Inhumans (Marvel/Netflix, 2017)

[shevek]

Hey - I got all caught up on Stargirl and Harley, so I figured since I'd never seen the show before that I would breeze through all 8 episodes of the Inhumans show from 2017 in one day. It got cancelled and never got a Season 2, and I know it got severely panned by critics. But there was never a thread about it on this Forum, I don't think (Femina mentioned it once or twice).

Has anybody bothered to check this out? It's basically the core Inhumans lore with the factions of Black Bolt and Maximus battling each other for control of the Inhuman city-state, Attilan. Anson Mount (Captain Pike on Star Trek:Discovery) as Black Bolt is really the only known actor in the cast, and he has a hard role to play, trying to convey all his emotion with sign language because he can't talk. Of course, the thing everyone anticipates (much like the Harley/Ivy kiss) is getting to see Black Bolt unleash his destructive vocal power near the conclusion.

There are a handful of gorgeous super-ladies in this production, similar to the lineups in the comics, and their costumes range from average to actually pretty good:

- Serinda Swan as Medusa. For the brief couple of episodes that we see her use the powers of her living hair, she is the hottest thing in the series. That doesn't last too long, unfortunately. Without her flowing tresses, she's not as hot as, say, Natalie Portman as Evey in V for Vendetta.

- Isabelle Cornish (age 23 at the time) as Crystal, with her elemental powers of fire, ice, lightning etc. She plays the beautiful snotty spoiled princess to a tee. The costume looks excellent on her, and she is wearing it most of the time.

- Sonya Balmores as Auran. Her power is regeneration, so the showrunners have her take a serious beating multiple times. She is definitely recipient of the most peril in the series. Her costume is a generic dark-leather suit reminiscent of various ones from the CW shows (e.g. Alex Danvers' combat costume). She looks pretty good in it.

- Sumire Matsubara as Locus. Her power is being able to find anyone via echolocation. She comes in a bit later, and definitely gets into some scrapes which I won't reveal for spoiler reasons. She is a gorgeous Japanese singer and model who hasn't been on any other American stuff except for a Hawaii-Five-O episode. Would love to see her as Katana, Doctor Light or pretty much any other Asian superheroine.

Besides the ladies, the other gorgeous thing about the series is all the beautiful scenery on the island of Oahu, from the green jungles to the pristine sandy beaches. There is another actress in the series who is not a super-being - Jamie Hyder, who played a werewolf in a couple seasons of True Blood. She has the look of a Middle Eastern model, and strips down to her skivvies for some boots-knocking with an Inhuman, and some surf-swimming, which is the closest this series gets to the Hawaii Five-O / Baywatch vibe.

The other major aspect of the series is the story, which very much resembles the Shakespearean/King Lear grand drama of the Black Panther movie. Instead of Black Panther vs Killmonger, it's Black Bolt vs Maximus. And what's interesting is that it's also a caste-based hereditary monarchy going up against a violent revolutionary dictatorship, again just like Black Panther. No mention of any kind of superheroic defenders of representative democracy..and the royal family is inexplicably so ethnically diverse that you wonder how all of them can really be "cousins". The only other obvious bit of wokeness is when they make sure to slip a mention of how Hawaii used to have a king, but was taken over by colonizers...you know, the kind with the representative democracy?

Anyway...I think I went over most of the major points, but feel free to chime in if you've seen this thing. Its lack of popularity probably unfortunately killed any portrayals of Inhumans in the near future, but there's still the Eternals.

[tallyho]

You left out the big dog

[shevek]

You left out the big dog

Yeah, I guess that would be like talking about Doctor Who without mentioning the Tardis.
But there are actually two CGI teleportation MacGuffins in the Inhumans series:
Lockjaw (the aforementioned mega-mutt) and Eldrac (a disembodied face in a wall).
The expressions on Lockjaw's face are done skillfully.

Lockjaw is Crystal's pet, so they will be seen together quite a bit.

[Visitor]

My biggest regret of that year was spending money to see the IMAX version of the pilot in a theater. There wasn't anything in it worth the extra cost.

It was a decent plot and followed the main points of the comics, but it just was hard to get invested in the series. You had really powerful characters that couldn't use their powers for different reasons so they weren't much over the humans.

The part I liked best were the Earth space probes trying to explore Attllan and being blocked by the Inhumans. Finding out they were being collected and then what happened to them was funny.

[tallyho]

I would dispute the reference to Anson being the only known actor in the cast.
Maximus is played by the Roose Bolton character from Game of Thrones. As one of the more notorious baddies in the first 5 series I would argue he is more well known than Pike globally.

[shevek]

I would dispute the reference to Anson being the only known actor in the cast.
Maximus is played by the Roose Bolton character from Game of Thrones. As one of the more notorious baddies in the first 5 series I would argue he is more well known than Pike globally.

Good point, Tallyho, I didn't know that, and you are correct. I just didn't know who he was because (and yes, you may gasp at your leisure) I have never watched Game of Thrones. So I know only the basic main characters and facts from that show. Should have looked the actor's name up. He was also Simon Bellamy, the guy who turned invisible in Misfits (which was a fairly decent show for a while).

Expounding further on a couple points:

- As the story of an epic family power struggle (which I would assume is similar to that of Game of Thrones), there's no sense that the Inhumans know anything about simple modern concepts like democracy and voting and human rights and legal equality, despite having considerably advanced technology in the form of their scanner/announcement system (which requires the dedicated enslavement of the two women in the white hoods) and their communicator bracelets. Maximus is going straight from one form of tyranny to another.

- Some plot details seem out of place. When Medusa transports to Earth, she has no idea how to get money. And yet somehow from Moon, Maximus is able to procure massive funding to pay for genetic research Earthside. What does he pay for it with?

- A few incongruous phrases in the dialogue. For example, Karnak says "scare the bejeezus out of me". How does he know that current English slang term if the Inhumans haven't been on Earth for centuries, and show no sign of being aware of references to modern Christianity? With names which are derived from ancient history (Roman, Greek, Egyptian), you would think their language usage would be a bit more archaic than colloquial.

- A little problem with hiding on the moon, even if it's on the far side. It must take a large amount of energy to keep a city of that size and complexity running, plus it takes even more energy to power the camouflage dome (which, once again, is very similar to the dome over Wakanda). It's not even a matter of how they generate that energy on the moon (the Marvel Universe has never been very good with laws of conservation) but how do they keep that energy signature from showing up on the satellite scans, especially when Louise was easily able to detect the small energy bursts of Lockjaw's teleporation jaunts using the satellites.

- And, if they are constantly going down to Earth to collect those who manifest Inhuman genetic abilities (which Triton was doing
at the time he was being hunted), then why aren't they much more familiar with Earthly ways? Why wouldn't they already have "safe houses" or "base camps" they would be operating from? Which, of course, would be easy stepping stones to a migration to (or invasion of) Earth?

Tidbits for thought.

-

[tallyho]

Yes I liked what I saw of it. I remember Medusas hair effects got a lot of flak as being fairly poor at the time. Certainly nothing in the pilot to warrant Imax