MCU: The Wong Dynasty

[Heartofice]

One reason it feels like Bruce’s Hulk looks ok whereas She-Hulk and Abomination look bad is the faces.

There was a moment where Blonsky transformed where it felt like they had used an iPhone Faceswap app to just overlay Roths face onto a blank Abomination model. That’s also what Jen looks like as She-Hulk, like a face swap. 
 

Whereas Bruce’s Hulk feels like a fully designed CGI character. He of course has the advantage of more comic facial features so there is much less of that uncanny valley effect. 
 

The CGI has been pretty terrible throughout a lot of the MCU recently though, for well publicised reasons, I’m well past the point of caring, that just seems like the house style now.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, KalVsWade said:

I appreciate that Marvel knows that we are all about Wong. I do not appreciate they continue to give it to us in small dollops.

............

You rascal, you!

[Werthead]

15 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Whereas Bruce’s Hulk feels like a fully designed CGI character. He of course has the advantage of more comic facial features so there is much less of that uncanny valley effect. 

I think a much more obvious advantage is that the Ruffalo-Hulk CGI process is now ten years old and they have refined it through multiple movies and they simply re-used it on this show, whilst for She-Hulk they had to create the whole process from scratch.

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

When she first walked in her office her walk looked terrible, she was like a PS1 rendered character.

There is hyperbole and then there's getting a little silly. PS4, maybe.

The real reason it isn't very good is because a typical Marvel movie has ~$90 million to spend on an hour of footage and this show has less than that. Although I'm wondering how the budget works on shows under half an hour in length. I doubt they're spending the $25 million per hour all the Disney+ MCU shows have reportedly been given on just half an hour, and this shows looks distinctly cheaper than, say, Falcon & Winter Soldier, Hawkeye and Moon Knight, but also more expensive than Ms. Marvel.

[sifth]

All the more reason why I thought practical effects for She Hulk would have been better. I said this from the moment it was revealed that they were going to make her CGI.

[RumHam]

I posting this Thor deleted scene just because I love the non-CGI Korg at the end. They should have left him like that for the whole movie. The way that dude eats grapes is also pretty great. 

 

[DMC]

20 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The way that dude eats grapes is also pretty great. 

Ha!  That's Simon Russell Beale, who is outstanding in Penny Dreadful.  IMDB says he's playing Dionysus there, which is perfect.

And yeah Taika earnest waiving as he leaves with the Korg head hanging over him is hilarious.

[RumHam]

I liked episode three of She Hulk. Wong is the best. I thought Shang-Chi suggested they were hustling people with a staged fight. "you need to learn to pull your punches!" or something like that. So I assume he was just lying there? and about offering Emil his freedom. I feel like that fits with his whole personality. As did his exit. 

 I worry Wong is going to be an early casualty of Kang. They're using him a lot and Strange has to get the top job some day, I assume. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

3 hours ago, sifth said:

I noticed it as well. The transformation from Blonsky into The Abomination looked particularly bad. It almost felt like something from the CW. I think they used another hard cut, similar to what they've been using for Jen's transformations in She Hulk.

Yikes.

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

One reason it feels like Bruce’s Hulk looks ok whereas She-Hulk and Abomination look bad is the faces.

There was a moment where Blonsky transformed where it felt like they had used an iPhone Faceswap app to just overlay Roths face onto a blank Abomination model. That’s also what Jen looks like as She-Hulk, like a face swap. 
 

Whereas Bruce’s Hulk feels like a fully designed CGI character. He of course has the advantage of more comic facial features so there is much less of that uncanny valley effect. 
 

The CGI has been pretty terrible throughout a lot of the MCU recently though, for well publicised reasons, I’m well past the point of caring, that just seems like the house style now.

Yeah, I agree. I've only seen the first episode and the CGI Hulk and She-Hulk mostly look pretty good but sometimes they don't. There's definitely something consistently uncanny going on with the facial features. It's particularly noticeable with Hulk because we've seen him done well.

The first episode was OK. 

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, Werthead said:

I think a much more obvious advantage is that the Ruffalo-Hulk CGI process is now ten years old and they have refined it through multiple movies and they simply re-used it on this show, whilst for She-Hulk they had to create the whole process from scratch.

Sure it’s in part that, but then Ruffalo Hulk looked decent right off the bat, certainly in comparison to Norton and Bana Hulk. 
 

Reason being he’s more of a walking cartoon , and them getting the balance of Ruffalos features and Hulk features right so it doesn’t look ‘off’. That also works better when so much of the MCU is basically a cartoon with some actors in it, like an modern day Roger Rabbit, the CGI characters fit in better.

She-Hulk just seems to push it too far towards realism, her facial features are the wrong side of reality. It really just looks like they transposed Jen’s face on top rather than built a rig and animated it. It’s off. 
 

That’s just a bad design decision, they could have made it less realistic and it probably would have worked, they could have gone down the Gammora makeup route and that might have worked. I think they were too optimistic as to what they could achieve.

Plus they don’t help themselves with the way they shoot things, it’s hard to do her hair and make her walk right, so don’t do shots where it’s so obvious where the flaws are. It’s like they didn’t plan it out to cover their weaknesses , they just did whatever shots were asked for. 

[Jaxom 1974]

"I will kill for you, Megan Thee Stallion..." 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Ep3 did nothing to hook a casual viewer into the show, with the first 25 minutes meandering towards a conclusion of the set up from the end of the previous episode, and then introducing a new...I dont know what at the end again.

