the camera and her confidence in humor have served her well. However, a giant bombshell in the penultimate episode left the show unable to come to terms with its tone. Serious problems can be solved with humor, as shown all the time in other episodes 22-24 seasons. Unfortunately, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law seems to be running out of time. Any account of the abject humiliation Jen endures is abandoned in favor of quick humor and a finale that had too much to do in the space of just 30 minutes.

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law’s finale may not be the best installment of the bunch, but that’s not enough to slow down the overall success of the series. Fans feared the series had no value to the overall MCU canon has been proven wrong time and time again, not just with major involvement of characters like Wong (Benedict Wong), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Daredevil (Charlie Cox). ) but with character introductions that have huge implications for the future of the franchise.

The show’s value as something completely new to the Marvel Cinematic Universe also can’t be understated. While the MCU remains largely genderless, this is the first time we’ve seen female sexuality front and center in any of its series. In a world where women are still told they are “asking for it” in any context, Gao and company brought us a woman in her thirties looking for healthy sex and sent Daredevil on the proverbial walk of shame, superhero costume and all. Phase 1 could never.

This freshness isn’t exclusive to his unapologetic approach to Jen’s sex life, either. She-Hulk: Attorney At Law takes toxic masculinity to the test in a way that has never been seen in this franchise or in most mainstream superhero media as a whole. It’s easy to roll your eyes at this and say that there are plenty of other genders already taking turns on the toxic masculinity front, but that’s kind of the point. The sheer number of men young and old who religiously watch the MCU cannot be understated, and She-Hulk squared his shoulders and shouted from the rooftops that “Boys won’t be boys!” The boys will be held accountable for their actions! That’s a big deal for a franchise with as much mass appeal as the MCU, which previously chose to be what they perceived to be the most “widely accessible.” But being “widely accessible” has historically translated to “accessible to men.” I love a Captain America movie as much as the next person, and all kinds of superheroes are for all kinds of people, but it’s exciting to see a wider audience being reached.

Digital effects, meanwhile, have been the elephant in the room ever since the first trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney At Law was released. There are extremely unfounded rumors of a huge per-episode budget for She-Hulk, but there are a few things to consider for what I’m going to say. First of all, these figures are not corroborated by any real source, so they will be treated as a rumor until proven otherwise. But, as someone who started out as a reviewer for the Arrowverse, I didn’t mind the effects that much. Were they flawless? No. Do I stand by what I said in my first review, that Jen looks a little weirder than Hulk because he’s allowed to have blemishes and facial hair? Yeah. It looks like a TV show with a massively computer-generated character. Blaming him for being anything other than what he is seems a little weird to me.

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