Tatiana Maslany's She-Hulk Will Be Completely CGI
Because Marvel's Hulk has such a storied history as a live-action television character, you might be left wondering if Disney+ was going to honor that tradition with their forthcoming series "She-Hulk." Lou Ferrigno played Bruce/David Banner's alter ego in green make-up and a fright wig from 1978 to 1982 on CBS' "The Incredible Hulk," and then later in three made-for-TV movies from 1988 to 1990. Now "She-Hulk" star Tatiana Maslany ("Orphan Black") has told the Scott Hasn't Seen podcast (via The Direct) that her portrayal of the Hulked-out version of Bruce Banner's cousin and lawyer Jennifer Walters will indeed be 100% computer generated, as mandated by modern-day movie standards:
"It's all CG... I'm in mo-cap the whole time. I'm on platforms with mo-cap where I have a little head on the top of my head..."
This technique is, of course, how Mark Ruffalo has been performing various iterations of the Hulk over the years. This is standard for other big Marvel Cinematic Universe characters like Thanos, Korg, and even Tim Roth's Abomination, seen recently in "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" and who will also show up on "She-Hulk."
Par For the Course
The fact is, unlike Lucasfilm's recent "Star Wars" franchise films and series, Marvel has made little effort to do much in the way of throwback practical effects. Heck, even characters whose human-scale appearance you would imagine might only require a physical suit have been rendered entirely in CGI, including Tom Holland's Spider-Man, Paul Bettany's Vision, and the late Chadwick Boseman's Black Panther. Not for lack of trying, though: in 2003, Marvel hired makeup maestro Steve Johnson to build a fully-animatronic Hulk for director Ang Lee's "Hulk," but ultimately scrapped it in favor of some poorly-received CGI. In the end, having Hulk and similar characters be computer generated makes sense because it allows the actor playing the character to have both their likeness and the nuances of performance shine through.
If you go way back to New World Pictures' first attempt to bring She-Hulk to the screen in 1991 (and you absolutely should Google it), you can see pics of a barely-made-up Brigitte Nielsen with green lipstick and hair in a skimpy leotard. Thankfully, these promotional photos are all that remain of the failed attempt, which would have been helmed by the late schlockmeister Larry Cohen ("Q: The Winged Serpent"). While it would be a gas to write a bunch of think-pieces about how we secretly love Nielsen's cheap/campy 90's version of She-Hulk, it's probably for the best that Maslany gets the first real crack at it.