I will agree that Wong elevated whatever bits he was presented in. The rest was pretty much hit and miss. I was also confused since the lawyer guy who owns the firm made a big deal about wanting She Hulk rather than Jennifer Walters, and yet she appeared in civilian garb throughout the parole hearing.

[Mr. X]

27 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I was also confused since the lawyer guy who owns the firm made a big deal about wanting She Hulk rather than Jennifer Walters, and yet she appeared in civilian garb throughout the parole hearing.

I may be wrong, but I thought that the guard at the entrance to the prison made a big deal about "no superpowers" on her first visit, which is why she always has to stay de-hulked during her visits. (It clearly gives the production a chance to save money, since they can keep Maslany non-CGIed during that time.) And I'm pretty sure there were no news cameras inside, so the lawyer guy can theoretically keep She-Hulk with the press outside even when it's Jennifer Walters on the inside.

[Jaxom 1974]

Oh I don't know. I chuckled quite a bit this time out, with a couple of big laughs.  That being said, a couple concerns, that I assume will be addressed:

* For some reason, keeping track of the various lawyers, prior to, and now after joining the new firm, isn't as easy to follow along with...

* I very much appreciated the Wrecking Crew...but I'm hoping it turns out that the group here was a bunch of duped idiots...I mean, the Wrecking Crew in the comics isn't that smart overall, sure.  But they're also not without their own power sets and they should be a little tougher in general...

* I also made the "No Superpowers in the Prison" assumption during the trial...

[Kalbear]

43 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

 

I will agree that Wong elevated whatever bits he was presented in. The rest was pretty much hit and miss. I was also confused since the lawyer guy who owns the firm made a big deal about wanting She Hulk rather than Jennifer Walters, and yet she appeared in civilian garb throughout the parole hearing.

They literally told her that no superpowers while in the prison. 

I'm still laughing at the "no inspiring Thor speeches will be admitted into the record" line.

[mormont]

I know no-one will care about this but me, but I was kind of disappointed that they race-swapped Thunderball from the Wrecking Crew to be a white dude. (Yeah, I know they made Wrecker a Latino.)

I'm not disappointed that the WC were clowns and cannon fodder because that's what they're for, but I always kind of appreciated that in the comics, they were three rednecks and a black scientist who was the smartest guy on the team and that his race was just never an issue. That was a rare thing in superhero comics, particularly decades ago.

(It is kind of tonally weird that the first time She-Hulk met Titania in comics, she and the Wrecking Crew nearly beat Jen to death, and now they're all in a sitcom together, but that's just how these properties go.)

Anyway, much stronger episode IMO. I can forgive the CGI issues, that's never been a dealbreaker for me, and I am greatly enjoying the writing and performances. Agree that Wong was up to something, but we may need to wait to find out what.

[Maltaran]

44 minutes ago, mormont said:

. Agree that Wong was up to something, but we may need to wait to find out what.

Perhaps he has an interest in Blonsky’s “meditation retreat”

[Heartofice]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

I know no-one will care about this but me, but I was kind of disappointed that they race-swapped Thunderball from the Wrecking Crew to be a white dude. (Yeah, I know they made Wrecker a Latino.)

I'm not disappointed that the WC were clowns and cannon fodder because that's what they're for, but I always kind of appreciated that in the comics, they were three rednecks and a black scientist who was the smartest guy on the team and that his race was just never an issue. That was a rare thing in superhero comics, particularly decades ago.

Feels like the very least of the issues if this actually is meant to the be the wrecking crew. Yes they were always a bit of a joke enemy from much of what I've read, but I've always found them kind of iconic looking and at the very least physically intimidating. I'm not going to accept that these tiny kids are meant to be the same thing. 

I didn't even realise Jameela was meant to be Titania. This is not a good start.

My fear here is that these characters are brought into the Secret Wars and are meant to be seen as canon for the entire MCU. At this point it might be better to just separate out anything happening in She-Hulk and say it's occurring in another universe. We can refer to it as The CW Universe due to the quality of the outfits.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

I finished episodes 2 & 3. Meh. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it either.

I rolled my eyes at "superpowered social media influencer". Yeesh. I liked the online misogyny highlight reel. That was kind of clever and clearly aimed at mocking the right people. Blonsky's parole hearing was excrutiating.

For me the biggest problem is that, like all the other MCU fare, this lands on the action-comedy spectrum and it doesn't score very high on either measure.  The show just isn't very funny. Maybe that's just me.

I like the cast. As others have said, the VFX needs work.  It'll become even more evident when She-Hulk appears in a movie, where she will likely look much better.

[Denvek]

15 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

For me the biggest problem is that, like all the other MCU fare, this lands on the action-comedy spectrum and it doesn't score very high on either measure.  The show just isn't very funny. Maybe that's just me.

I find it funny but not very funny. Hopefully whatever the Wrecking Crew plotline is helps it pivot away from the wider MCU cameos and stand on its own merits.

[DaveSumm]

17 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

For me the biggest problem is that, like all the other MCU fare, this lands on the action-comedy spectrum and it doesn't score very high on either measure.  The show just isn't very funny. Maybe that's just me.

Yea I think this is a general identity problem with the show. It feels odd to me when she talks to the camera because she only does it like twice an episode. You’ve forgotten that it’s a thing by the time she does it. So it’s trying to be a comedy, and trying to be a fourth-wall thing, and an action series, and expand on the MCU, and it hasn’t really done any one of those things very well yet. 

Also I was irrationally annoyed that when she said “Ooo linking the A and B stories, nice” they … didn’t. Sitting at the same table as someone involved in the B plot isn’t ‘linking’ your plots. It was still Blonsky’s trial and the unrelated trial.