The She-Hulk Review Debacle Just Keeps Getting Weirder

Disney and Marvel's latest television series knows a thing or two about rules and getting angry, but that is probably on account of the main character being both a Hulk and a lawyer. Skilled in both respective aspects of her life, Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) is the cousin of Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who, for the uninitiated, is better known as the Hulk. Although Jennifer wants to focus on her career and paying off her student debt, she is instead forced into fights that she wants no part of, but as Bruce tells her, being a Hulk puts a target on her back.

Speaking of having a target on your back, Marvel is no neophyte when it comes to a polarizing response to its properties. According to Inverse, Rotten Tomatoes had to remove toxic reviews from the movie "Captain Marvel" due to a brigade effort to review bomb the film. Likewise, "Ms. Marvel" shared a similar fate, and "Ms. Marvel" star Iman Vellani responded to NME about these reoccurring efforts by saying, "It's honestly quite laughable and I think change is scary for a lot of people. And having a show that surrounds a 16-year-old girl who's Pakistani and Muslim and a superhero is scary for a lot of people. I think this is just gonna rip the Band Aid off and hopefully people will fall in love with her." However, it seems this tired story is getting another spin with "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law," but what is exactly happening?

Considering the systematic attacks on Marvel television shows and movies, it should come as no real surprise that "She-Hulk: Attorney at Law" is under barrage. This time though, instead of an army of internet denizens engaging in armchair assassinations of user-submitted scores, it appears as if there are now two camps attempting to manipulate scores. On one end of the spectrum, we have several people doing their best to bring down a score, and in response, a group of people has also taken it on themselves to prop a score up. This has led to some rather interesting results, with IMDb being a perfect example.

Taking a look at the IMDb user scores for "She-Hulk," one can notice what can only be described as an inverted bell curve. As of this writing, there are just shy of 19,000 user submissions, but instead of a nice run of different opinions, it looks like there are two extremely different camps of thought when it comes to the show. Of those 19,000 votes, there are 6,374 submissions that say "She-Hulk" is a perfect 10, while on the flip side of that, there are 5,429 that say the show is a one out of 10. These two scores constitute 62% of the total vote, which results in "She-Hulk" having an average score of 5.9, but this score is a balance between two extremes.

The IMDb user reviews help to illuminate why there is such a disconnect between fans. IMDB user goldstone-77 said of their one-star review, "Probably the worst MCU show to date, and that's saying something. She is obnoxious. Too much feminism, way to alienate a large portion of your potential audience. The premise of the blood falling on her arm and turning her was simplistic and unimaginative." On the flip side of that coin, user noahbmayfield reviewed "She-Hulk" positively and stated, "[Let's] get one thing out of the way: There are a million reviews on here detailing the infuriating review bombing from the ever-misogynistic Marvel fandom, so I don't think we need one more. But, while I do want to keep this as an honest review rather than a retaliation, I will say that, yes, I'm just as annoyed and disappointed as you that this kind of review bombing is still going on."

However, IMDb isn't the only place this stratification is happening, but it is the most pronounced. As mentioned earlier, Rotten Tomatoes had taken steps to remove toxic reviews from "Captain Marvel," but it seems as if there is still some of that going on with "She-Hulk," as the show has a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 86%, while the audience score is 66%. This isn't a huge discrepancy, but the user reviews echo the similar sentiments of the IMDb reviews.

In their Rotten Tomatoes review, user Jay E gave "She-Hulk" a half a star out of five, and said, "This show [really] has no direction... pretty disappointed tbh. I guess the MCU is trying to cater to 30 year old family-less women who may see past the cringy writing, bad cgi, and poor direction." Again, to illustrate the absolute division of fans, user Troy W stated, "I can't believe I am pulling this card but, the negative reviewers obviously have never read the Dan Slot (which is the same sense this show is based on) run of She-Hulk. Their heads are really going to explode when she starts sleeping with who she damn well pleases. She-Hulk is in control of herself more than Hulk, even her 'Savage' form is more in control. Why? Because she is female. It is, and always has been that way in the comics."

Reddit is also a place where the proverbial battle lines are being drawn for "She-Hulk," with u/rowdy_nik saying that they didn't think Marvel shows could get worse after "Ms. Marvel," and complained about Disney pushing propaganda and ruining legacy heroes. U/LooseSeal88 absolutely adored "She-Hulk," and said that the character has quickly become one of their favorites. They then questioned if the people with negative comments even watched the same show. U/annoyingrelative probably said it best when it comes to the varying opinions surrounding "She-Hulk," and they noted that the show, which they consider fun, won't exactly be everybody's cup of tea. In summation and considering the varying comments surrounding the series, it seems as if the polarizing reviews of "She-Hulk" are yet another result of opposing cultural views, and "She-Hulk" is simply another battleground.