I wanted to wait until the season finale to review the entire season of Marvel’s Inhumans, but I don’t know if I can make it, so I will review episodes 1 through to 5. Now, bare in mind, I’ve only watched the first five episodes and may do an entire review for the show [if by some miracle] I keep on watching. Marvel Inhuman’s follows the lives of the Royal Family; there’s the King: Black Bolt, his Queen: Medusa, his brother: Maximus, her sister: Krystal, his cousins: Gorgon, Karnak, and some fish guy, that no-one really cares about and everyone seems to have forgotten about. When Maximus betrays his family and attempts to take power, they flee to earth – stranded on Hawaii.
Panned by critics and fans alike, Marvel’s Inhumans has become the show people love to hate for the sake of hating a TV Show. Already surrounded by negative buzz thanks to the genius idea of IMAX previews, viewers were always going to hate on it regardless. I don’t want to go into this show saying what everyone else is saying just because everyone else is saying it. Do not get me wrong, this show isn’t great, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but this show is getting a lot of stick just because everyone is jumping on the wave.
My biggest problem is the writing and the plot – as I literally explained above, the show’s plot is paper-thin and we can pretty much guess how this show is going to end, Black Bolt and Medusa will return and they will get back the throne, they will change their ways, treating the people better, and the fish guy might return to save them when they are on earth and having the final big battle with the fire guy (and looking like they will lose) but might die in the end, if he doesn’t die one of the other two will. Upon return, they will show Maximus mercy, because Black Bolt cannot kill his only brother or he will flee to earth, either way in the end we will see him with the doctor – he might go through terrigenesis, but will ultimately survive with a smile on his face – [bang everyone is thinking] SEQUEL.
I am struggling with what else I could say about the show because it’s so pointless and set within such a small time frame. The writing is horrendous and as a result there is NO ACTING for people to try to hate on, the CGI is sooo bad – the “IMAX experience” experiment failed hard, because all it did (some weird way) was show how bad all of the other scenes that weren’t set for IMAX were. Unfortunately I am at a point where I really don’t care for this show and don’t understand why I have watched it, I don’t want to hate on it, but it isn’t a good show, I give it a four because the name Marvel and the cast they had on board was the only good thing about it. Plus at times, there is hope, characters like Lockjaw and Maximus (it’s fricking Ramsay Bolton), there are some feel good moments and there are some potential relationships that have been explored and are yet to that seem genuinely interesting, like Medusa and Black Bolt, the both of them and Maximus, Gorgon and Karnak, and the Louise [NASA woman] and Medusa. But they have only been explored in small detail, and the use of flashbacks are completely useless. I don’t like hating on shows but unless this buckles up it’s ideas, not even I could defend it.
As I have said, the writing is poor and that as a result makes some characters unbearable, Medusa is bland – to the point where I don’t understand if I am supposed to care for her, Black Bolt isn’t given the emotional impact a character like his is supposed to have – this isn’t the actor’s fault. The use of music could be used to show his emotion when he had to decide to trust his friend in the prison or not. Karnak is off loving life with weed woman, but for some reason I don’t know, the guy hates him and decides to kill the other man in order to kill Karnak. [Don’t worry it really isn’t a spoiler, I didn’t even notice it]. Gorgon is playing hide and seek in the jungle for four episodes. Maximus makes a compelling villain, almost to the point where I just want him to kill everyone and take the throne. He is the only character that has really had any character development, and his reasons for betraying his family have fully been explained. And Krystal is not using her teleportation dog to its fullest potential – all I want to do is see the dog.
By far the best episode of the show has been the fifth, and because I have just watched that, I am actually thinking four out of ten is a good number for the show. I am pretty sure, I will read this in a month and ask, why I gave it a four but, oh well. The fifth episode is a starting point, it the best episode so far, the relationships have been rekindled, we are also given the thought, that maybe the Royal Family are not the heroes we thought we were following but maybe Maximus has a point and they really are villains. We see some resentment from Medusa to her parents, and Gorgon and Karnak’s relationship is given a nice twist.
Unfortunately, the eight episode limit is what really hinders this show. Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D needed time to grow, but even they over-estimated the intelligence of their audience, they thought the Marvel name would sell it, but as Inhumans as shown, that is not the case. Sure, Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D’s first season was amazing for those people who stuck by after the SEVENTEENTH episode, but the average viewer stopped by five. Inhumans was already set up to fail, with such a small episode order, whatever they did there couldn’t be a sufficient story line, plus the six months of productions I heard where given, the demotion from the big screen, and the trailers all set Inhumans up to fail.
This show had the potential to be good, I see hope and potential, and thought that they would go down the Star Trek/ Stargate route but instead, unfortunately they have decided to go down the route that we have seen a million times. The most interesting thing about this show isn’t how the fans and critics have responded, but instead how Marvel will react, they have to buckle up their ideas, Iron Fist flopped, Defenders was a little bit of a let-down. The television division of Marvel is not working out, so at least something useful may come of Inhumans. unfortunately, we may never get to see a good adaptation of these characters even though Marvel would be able to pull it off.
AthemovieZ 