The Inhumans are all about a secret civilisation of super powered individuals that inhabit the world of Attilan, a hidden city on the moon, and leading them are the Royal Family of Black Bolt, Medusa, and their most trusted allies of Crystal, Karnak and Gorgon. However, Black Bolt’s treacherous brother, Maximus, usurps him and forces the Royal Family to flee for Earth.
All of those traits which make a comic book adaptation successful are absent in this show: it feels unimaginative, lazy, inept, badly put together, downright nonsensical from one scene to the next, and just an absolute slog to get through. Here, the costumes and makeup look like something out of an amateur theatre company, the effects are lacklustre, and the set design looked and felt bland, generic and lacked creativity or vibrancy. It certainly doesn’t help when the dialogue is incredibly clunky, feeling more like a very early first draft that was quickly cobbled together, lacking any of the sharpness or wit from Marvel’s recent ventures,and the show fails to inject any life or personality into any of these characters.
Finally, you can’t help but feel sorry for the actors involved because this makes them look dumb, which is sad since some do better than others. Anson Mount nailed Black Bolt, capturing his regal nature and conveying emotion even when he can’t say anything, while Ken Leung gives a solid performance as the analytical Karnak. Iwan Rheon tries his best with the material that’s given to him, but he ends up coming across as Loki-lite, and even though Medusa is arguably the most iconic character that required an actress to bring that character to life, Serinda Swan came across as merely passable with some of her dramatic scenes being very cringe-worthy. The two weakest links were both Eme Ikwuakor as Gorgon and Isabelle Cornish as Crystal, but to be fair, all of these actors could be very talented, and with the right material, they could very well give the best performances possible, but it’s the stuff they have to do and say here that stinks to high heaven.
Just like with Marvel’s Iron Fist, Inhumans is completely misguided in terms of approach and execution, and after two strikes in a row with Marvel, Scott Buck should just stay far away from other Marvel properties in the future. It is baffling as to why this has ended up as cheaply put together as it is; did they just not put in the effort? Were they rushed? We don’t know, but what’s here is beyond disappointing.
My Verdict
My Ratings
This fails to capture the weird, surreal, fun complexity of a typical “Marvel” product, and furthermore, this is what any superhero property shouldn't be: BORING.
