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It's Crystal Clear Why Marvel's She-Hulk Was A Flop
It's Crystal Clear Why Marvel's She-Hulk Was A Flop
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0:00
She-Hulk Attorney at Law hit Disney Plus
0:03
with a lot of fanfare, but some fans
0:05
rejected the show before it even
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started, and things only got worse from
0:09
there.
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She-Hulk fell short with viewers. It's
0:12
just a fact, and the numbers bear it
0:14
out. A few weeks after the series August
0:16
2022 debut, Nielsen revealed its
0:18
streaming ratings for the premiere week.
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She-Hulk wasn't in the top 10 at all.
0:23
That may not sound too bad, but it does
0:26
when you consider, as Game Rant pointed
0:28
out, that every other Disney Plus Marvel
0:30
show had cracked the top 10 before it.
0:33
She-Hulk [music] did finally make it
0:34
into the top 10 the following week,
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probably thanks to having an additional
0:38
episode to stream. It entered the list
0:40
at number nine
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>> [music]
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>> with 390 million minutes viewed. So,
0:44
hey, it got into the top 10, but it
0:46
still lagged compared to bigger shows.
0:48
>> [music]
0:48
>> Netflix's Echoes nearly tripled its
0:50
total with more than a billion minutes
0:52
viewed. Stranger Things got 890 million,
0:56
and The Sandman snagged 681 million. The
0:59
Direct also got numbers for some [music]
1:01
HBO shows, which aren't included in the
1:03
Nielsen streaming ratings, and found
1:05
that House of the Dragon nearly doubled
1:07
the She-Hulk total with 741
1:10
million. According to Game Rant,
1:12
Marvel's [music] previous worst
1:13
performer was Moon Knight with 418
1:16
million minutes viewed. That said, there
1:18
has been some Marvel pushback [music] to
1:20
the prevailing notion that She-Hulk
1:22
underperformed. Brad Winderbaum, Marvel
1:24
Studios head of streaming, television,
1:26
and animation, said in an April 6th
1:28
interview with The Escapist, I'll tell
1:30
you this about She-Hulk. Yeah.
1:33
That's one of our best performing shows.
1:34
Whether that means She-Hulk performed
1:36
better than the numbers that were
1:37
published at the time or other Marvel
1:39
shows did worse, it's hard to say for
1:41
sure.
1:42
One of the most consistent complaints
1:44
about She-Hulk Attorney at Law involved
1:46
the special effects. Lots of folks, even
1:49
those who liked the show, agreed that
1:51
the CGI animation looked cheap and
1:53
[music] rushed, which was unfortunate
1:55
since the title character was entirely a
1:57
CGI creation in her hotel form. For a
2:01
show like this is that we have a CG lead
2:02
and that has never been done in a Marvel
2:04
television show before because it's a
2:07
little crazy. [music]
2:08
The Independent's Louis Chilton
2:10
described the pilot episode fight
2:11
between the Hulk and She-Hulk as an ugly
2:13
blur [music] of weightless,
2:15
cheap-looking digital effects. It
2:17
certainly didn't help that the show's
2:19
pre-release trailers had what looked
2:20
like to be unfinished special effects,
2:22
leading to early judgments that all the
2:24
CGI animation would look like that. The
2:27
criticism got so loud that even before
2:29
the series release, its cast and crew
2:31
were playing defense on behalf of the
2:33
special effects team. [music] Lead
2:34
actress Tatiana Maslany said at the
2:36
Television Critics Association's 2022
2:39
summer press tour, "I feel incredibly
2:41
deferential to how talented these
2:43
artists are and how quickly they have to
2:45
work, obviously, in terms of like
2:47
[music] churning these things out. It's
2:49
probably unfair to compare the CGI from
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a TV production to what's possible in a
2:54
far bigger budget film, but Marvel set a
2:56
standard for itself and got blowback
2:58
when it fell below it." All those
3:00
special effects apparently were too
3:01
expensive for TV, by the way. When asked
3:03
about the possibility of a second season
3:05
on a Twitch stream in January 2024,
3:08
Maslany said, "I don't think so. I think
3:10
we blew [music] our budget and Disney
3:12
was like, 'No, thanks.'"
