TV REVIEW
THE INHUMANS
FIRST THREE EPISODES OF SEASON ONE
At first, I was excited to finally see The Inhumans on
a screen of sometime. Back in 2014, Kevin Feige announced that The Inhumans
were going to get a movie in Phase Three. I was psyched beyond any sort of
detail. Soon after, we start seeing Inhumans popping up on ABC’ “Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D.” and I only thought that it would lead to a greater connection
between the TV shows and the movies within The Marvel Cinematic Universe. But all
sudden, “The Inhumans” kept getting pushed back, and Kevin Feige didn’t see
eye-to-eye with the TV division, and Marvel Entertainment broke away from
Marvel Studios. These events and more led to The Inhumans on the small screen
instead of the silver screen.
But hey, we were still getting The Inhumans in some
capacity and I was excited. If you have been watching “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”
then you are a bit familiar with The Inhumans, and how walking or being exposed
to the extraterrestrial terrogen mists will either give you powers and make you
Inhuman, or it will kill you. That has been a main focal point of the last few
seasons of the show, and now they were about to introduce The Royal Family of
Inhumans, who live in a private city on the moon. They may not have been
receiving the movie treatment, I thought, but I was still stoked. Especially
since actors like Anson Mount, Iwan Rheon, and Ken Leung were joining the cast,
everything was making me believe that this was going to be another winner for
the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
I have finally caught up with the series, watching the
first three episodes. All the goodwill this show created for me has absolutely
deflated. Perhaps I need to start lowering my expectations on the MCU TV shows
from now on. In the year 2017, I have been mostly let down by the MCU TV
output. I couldn’t finish “Iron Fist,” I didn’t think “The Defenders” was as
great as it could have been and the last half of “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”
season four had WAY TOO MUCH going on in it. Now I get “The Inhumans” which
could be the worst thing connected to the MCU. Yes, it’s true and it’s
radically upsetting. If the movie side decides to completely forget the TV side
of the universe, I can’t say I’d complain. More and more I doubt that they will
intersect anyway.
The first episode jumps right into the city of
Attilan, the hidden capital of Inhumans located on the moon. If you are just
jumping into these shows now, and haven’t been introduced to the Inhumans, even
on “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” then you are going to be awfully confused. The show
is expecting you to be up to date on everything going on in ABC’s branch of MCU
shows, and “Inhumans” itself does a terrible job setting up the characters.
There is no tension, no sense of urgency, and not a whole lot of motivation
created. Sure, as the episodes progress, we learn more about some characters in
flashbacks. But their motivations are, so far, ordinary and pedestrian.
The King of Attilan is Blackbolt (Mount), whose vocal
cords are so powerful that he can’t speak, otherwise he will kill you. His
Queen is Medusa (Serinda Swan) whose hair has special powers. Blackbolt has a
brother named Maximus, who has no powers but survived the terrogen mists (Dear
God, more on that later). Then there is Crystal (Isabelle Cornish), Karnak
(Leung), Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor) and a giant teleporting dog named Lockjaw.
Blackbolt keeps several Inhumans at the city, believing they will be safe in
their secluded home. Maximus believes that humans will find them eventually,
and that they should just go to Earth, by any means necessary. This triggers
the struggle for this first season, and if you are minorly observing, it looks
like a cheap knock-off of X-Men. In the comics, The Inhumans and the X-Men
couldn’t have been more different.
The biggest problem with “The Inhumans” in the first
three episodes is the same problem Fox has been having with Fantastic Four.
They don’t want to go full Jack Kirby. They don’t want to fully embrace what
makes The Inhumans who they are. Each character is grossly underpowered. Not
for creative reasons, but clearly for plot convenience. Not only does Blackbolt’s
voice kill and destroy as it gets louder, but he’s just a badass in general. In
the first episode, Maximus begins taking over the city, and the Royal Family is
scattered all over Earth (rather scattered all over the state of Hawaii, again
for plot convenience, all our heroes need to regroup easily) Blackbolt ends up
in the heart of Honolulu. First, he walks into a store and gets a suit without
paying for it, looking like a shoplifter. Then he is literally beaten down by
cops. Seriously, Blackbolt, King of Attilan gets beaten up by cops. Medusa gets
her hair buzzed off, which logically makes sense, but how it plays out in the
show is laughably bad. Karnak gets captured by freaking weed dealers, then
joins them to not be killed. Seriously, who wrote this show. Oh, and Triton
dying in the first thirty seconds of the pilot? That’s insulting too.
The saddest character abomination is Maximus though.
Is there a reason why he doesn’t have his genius level intellect? Or any of his
other powers? Why exactly is the show holding those back? Are they milking them
for big reveal? I would have rather had Maximus be a powerful adversary from
the get-go, it makes The Royal Family look even weaker if a simple human can
overthrow a family full of superpowered beings in what seems like mere seconds.
Iwan Rheon’s acting is so mind-numbingly atrocious that I can’t believe the
same actor played Ramsey Bolton on “Game of Thrones.” Are actors only as good
as the scripts they receive? Telling from Rheon’s work in the first three
episodes, that is undoubtedly true.
I was a fan of Anson Mount on AMC’s “Hell on Wheels,”
and even he features low budget acting chops here. I know it must be difficult
playing a character who never speaks, but even his facial language doesn’t suit
the character. It doesn’t help that between being transported to Earth in
episode one, getting thrown in jail in episode two, then deciding to just leave
in episode three is a nonsensical mess. The “being-not-from-Earth-suddenly-appearing-on-Earth-and-getting-in-trouble-with-the-law”
is the most painfully familiar storytelling device they could have used,
totally safe to the bone, and they can’t write anything compelling from it. If
you are going for familiarity, at least make it interesting.
The worst actor on the show by far is Sonya Balmores,
who plays an associate of Maximus after he takes of Attilan. She is sent to
Earth to kill the Royal Family. She is a horrible actress. She has the worst
lines, and she delivers them dreadfully. In episode two, her character is
killed by Medusa and I applauded in my own living room. Then it was revealed
that she wasn’t dead, and I could tell that the show fumbled in the story
department on that notion. Gosh, she’s so terrible.
The first three hours proved, more than anything, that
“The Inhumans” should have been a movie property, or it should have been a show
on Netflix. It should have had the proper budget to make the visuals
compelling. The visuals here are your standard ABC visuals. They try to make
these strange worlds look real, but they can only do so much before it all looks
cartoonish. This property should have had the budget for better writers and
perhaps better actors, although I wish we could see what Mount, Rheon and Lueng
could have done with better scripts. After three episodes, I don’t know how
these actors can suddenly not be stiff. I don’t know how they can make us care
about these characters. I don’t know how they can get the audience to buy into
this story that we all know will end happily.
But alas, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” began on a slow,
off-putting note. So maybe by season two, “The Inhumans” will finally find its
footing, like “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” did. The thing is, “Agents of
S.H.I.E.L.D.” was at least vaguely entertaining, even in the first season as it
was working its kinks out. There isn’t much of anything in the first three
episodes that is entertaining about “The Inhumans,” vaguely or not.
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