You’ll forgive me if I seem just a little bit full of myself today, won’t you? I chose my media years ago. It was ordained; after all, I come from a long line of devoted movie watchers. (Well, no I don’t. But it sounded good, didn’t it?) And while movies used to be the apex of modern artistic expression, much has changed. The divide between the quality of what is shown in a theater and what is shown on television has blurred considerably. Many have also discovered *gasp* the limitations of film – (often) lack of proper character development and unrealistic conflict resolution speed for two. Thus, quality television can offer things movies cannot. When HBO can match budgets and writers and casts and subject matter equal to anything a theater presents, one might wonder why SteelFrogBlog doesn’t cover TV instead? Perhaps it should.
And then I get a random taste of what “quality TV” is all about. It has to be very random, mind you; I ended the Comcast extortion racket in January; I don’t care how many incriminating pictures they have, I’m not paying! And the result of TV finding me instead? I laugh smugly full of schadenfreude and scorn knowing that I have chosen well, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. What am I talking about? My local theater decided to devote an IMAX theater to the pilot of a television show called “Inhumans” (a.k.a. “Marvel’s Inhumans”) and –far from something I would expect to end with an Avengers-like Samuel L. Jackson cameo—if this represents quality network television, I can happily ignore the small screen for several more months, even years.
In the magical land of Idea Retreads there live Inhumans, or as I like to call them, humans. Inhumans live on the moon in an underground and strangely feudal society; I’ll get to that in a sec. Inhumans, for the most part, look exactly like humans except for the odd cosplay or terrible makeup job. And Inhumans have powers. Unlike the X-Men, that didn’t stop these jokers from developing a caste system where the denizens not lucky enough to collect their powers yet have to work the Green Cheese mine.
Now, keep in mind this is one of those shows where everything is unique and special, but exposition is doled out as if Scrooge were in charge … so here’s my limited understanding: two kids get married, and to seal their bond, they’re placed in special Moon Unit Zapper pods and before you know it, they emerge with some sort of super-human ability, making them eclipse forever their blue-collar shackles. Welcome to the life of lunar indolence, you lucky noobs. This upwardly-mobile betrothal system is supervised by the royals, who have their own issues: King Black Bolt (Anson Mount) is mute, but luckily has a good handle on American sign language. The unfortunate part is that means Queen Medusa (Serinda Swan) gets double the number of lines for both she and he. This is a rather grandiose mistake; Serinda is not only a lousy actress, her Inhumans look is downright Inhuman. Babe, that snake-hair thing? Wig. Not even close. You look like a failed attempt to rival Barbie.
It took exactly one scene for the direction to betray that Bolt’s brother, Prince Maximus (Iwan Rheon) was going to attempt a coup,
and, of course, the power struggle would find its way to Earth. Luckily, the bus-sized family bulldog has the ability to transport at will and takes many of the targeted family members to Hawaii for safety and/or vacation. Is bulldog a working breed? Wouldn’t a husky or a greyhound make more sense? They’re all about the travel.
Anyway, if I’ve got this right, this is a Marvel Comics derivation about a royal family in a land beyond Earth where dudes have some superhuman powers, right? And the jealous and largely ignored non-ruling brother stages an uprising which spills its way over to Earth, right? Are you sure you didn’t just want to call this The Continuing Adventures of Thor and Loki? Even were the plot original, I can’t say that I enjoyed yet another dip in the Hamlet Sea. Inhumans exists primarily to withhold information until you’re hooked, but I seriously doubt many will get there. Personally, after seeing the pilot, I’m done with this series. I won’t look for it on Netflix and hope it never returns to take up otherwise perfectly good theater screen space.
♪When a man is inhuman
He’ll take a plot from somethin’ else
Pretend he’s an X-Man
Or an Avenger
If this is bad, and you see it
Maybe it’s just wrong
Don’t try to fix it
Hey, man, surrender
When a man is inhuman
Spends inordinate time
On accessory
He’ll give up all his comforts
Invest in this drain
Pretend that it’s his
Success story♫
Rated TV-PU, 86 Minutes
Director: Sure, why not?
Writer: It’s very possible
Genre: Not sure graphic novels are trying very hard any more
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Somebody who truly cannot tell the diff between what film offers v. what TV offers
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Disappointed Marvel fans
♪ Parody Inspired by “When a Man Loves a Woman”