3:14
I will answer your questions, but you
3:16
must first transform back to Jennifer.
3:19
Why?
3:20
You are very expensive.
3:22
While some fans clearly didn't make it
3:24
there, others who actually watched the
3:25
She-Hulk finale seemed to be turned off
3:27
by its development. [music] The episode
3:29
found Jennifer Walters cutting off a
3:30
climactic fight in the middle and going
3:32
to Marvel Studios production facilities
3:34
to confront the artificial intelligence
3:36
who oversees it all, named Kevin.
3:38
[music]
3:39
She essentially gets the show's writers
3:41
to rework her own story while she's in
3:43
it. This can't possibly be where the
3:45
season was going.
3:47
Some fans thought that was too much. One
3:49
wrote on Reddit, "As much as I enjoyed
3:51
all the meta stuff, I was kind of
3:53
disappointed that the final climax was a
3:55
show going full meta. Like, I actually
3:58
wanted to see her argue that big case in
4:00
court."
4:01
For a show with Attorney at Law as its
4:03
subtitle, surprisingly little of
4:04
She-Hulk takes place in a courtroom.
4:06
[music]
4:07
That took a lot of viewers by surprise,
4:09
and not in a good way. One wrote on
4:11
Reddit, "I think it would have been
4:12
better if they didn't have an
4:14
overarching story and just focus on the
4:16
superpowered court case of the week.
4:18
Basically, like Harley Quinn with Marvel
4:21
characters." Apparently, showrunner
4:23
Jessica Gao had big plans for more court
4:25
scenes, with one case, the trial of the
4:27
Abomination, [music] originally meant to
4:29
span multiple episodes. "That all
4:31
changed in the writers' room, though,"
4:32
Gao told Variety. "One thing that we all
4:35
realized very slowly was none of us are
4:37
that adept at writing, you know, rousing
4:39
trial scenes. That's clearly a problem
4:42
when you're writing a TV series about a
4:44
lawyer. Undoubtedly, there was a hill to
4:46
climb for She-Hulk to differentiate
4:48
itself from the series [music] about
4:49
Marvel's other superpowered lawyer,
4:51
Daredevil. She-Hulk largely just chose
4:54
to opt out of the courtroom parts
4:55
[music] altogether, and that led to
4:57
confusion and disappointment from fans
4:59
hoping to get more trial-based hijinks
5:01
than twerking with Megan Thee Stallion
5:03
in the office.
5:05
At least some fans found that She-Hulk
5:06
was a little unfair to Jen Walters'
5:08
cousin, Bruce Banner. A big chunk of the
5:10
first episode is dedicated to Bruce
5:12
trying to help Jen [music] tame her
5:14
inner Hulk, which has been unleashed
5:15
thanks to her accidentally coming into
5:17
contact with some of Bruce's irradiated
5:20
blood. Some viewers didn't love that Jen
5:22
contended in those exchanges that her
5:24
life was harder than her cousin's. I'm
5:26
an expert at controlling [music] my
5:28
anger because I do it infinitely more
5:31
than you. It's not too far a move from
5:33
America Ferrera's largely well-received
5:35
speech the following year in Barbie.
5:38
But not only are you doing everything
5:39
wrong, but also everything is your
5:41
fault.
5:43
So, what's the difference? Well, using
5:44
Bruce Banner as a point of contrast
5:46
[music] just didn't hit the mark for a
5:48
lot of fans. That's one guy who has
5:50
absolutely been through the wringer and
5:51
has only had some comfort in his life
5:53
since Endgame.
5:55
There is another factor we have to
5:56
mention, and it's one the show itself
5:58
attempted to get ahead of to mixed
6:00
results. In the weeks leading up to the
6:02
release of She-Hulk, it became yet
6:04
another battlefield in the culture war.
