She-Hulk Director Says This Is The Biggest Challenge In The Show
The first episode of "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," which follows Jennifer Walters, aka She-Hulk (Tatiana Maslany), as she strives to maintain her normal life in the wake of obtaining her new powers, is now available to stream on Disney+ for all the world to enjoy. It's not easy for her, though, and she quickly realizes why so many caped crusaders deliberately draw a line between their hero persona and their civilian life.
The show promises a marvelous fanfare of familiar faces, with Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo); Emil Blonsky, aka Abomination (Tim Roth); Wong (Benedict Wong); and Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil (Charlie Cox) making an appearance, and that only covers the ones we know about, let alone all the new characters who will have their on-screen debut. It also promises to be a genuinely good time, with the show holding on to She-Hulk's fourth wall-breaking trait. This, and adjacent concepts, were apparently a point of stress for the creative team since they don't inherently blend with Marvel's spectacle.
Kat Coiro claims that comedy and spectacle struggle to mix
In an interview with Screen Rant, director and executive producer Kat Coiro discussed the challenge of balancing comedy with spectacle in "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," saying, "The biggest challenge of the series is balancing the small comedic details with the visual spectacular that Marvel fans have come to expect. The two do work in opposition to each other in a lot of ways. CGI action stunts and cinematic scope require rigidity and intense preparation, whereas comedy is all about letting actors get loose and improvising and having fun, and so it was really about breaking it down and going, 'Where do we go big and where do we go small?'"
This goes hand in hand with how Coiro discussed an intentional size difference between the Hulk and She-Hulk, who is noticeably smaller. While fans are disappointed that the character is far smaller than what the comics portray (via CBR.com), according to Coiro, Marvel skewed her to more human proportions so that it would be believable for her to attempt normal activities — like dating, doing office work, hanging out with friends, etc. — in her She-Hulk form. Whether or not that line of reasoning will be understood by audiences remains to be seen.