Go Big Green

The downside of writing about Marvel’s She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is having to do it from watching just one episode of the show. I’ve always believed in reviewing an episodic series after consuming as much of it as possible – which can be a grueling task when you’ve committed to getting through the entirety of a show that exhausts its full slate of ideas or appeal in its first twenty minutes – I’m looking at you, Jupiter’s Legacy – or insists on cycling through the same handful of scenes for an entire season, as was the case with certain early Marvel shows.

And full disclosure: Disney did indeed offer me an early look at the first few episodes of She-Hulk, but with the now-standard NDA requirements that would have made me promise to watch them in total isolation, in circumstances where no one else could possibly make eye contact with the screen – which is difficult when one’s projector is located in a windowed studio – and also with my e-mail and IP addresses superimposed on the image. This has been the case with every Marvel property since Hawkeye, and while I understand the mechanics of secure digital screeners, I have no interest in contributing to this sort of overreach on the part of a global corporation. So I’ll watch She-Hulk as it comes out, and that’s fine. Because I’m really liking She-Hulk.

The thing is, the first episode of She-Hulk is probably not anything at all like the rest of the series: It’s the origin story, a flashback to the accident that led to idealistic young lawyer Jennifer Walters being splashed with her cousin Bruce Banner’s gamma-irradiated blood and developing her own emerald alter ego – though, as in the comics, Jen’s consciousness is still in command of into her giant green form.

Nerd alert: The mechanics of the accident are very different, thanks to all the compounded tweaks to Bruce Banner canon over the decade or so of the ongoing Marvel movie project, and also they have to account for the post-Endgame timeline and how Mark Ruffalo can be playing Bruce as a human after all the “Smart Hulk” stuff in that movie. As someone who read She-Hulk in its original run, and enjoyed all the weird places John Byrne and Dan Slott would subsequently take the character in their respective runs, the revisions do not bother me in the slightest because comics and movies are different things, and also who cares because this gets us Tatiana Maslany into the MCU as Jen Walters and it might be the single best piece of casting since, I dunno, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang.

I’ve been a fan of Tatiana Maslany’s since Adriana Maggs’ Grown-Up Movie Star back in 2009, and watching the rest of the industry catch up to her over the last decade – especially once Orphan Black offered her a showcase for her versatility and the joy of performance she manages to encapsulate even in her most serious work – has been an absolute pleasure. Toronto being Toronto, I’ve also gotten to know her a little bit over the years, and it’s been wonderful to see her having fun on the ride; just listen to her appearances on Comedy Bang! Bang! podcasts – always opposite Scott Aukerman and Paul F. Tompkins, and frequently with Kristian Bruun and Lauren Lapkus – to track how much she’s enjoying the opportunities to be silly with her fellow weirdos, even when promoting grimmer projects like Stronger or Destroyer. When the news broke that she’d be starring in Marvel’s She-Hulk series, I knew two things: They were almost certainly going for the off-center lawyer comedy of Slott’s run, rather than a more conventional action-y show … and whatever the show turned out to be, Tat was going to have a fantastic time.

And I was right! Even with the legal stuff serving as bookends to the origin flashback, it’s clear that She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is going to be a show about the day-to-day silliness of trying to negotiate the world as both a five-foot-two lawyer and a six-foot-seven superhero. The CG version of Jen – which Maslany kept referring to as “Shrek” on her most recent CBB, and which I truly believe is not a bit – is a decent enough melding of the She-Hulk of the comics and the actor underneath, and if the rendering is a little less than photorealistic here or there … honestly, I’ve never watched this stuff for the effects. It’s the character work that pulls me in, and Maslany and Ruffalo establish such a credible connection as people who’ve known each other their entire lives that I would have happily watched another hour of the two of them sitting around shooting the shit without any trace of their Hulk selves.

Also, can we take a moment to appreciate how elegantly Marvel has solved its Hulk problem? By realizing the character’s limitations as a protagonist – he’s basically just a wrecking ball who shows up whenever the story requires Bruce Banner to lose his cool – and pairing him with characters of similar strength, like Iron Man or Thor, they’ve allowed him to be the cool guy who shows up at the party, does some fun stuff and then leaves. And as Ruffalo has aged, the character has aged with him; we talked about that when he came to Toronto with the first Avengers movie, and he said he was really curious to see how his Hulk would look with wrinkles and graying temples. And now they’re doing it! It’s kind of, well, incredible.

But this is Jen’s show, and even sharing the first episode with Bruce she’s clearly in control of her own story – and her own self. She-Hulk was breaking the fourth wall way before Deadpool was a glimmer in Fabian Nicieza’s notebook, and Jessica Gao uses that device here to let Jen – green or not – steer the narrative for us. The first episode uses it sparingly, and I’m hoping it stays that way … but if it turns into a running deal, with Jen keeping us up to date on her co-stars and other developments in Marvel lore, I trust Tatiana Maslany to make it work. There’s not a lot she can’t make work, really. She was sensational before she ever played the She-Hulk, and watching her blast out that magnificent F-bomb at the end of the premiere tells me she knows exactly how much fun she’s about to have. Go get ’em, Shrekie.

Speaking of unexpected mutations and people embracing their weirdness, the Blu-ray edition of David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future showed up the other day.

I reviewed the film here back in June when it opened theatrically, so I won’t rehash that too much; I’ll just say it holds up on second viewing as one of Cronenberg’s most personal works, obsessed with the fragility of human existence and the ways in which we constantly remake ourselves to suit the current moment. It’s also even funnier the second time around, once you’re attuned to Mortensen’s bone-dry frequency and how much fun Kristen Stewart is having being so very, very serious … and this time, I noticed that forty years after Videodrome, Cronenberg found a way to echo Debbie Harry’s “Take out your Swiss Army knife and cut me, just a little” moment. Bookends, man.

Sphere’s Blu-ray is a fairly modest disc, replicating the Neon/Decal US release with a crystal-clear 1080p/24 video and 5.1 DTS-MA audio. It looks great, though of course a 4K edition would make more of the murky interiors and dark streets in which Cronenberg’s characters spend the bulk of their time. Extras are minimal – just a five-minute production featurette and a couple of trailers, your basic electronic press kit – so I’m hoping this means Neon’s distribution deal with Criterion will result in a more elaborate UHD release us down the road. Even if we have to import it.

Props to Sphere for encasing the generic “movie star collage” jacket art in a slipcover that replicates the film’s theatrical poster. I’m sure Cronenberg enjoys the idea of gicking out randos wandering through the DVD shelves at Wal-Mart.

New episodes of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law drop every Thursday on Disney+. Crimes of the Future is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Sphere Films; it’s also available (in 4K!) on digital and on demand.

Next week: George Miller grants us our hearts’ desire by making another movie, and Shout! Factory’s 4K editions of Cat People and Dog Soldiers eye each other suspiciously on the new-release shelf.