6:06
She-Hulk had been around in the comics
6:08
for over 40 years by that point, but a
6:10
vocal group of Marvel faithful saw the
6:12
choice to base the show on her as
6:14
another example of pandering to people
6:16
who weren't the true fans. Undoubtedly,
6:18
quite a few of those fans review bombed
6:20
the show on Rotten Tomatoes and
6:22
elsewhere, then sat it out. But the show
6:24
seemed to anticipate this [music] to
6:26
mixed results. Among the fans who did
6:28
watch the show, some thought that the
6:30
writers' choice to make the season's
6:31
villain stand-ins for real-life online
6:33
trolls, predicting some of the response
6:35
to the show, was too heavy-handed.
6:39
2022 was not a particularly great year
6:41
for Marvel. 3 years after the high
6:43
watermark of Avengers Endgame, fans were
6:46
feeling like the phase four of
6:47
multiverse saga was largely
6:49
directionless and flailing around to
6:51
find something to cling onto. The films
6:53
were financially successful, but led to
6:56
fan disappointment. Think Thor: Love and
6:58
Thunder.
6:59
What a classic THOR ADVENTURE.
7:01
HOORAH!
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THERE was also just a lot of stuff to
7:04
keep up with. In addition to the three
7:06
MCU movies of the year, there were also
7:09
three TV series: Moon Knight, Ms.
7:11
Marvel, and She-Hulk. With that in mind,
7:14
it's entirely reasonable to view
7:16
She-Hulk within a framework of rapidly
7:18
falling consumer trust in the Marvel
7:20
[music] brand. Maybe if fans didn't
7:22
already feel burned by other offerings,
7:24
they would have given She-Hulk more of a
7:25
chance. When many saw the early
7:27
trailers, [music] it was over before it
7:29
even really started.
7:31
Not only does it look like budgetary
7:32
factors will mean the first season
7:34
She-Hulk will be the complete series,
7:36
but there are clues that Maslany may be
7:38
done with the role. The actress, who's
7:39
plenty busy with other projects, has
7:41
been very forthcoming about the
7:43
emotional toll the fan backlash to the
7:45
series and her portrayal of Jen took on
7:47
her. There's so many more interesting
7:49
things that I can like look to than a
7:53
sort of vitriolic fan response. Maslany
7:57
has also taken some public shots at
7:59
Disney, specifically for ABC's temporary
8:01
firing of late night host Jimmy [music]
8:03
Kimmel. She even encouraged her
8:05
Instagram followers to cancel their
8:06
Disney Plus subscriptions. None of that
8:08
definitively confirms that Maslany won't
8:11
play She-Hulk again. After all, some of
8:13
her Marvel co-stars were also critical
8:15
of the Kimmel suspension, including Mark
8:17
Ruffalo and Pedro Pascal. But it also
8:21
doesn't speak to a pristine working
8:22
relationship. These factors have led to
8:24
rumors that Marvel may have to recast
8:26
Jen Walters. When asked about it,
8:28
Maslany pleaded ignorance. I don't know.
8:31
Do you know? I don't know. That's why
8:33
I'm asking you. I don't know. I don't
8:34
know.
8:35
But wait, isn't the show basically
8:37
canceled? [music] Seemingly so, but that
8:39
doesn't mean there aren't any more plans
8:41
for She-Hulk. Some concept art for
8:43
either Avengers Secret Wars, posted and
8:45
then deleted by artist Mashk Rizvi,
8:48
shows She-Hulk alongside the Hulk and
8:50
his son Skaar. Everyone else in the
8:52
image is also hulked out, indicating
8:54
that it's taking place in the region of
8:56
Doctor Doom's Battleworld known as
8:58
Greenland. Curiously, She-Hulk looks
9:01
like Maslany's version of the character
9:02
in the concept art. Perhaps Marvel
9:04
thought they still had her locked down
9:06
for the role when it was made. That's
9:08
far less clear now. In the event that
9:10
she still appears in the movie, and if
9:12
someone else plays her, [music] we'll
9:13
surely be interested to see whether fans
9:15
feel differently about the MCU She-Hulk
9:18
in a different context.
