A cross examination of the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law trailer

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A cross examination of the She-Hulk: Attorney at Law trailer

Sat, 05/21/2022 - 00:54
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Well here we are, the fifth Marvel column in a row. It isn’t so much that I plan on talking about Marvel and their vast library of properties all the time, but they are also the only group putting out a steady stream of these things. I promise the next five won’t be Marvel related.

So with that out of the way, the trailer for She-Hulk: Attorney at Law dropped and finally gave us a good look at the titular heroine, and…..it looks pretty good.

There have been complaints online about the CGI effects used on the character, but I’d posit that a) this show doesn’t come out till August so they have time to refine the effects, and b) green is always going to be a weird color on a human, it’s an uncanny valley sort of thing I believe (go back and watch any previous Hulk movie, you’ll see what I mean).

I don’t think we’ve covered She-Hulk previously, so the first half here will be devoted to her history and the second to the trailer itself.

So the story goes, after the success of Marvel’s The Incredible Hulk tv series with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno, and the success of another concurrently airing show, The Bionic Woman, Marvel was worried that the studio would try to introduce a female version of the Hulk, something producer Kenneth Johnson (creator of V and the aforementioned other shows) had done before with The Six Million Dollar Man. So Stan Lee created She-Hulk to ensure that Marvel had the rights to the character.

She-Hulk, aka Jennifer Walters, is a lawyer and cousin to Bruce Banner/ Hulk. In the comics, she received her powers after receiving a blood transfusion from Banner, the result of which made her a gamma mutate like himself.

Originally, Walters would take on a form with a disposition similar to her cousin (Angry! Smash! Talk in third person!), but this eventually changed to her retaining her intelligence and emotional control while being far more outgoing, energetic and fun as She-Hulk. In fact, for a period of time in the comics, She-Hulk was able to stay in her transformed state permanently.

She-Hulk comics often took a fun and satirical approach to the medium with some frequent fourth-wall breaking. In her time in the comics, She-Hulk has been a member of the Avengers, she temporarily replaced Thing in the Fantastic Four when he had lost his superpowers, and she has also served as a lawyer in many cases involving superpowered individuals which seems to be the direction the show is going.

As for the trailer breakdown, most of what I mentioned above seems to remain true with regard to Walters. We also see that she is training with Banner (who is still in his “Smart” Hulk persona) and we get a look at a returning Marvel villains in Emil Blonsky aka the Abomination. Abomination was last seen in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings last year, but before that, made his debut all the way back in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk.

There are some new villains seen in the trailer including Jameela Jamil as Titania, a character introduced in the Secret Wars limited series who would later become a rival to She-Hulk. We also caught a blink-and-you-miss-it look at D-List Marvel villain Frog-Man, a foe of Daredevil, Spider-Man and Iron Man. Frog-Man’s inclusion seems to indicate that we might see a villain of the week style show with some minor (and maybe major) villains that will be involved in court cases during the series. Personally, I’m picturing something akin to a cross between Ally McBeal and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law with some MCU-flare.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is set to premiere on August 17 of this year on Disney+. We’ll have Ms. Marvel and Thor: Love and Thunder released between then and now for the MCU. But as I promised, next week will not be Marvel themed, in fact we’ll probably be taking a nice long Marvel break for a bit.

So next week, anticipate something different.