Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
She-Hulk/The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Director’s Note: While we are pleased to be back on a regular schedule with our weekly reviews, we would like to object in the most strenuous terms to the entire staff in the front office taking three days to explore Cineshow, a regional trade show for theater owners, while we remain in the bunker, ostensibly to read their field report on Friday along with the cooking staff in the galley. What is the point of having a Media Division if you can’t deploy them to cover things like Cineshow—a trade show that is 100% in our wheelhouse, I want to point out? The answer is simple. We suspect that the Administration staff was looking for a free trip to lovely, beautiful, exotic Addison, Texas, on the company dime and did not want to take any of us along, no matter how qualified we might be. Rest assured; we will be bringing this up at the next quarterly review meeting at the end of September.
She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (Disney+)
Jennifer Walters, plucky lawyer with sassy friends, just happens to be Bruce Banner’s cousin, and they clearly have a relationship that goes back to childhood shenanigans, because they have the shorthand communication that only close friends and family share. When their car crashes, messing them both up pretty badly, Bruce’s blood accidently enters Jen’s bloodstream, and now she’s got Hulk, too. It’s that simple.
The character first premiered in 1980, on the heels of Spider-Woman in 1978, and the character took a while to find her groove. Legendary comic creator John Byrne refreshed the concept of She-Hulk by first using her in the Fantastic Four while The Thing was walking the Earth like Kane in Kung-Fu, and then launching her into a second series in 1989, making her a fourth wall-breaking powerhouse, at home fighting aliens or arguing tort law.
Her groundbreaking relaunch was meta before meta was cool. She threw quips at us, talked directly to Byrne himself, and in one memorable issue, tore a hole in the page she was on, walked across a two-page ad, and then tore another hole and dropped in on the bad guys, saving herself a lot of trouble in the process. It was, frankly, awesome, and I have no idea why more people weren’t in love with the book.
The Byrne series has since become a cult classic and it’s been recently reissued for new a audience, which is great, because this made-for-TV version of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, is carved directly from those comics, with a sprinkling of the more recent series wherein she becomes a super-lawyer to the super-powered community. There’s nothing else like it, not even Loki, and Jen’s inner-outer monologue and asides reinforces the legal drama aspect of the show in an Ally McBeal kind of way. That fidelity to the comics is just gravy for me. I had a suspicion they were going to do this bit in the show, and I’m so over the moon that they included it as a running gag.
One of the strongest things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s translation of comic book story to screenplay was that they left room for the conversations between characters. I’ve mentioned before on numerous occasions that the glue holding the giant shared universe of the Marvel Comics world (and by extension the MCU) is the dynamic relationships between these heroes with problems. She-Hulk is no exception; a big part of the first episode is interplay between Tatiana Maslany and Mark Ruffalo and their relationship isn’t forced or hurried. It’s clear they have history, and from the way they dig at each other, it’s family history, too.
Do not listen to the Five Angry Men on the Internet about this show. You may see some negative things about it, and they are all wrong. If whoever you see complaining about the show thinks that this is a new character, created for the “Woke Value,” and don’t know about the 40+ years of She-Hulk comics the show is drawing from, then you can safely Not Listen to them anymore, because they will never be any kind of credible source for geek culture. I’m not trying to gatekeep here, but...well, yeah, I kinda am. Those guys can’t learn anything new because they know everything already.
The first episode of She-Hulk is great, and the hype is justified. I hate that the show is not bingeable.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Amazon Prime)
I had a recent conversation with my old, dear friend Brad Bankston, who observed that Nicolas Cage is our generation’s Vincent Price. He’s not afraid of a low budget movie, and he tends to make everything better when he’s in it, elevating substandard fare and happy to go along with big budget spectacles.
I love that analogy. There are some movies you watch simply because Vincent Price is in them, and there are some movies you watch simply because Cage is in them, especially the stuff he’s done in the last ten or twelve years. He’s not stopped working, and the sheer variety of stuff he’s done has been nothing short of awesome. Not all of those movies are good. A couple of them are real dogs. But Cage shows up to play, every time. He’s got a wonderful consistency that you only see in certain old school actors...like Vincent Price, for example.
Which brings me to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (henceforth abbreviated to TUWoT, and please don’t say that out loud at the coffee shop). Don’t watch the trailer; it gives some stuff away. Let me instead pitch it to you:
Nicolas Cage plays Nick Cage, burnt out from taking so many lesser movie parts, his star on the wane, his marriage and relationship to his daughter in ruins, who decides to hang up his star and call it quits, when he gets a request to appear at wealthy stranger’s weekend birthday party for a million dollars (a sum he can’t refuse because of his crippling debt). He is coerced into playing the part of movie star Nicolas Cage by his younger, Wild-At-Heart self who acts as his spirit guide, but Cage also find himself channeling his old roles in order to stay one step ahead of mounting danger for himself and his family. Only funny. And with Pedro Pascal as the eccentric millionaire.
This isn’t the first time a noteworthy celebrity has taken the part of playing themselves in a film (Shatner did it in Free Enterprise, and it worked mostly because he kept telling the screenwriters to make him more of a jerk), but this film improves on the idea by having Nicolas Cage the younger council Nicolas Cage the elder throughout the film. Watching Nick doing Nick, talking to Nick, is a hall of mirrors effect that you just have to see to believe. The movie ends up being a an action-adventure movie disguising a buddy flick, with Cameron Poe and the Mandalorian vibing from the start, in turn hamming it up and clicking almost instantly into a believable bromance.
It's pretty clear in TUWoT that Cage is reacting to the pop cultural perception of himself with surprising candor; he’s not flattering himself, not really, and that vulnerability is what makes him such a likeable train wreck.
This is worth the rental. Make a drinking game out of spotting the film references to other cinematic classics. They are actual Easter eggs!
I could never get into most Nicolas Cage movies, so I'll be skipping this one. No judgment. Just a matter of personal preference. I'm reminded by a line from "Pretty Woman" about opera, which sums up my reaction to Mr. Cage: "People's reactions to opera the first time they see it is very dramatic; they either love it or they hate it. If they love it, they will always love it. If they don't, they may learn to appreciate it, but it will never become part of their soul."
My brain is now thinking about all the movies I can remember where an actor plays a warped version of themselves in a movie: Shatner as Shatner, Brendan Fraser in "Looney Tunes: Back in Action", John Malkovich in "Being John Malkovich", etc. That kind of thing could be its own film festival.
I'm still burned out on the MCU (something I never thought I'd say) but "She-Hulk" looks fun. I might have to check it out.
As always, thanks for sharing your opinions.
Enjoyed the first episode of SH:AaL (SH:AaL we?) and am looking forward to more. I remember the Byrne run fondly.
Cage looks like he's having fun, (completely missed the 'younger self bit in the trailers) and I have liked Pascal since THE GREAT WALL.