Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Marvel has so many characters in its history that it seems like Disney and ABC have an almost infinite well from which to draw when it comes to creating movies and TV. This time, ABC has brought the Inhumans to life, a group of characters who have appeared in one form or another in Marvel’s comics since the 1960s. Is Marvel’s Inhumans worth your while?
A Guide to Our Rating System
Opening Shot: The opening of a pilot can set a mood for the entire show (think Six Feet Under); thus, we examine the first shot of each pilot.
The Gist: The “who, what, where, when, why?” of the pilot.
Our Take: What did we think? Are we desperate for more or desperate to get that hour back?
Sex and Skin: That’s all you care about anyway, right? We let you know how quickly the show gets down and dirty.
Parting Shot: Where does the pilot leave us? Hanging off a cliff, or running for the hills?
Sleeper Star: Basically, someone in the Inhumans cast who is not the top-billed star who shows great promise.
Most Pilot-y Line: Pilots have a lot of work to do: world building, character establishing, and stakes raising. Sometimes that results in some pretty clunky dialogue.
Our Call: We’ll let you know if you should, ahem, Stream It or Skip It.
MARVEL’S INHUMANS
Opening Shot: A shot of a lush tropical jungle, with a location card saying “Island of Oahu, Hawaii”. We later see that a woman is being chased by men with guns, and is intercepted by a strange looking person named Triton (Mike Moh), encouraging her to go back with him to a place called Attilon.
The Gist: Attilon is a city of Inhumans, humans with genetic mutations that give them powers, that’s located on Earth’s moon. Most people on Earth don’t know the Inhumans exist, and the royal family wants to keep it that way: Black Bolt (Anson Mount), who can knock buildings down with his voice; his wife Medusa (Serinda Swan), whose long red locks prove to be powerful weapons; Gorgon (Eme Ikwuakor), who is has hooves and lots of strength; Karnak (Ken Leung), who can see into the immediate future and readjust (at least that’s what we think he does… it’s not clear in the pilot what his powers are); Crystal (Isabelle Cornish), a ward of the king and queen who can turn things hot or cold; and Lockjaw, Crystal’s gigantic pug who can transport people in an instant.
There’s another member of the royal family who want to return to Earth, however: Maximus (Iwan Rheon), who is a mere human without powers; the only reason he isn’t cast into the mines with other powerless humans is becaue he’s Black Bolt’s brother. He wants to transport all of Attilon’s population to Earth to give them space and give the non-powered humans more opportunity. But it really turns out to be a power grab, as he stages a coup, with all of the royal family besides Crystal escaping to Earth, landing in various spots on the island of Oahu.
Gorgon interacts with surfers who seem to know about the Inhumans; however, the humans in Honolulu just think of Black Bolt as a criminal freak, and he ends up in jail. Medusa, sporting a buzz cut thanks to her former bestie Maximus, blends in a bit better among an island tour group. And Karnak wanders around in the woods, his ability to see into the future hampered by a head injury.
As the royal family tries to mix in with the humans on earth, a research scientist named Louise (Ellen Woglom) comes to Hawaii to investigate some strange energy bursts she saw over Oahu. In the meantime, the head of Maximus’ security forces, Auran (Sonya Balmores), goes after the royals, with instructions to “bring back or kill.”
Our Take: We had heard that audience reception to the two-hour pilot, which was shown on IMAX screens in the early part of September, was poor, and after enduring the double-sized pilot, we sympathize with those folks. There’s a reason why the Inhumans haven’t been brought to the screen until now: some characters are just better on the page than on the screen.
Where to start? The pilot is confusing and simplistic all at once: We get why and how the Inhumans got to Earth, but what’s going on in Attilon isn’t so clear: Maximus seems like a slimeball, but his intentions are muddled so far. It doesn’t really matter, because we really don’t have any clear idea which Inhumans are good and which are not, and to be honest, we really don’t care.
If I were a fan of the comics, I might have accepted the stilted dialogue and clumsy exposition in the pilot as just “Inhumans being Inhumans,” but on screen it comes off as just bad acting and even worse writing. Mount, who did such a good job of being a man of few words on AMC’s Hell on Wheels, has to basically act with his hands and eyes as Black Bolt, and he looks more like a brooding Eugene Levy than the king of Attilon. Rheon plays Maximus as a guy you want to punch in the face all the time. Let’s just say that the characterizations aren’t very deep right now.
There’s weird inconsistencies that might be explained further along in the season, but for now seem like mistakes: if the surfers know about the Inhumans, then those legends would have likely gotten back to Louise, whose boss back at the research company she’s with thinks she’s crazy. And it seems like everyone within the city limits of Honolulu have no inkling the Inhumans exist. We wish we were like those people.
Sex and Skin: After we have the initial scene on Oahu, we cut to a scene of Medusa and Black Bolt making love, and getting calls on their communicators. Medusa grabs them with her hair and puts them aside, purring, “Do you remember what it was like before we were king and queen?”
Parting Shot: Auron, supposedly lying in a truck bed covered by a tarp after Medusa stabs her to death, comes alive, seals her wounds, can calls to Maximus, saying “I need backup.” Hm. You’d think, as queen, Medusa would have known her former head of security would have that healing power, no?
Sleeper Star: The pug who plays Lockjaw? Honestly, we can’t think of one performance that was good.
Most Pilot-y Line: Gogon, about to inflict some hoof-based justice on Maximus’ Earth goons, says the most cringeworthy line in a show that has a lot of them: “Never approach downwind, dumbass”. Also, the producers also happened to place two industrial-ish remakes of Doors songs back to back. Someone dropped the ball there.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Marvel’s Inhumans left us cold, not caring what happened to any of the characters at the end of the pilot. Which probably explains why the pilot was so boring we kept looking at the time counter on our screener to see how much we had left. These are characters that just don’t translate to the screen, and this should teach Marvel that not every character in their library should be mined for yet another movie or TV show.
(Click to see all of Decider’s complete Stream It or Skip It reviews)
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.
