Summary
This is what happens when you take a comic book franchise, and systematically remove all the things that make it interesting.
Even the most casual viewer can see that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has consciously distanced itself from the television arm. The release of INHUMANS proves that has been a strategic move, for the IMAX presentation only highlights the gaping flaws on a larger scale.
The Inhuman royal family, led by their king and queen Black Bolt (Anson Mount) and Medusa (Serinda Swan), rules over the kingdom of Attilan in a hidden location on the moon. When they are fractured by a military coup, they become scattered all over Hawaii and are forced to question their notions of humanity.
The IMAX premiere, also known as “The First Chapter,” is a massive misfire for Marvel. It begins well enough, introducing a fully-fledged Inhuman family that also includes comic-perfect versions of Crystal (Isabelle Cornish), Karnak (Ken Leung), and Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor). It all looks terrific until they start moving, and the show makes a solid case against visual fidelity with comic books. Medusa’s much-discussed hair, for example, is radical when it is whipping about and taking people out, but it’s every bit a static costume wig when she’s standing still.
So it’s a mixed blessing that for the rest of the episode writer Scott Buck’s script systematically removes all the things that make the characters powerful. Medusa’s noggin is shaved clean, for example, and Karnak loses his sense of direction (or whatever his ill-defined powers were meant to be). Indeed, more time is spent on Black Bolt’s brother Maximus, played by Iwan Rheon in a role two shades away from Ramsay Bolton in Game of Thrones. We get virtually no time to know this group of people before they are split apart, never giving us a reason to want see them get back together.
This simple set-up, very much following the traditional structure of a pilot episode, would be at least partly forgivable if the shopfront wasn’t so aesthetically shoddy. Some of the effects are laughably bad, and others just laughable. Gorgon’s hooves look like furry boots made for clubbing in the 1990s. Camera pans over the city of Attilan show extras that look like cardboard cutouts. Lockjaw the teleporting dog is a notable exception, stealing every scene he is in. He really should have just been given his own animated series.
Then there’s the lack of internal cohesion. Medusa and Crystal’s significant powers appear to take nothing more than their arms being held behind their backs to defeat. References to terragenesis, about the only bone of acknowledgement thrown in the direction of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., rely on some assumed knowledge but also greatly differ from what we’ve seen before.
Confined mostly to Hawaiian locales, INHUMANS could virtually be any action series not made by Marvel. Cringeworthy scenes include Medusa catching a tourist bus, and Black Bolt going suit shopping. While it is patently clear that the MCU has no interest in sharing its characters or narratives with their small-screen cousins, it would be nice if they could thrown them a few bucks along the way. It may not fix all of the story problems, but it least it would stop it from looking quite so ordinary.
INHUMANS is playing on IMAX screens now. The series commences in October in the US on ABC.
