“She-Hulk: Defender of Heroes”the new Marvel series that joins the Disney + offer this Thursday, follows Bruce Banner’s cousin, a lawyer who suddenly obtains the same powers as the famous and monstrous green giant and must juggle them and his daily life , in a proposal in the key of comedy that revolves around the question: “What would happen if you really obtained superhuman abilities?”.
“You probably wouldn’t want them, because I guess most people aren’t sitting around, hoping and wishing they had all the responsibilities of being a superhero or a superhero. I know it doesn’t happen to me, at least.”assured in dialogue with Télam the creator of the strip, Jessica Gao, who previously had steps as a screenwriter for successful titles such as “Silicon Valley” Y “Rick & Morty”.
As outlined since the premiere of “WandaVision”, when it arrived in early 2021 on that streaming platform as the first production for the small screen of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (UCM), it is the television format in which the franchise chooses to deviate of the tone that characterizes most of his films and explore other nuances for his enormous marquee of characters.
Thus, with the version of “Moon Knight” embodied by Oscar Isaac, the public visited a plot more linked to suspense and psychological thriller, then a classic teen comedy in “Ms. Marvel”, and now it will be the turn of a stand-up comedy to head
With a brisk pace and winks enhanced by the resource of breaking the fourth wall“She-Hulk” features award-winning Canadian actress Tatiana Maslany -known for her work on “Orphan Black”- as Jennifer Walters, the thirtysomething protagonist of this story who more than once speaks to the camera and the audience with great charisma to carry you through your adventures.
In the series, Jennifer is a committed lawyer who, as a result of an accident while traveling by car with her cousin (whose inevitable inclusion adds the bait of having Mark Ruffalo in the cast), he receives the same gamma-mutated blood that gives him monumental musculature and dramatically increases his strength, speed, and ability to regenerate.
Although Banner tries to help her tame her new abilities in order to start operating as a defender of the planet like the Avengers, she is not happy with the situation, and decides to return to her normal professional life when she discovers that she can choose when and how to wake up his Hulk version without as much difficulty as Bruce.
However, his condition will change the entire landscape, so he must redirect his career to specialize in legal cases related to the superhuman and become the public face of that environment, while dealing with his unbearable but beloved family, the machismo in his work , singleness, his friendships and earthly concerns.
“The more women we had on the team, the more variety of viewpoints we could have, so that way we were able to create characters with many dimensions.”Jessica Gao
Tim Roth Y Benedict Wongtwo old Marvel acquaintances, are part of the story as Emil Blonsky/Abomination, seen for the first and only time in “The Incredible Hulk” (2008), and the likeable and powerful sorcerer Wong, Doctor Strange’s faithful companion.
Ginger Gonzaga, Josh Segarra, Jameela Jamil, Jon Bass Y Renee Elise Goldsberry They also make up the cast of the series, which Jessica Gao developed alongside directors Kat Coiro and Anu Valia.
Télam: Jennifer Walters is one of the first names in Marvel that makes her rejection of becoming a superhero so clear. How did you build this character?
Jessica Gao: What I wanted was to show a real person, who felt like someone you might know or who looks like yourself. What if you really did suddenly gain superhuman abilities? In that sense, I identify with her, because we are women in our thirties, professionals, with a career, friends, and a family with whom we have to be in contact and get together constantly. I imagined that if one day I became a Hulk I would be furious, because I’m already too tired of the responsibilities of every day to add that to it, something I didn’t ask for. It felt like a very authentic response to me, because on these issues you have to think about the details, how it would affect you, like when Jennifer wonders about health coverage from a job as a superhero, because we’re Americans and it’s a constant concern. , or about how you are going to retire. They are very practical questions that she raises.
T: It is also a proposal that is distinguished by its complete comedy tone. How did you work humor within the superhero genre?
JG: It’s a very comfortable terrain for me, and this project was a lot of fun, because we had a fantastic writing team, and we had a great time working together. It almost felt like cheating every day, because we were getting paid to go make each other laugh. It was a very good situation, a lot of the stories and dialogues in the series come from our conversations, or chats with our friends when we watched Marvel movies, and we had thoughts and questions about that whole world. It was like mining each other with all that material and putting it into practice for the series.
T: Within those themes, the gender issue appears with importance in the content of “She-Hulk”. Where does the series rank as a Marvel product in terms of female representation?
JG: I think there was definitely a need for more of that in the MCU, in movies the male component weighs a lot, and we put together a majority female writing team because we needed to have multiple perspectives. The beauty of that is having voices that come from a very wide range of life experiences, from different types of women with varied backgrounds, because women are not a monolith, you can’t expect to have just one or two that represent half of the population of the planet. The more women we had on the team, the more variety of viewpoints we could have, so that way we were able to create characters with many dimensions. When we started talking about the issues that were important to us, we saw that we have a lot of common issues that we have to deal with, and that’s what we naturally include in the story.
T: This universe already has 29 films and, with this premiere, eight series for streaming. What weight did the existence of that giant franchise have when approaching the project?
JG: Because the MCU is so vast and really all roads lead to Kevin Feige (the president of Marvel Studios), and all threads come out of him, you can’t really worry about those things when you’re working on something like this. The focus was “we’re going to do something that’s good, because we have no control over what’s going to happen next.” So we were going to make the series that we wanted, that was fun, something that we could be proud of, that we were excited to share with the public. Going forward and into the future, it’s up to Kevin, although I personally hope that Tatiana and “She-Hulk” are everywhere.
