Inhumans

Marvel's Inhumans (also simply titled Inhumans) is an American television series created for ABC by Scott Buck, based on the Marvel Comics race of the same name.

Inhumans
A very inhuman show, nuff said.
Genre: Action Adventure Science Fiction Superhero Drama Running Time: 42 minutes Country: United States Release Date: September 29 – November 10, 2017 Network(s): ABC Created by: Scott Buck Distributed by: IMAX Entertainment Disney-ABC Television Group Seasons: 1 Episodes: 8

Why It’s Inhuman

1. For starters, This show based on the race from Marvel comics was a lazy, yet cheap attempt by former chairman of Marvel Entertainment Ike Perlmutter to try and replace the X-Men as Marvel's oppressed minority characters, since Fox had the film rights to the X-Men at the time. The show (Inhumans) was planned to become a movie in the MCU that was originally scheduled for release in November 2018 but was removed from the release schedule and instead made into a rushed TV series with poor production values.
2. To rub the salt to the wound, the show premiered the first two episodes in IMAX theaters which don't fit like any other theatrical movies since it's supposed to be shot in tv format.
3. The so-marketed IMAX cameras aspect only highlights the low budget effects and make-up.
4. Awful dialogue throughout.
5. Black Bolt's actor has no lines and still manages to be awful in every scene due to his weird expressions and looking like he's gonna cry instead of looking intimidating.
6. The VERY POOR production values:
   • The CGI is embarassingly poor.
   • Literally every single costume looks laughably cheap.
   • Medusa's hair looks fake.
   • Attilan should look like a futuristic utopia but just looks like a cheap hotel.
     • This is because we don't get to see what Attilan looks like, as most of the shots in Attilan are in the Royal Palace consisting of dark cement rooms and hallways, and some shots in the mines. We don't even get to see the city itself.
   • The crowd of "Inhumans" literally all look like normal people. Every one.
7. Poor grasp of the source material:
   • Medusa's hair should constantly move like it's alive, it doesn't happen here.
   • Where is Ahura?
   • Where is Black Bolt's mask?
   • Any of them having American accents feels weird, since they should have foreign accents.
   • The Inhumans are supposed to be technologically advanced and thriving in Attilan, this show has them looking like peasants who want to flee to Earth because they're starving and living in poverty.
   • In the comics the Inhumans want nothing to do with Earth and do all they can to stay away, so them fighting to go there in this story comes off as nonexistent. 60 years of Inhumans stories to choose from to adapt and they choose to make one up that flies in the face of their entire comic book history.
8. The Royal Family (the titular Inhumans) are extremely badly-written characters with no origin story and treat their people like garbage along with being racist towards humans in no redeeming qualities, their supposed to be heroes, but they never actually do anything heroic in the entire series. Unlike Thor or Doctor Strange, where they start worse and then go through a character arc and become humbler near the end, they remain the same for all 8 episodes. The characters are so loathsome that they make you want to root for Maximus, the "villain", instead. However, the show tries way too hard to have you hate Maximus by throwing in as many twists as possible to make you hate him more than the main characters and they turn him into a cartoonish villain near the end.
9. Nothing happens in 5 out of 8 episodes and most of the show involves pointless padding with some scenes with Maximus thrown in. To make matters worse, the pacing is dreadful, since each episode has 5 or 6 different plotlines occurring at the same time, and all of them move at a snail's pace. Some, like Gorgon and Karnak's plotlines, are pointless, quickly dropped, and barely do anything to develop the characters.
10. Medusa and Crystal are easily the worst characters in the show. Medusa is an absolute douche to humans and gets no development at all, while Crystal is boring, extremely racist, and hardly does anything to contribute to the plot.
11. Poor action scenes that are poorly edited with lots of quick cuts and are very bland. Another thing to note is how the show barely has any due to the poor budget, which is unacceptable for a superhero show.
12. We barely get to see anyone other than the main cast use their powers, even though the Inhumans are supposed to have superpowers.
13. It barely has any connections to the MCU, except for a reference to Agents of SHIELD, but this could mean that the show is not canon to said MCU whatsoever.
14. Some of the characters' powers are either downgraded or do not fit the character. Examples include:
    • Black Bolt's power is a big example of a downgraded power. In the comics, it was said that Black Bolt's voice is so powerful, not only would a single whisper destroy a planet, the Sentry (one of Marvel's versions of Superman), is scared to face him in battle. In the show, a single grunt simply flipped over a car and two words destroyed a building, it would turn that car and street to dust.
    • Maximus does not possess any powers in the show, whereas in the comics, he possesses mental manipulation/mind control.
    • Medusa's hair is supposed to be her main power, yet in the first episode, it is immediately shaved off. Also, she gets restrained by just 2 guards, that would never happen in the comics.
    • Karnak in the comics has stress point detection alongside precognition, whereas in the show, he has accelerated probability.
    • Auran has a healing factor instead of parabolic hearing.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Maximus and Black Bolt (until he reunites with his family, and even then, his plotline is pointless) are the only interesting characters in the entire series.
2. Lockjaw, a giant CGI dog with the ability to teleport, is easily the most likable character.
3. The flashback where a young Black Bolt accidentally disintegrates his parents is genuinely horrifying.

Reception

Inhumans was near-universally panned by both critics and audiences alike for its poor writing, horrendous production values, and dreadful pacing. On Rotten Tomatoes, the show has a critic rating of 11% and an audience rating of 33%. The site's critics consensus states "Marvel's Inhumans sets a new low standard for the MCU with an unimaginative narrative, dull design work, weak characters, and disengaging soapy melodrama". On Metacritic, the show has a critic score of 27%, indicating " generally unfavorable reviews" and a user score of 5.0, indicating "mixed or average reviews". The show currently has a 4.9/10 on IMDb. Not only was it a critical failure for the MCU, but it was also a commercial failure. The IMAX screenings of the first two episodes grossed only $3.5 million worldwide, and the ABC airings of the episodes fared even worse, with the last episode having the worst ratings of them all with only 1.95 million viewers worldwide. As a result, it lasted only 3 months and was canceled after 8 episodes. It has been considered by many to be the MCU's first true flop and the worst MCU television series ever made.

Trivia

• The failure of this show ultimately led to Marvel scrapping their plans to have the Inhumans replace the X-Men as the primary "mutant" faction, with most of them being killed off in the 2018 comic book miniseries Death of the Inhumans.
• Inhumans debuted on IMAX screens on September 1, 2017, making it the first live-action television series to do so. The theatrical run lasted two weeks, before the series premiered on ABC on September 29 and ran for eight episodes, concluding on November 10.
• Anson Mount later reprised his role as Black Bolt in Marvel Studios' MCU film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022) with a new costume staying true to the comics.
• The production of this show was considered to be at "risk" because the Inhumans weren't a very well known or recognized group in MCU unlike popular heroes like the Guardians of the multiverse, Avengers or X-Men, therefore Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D spent its entire second and third seasons focused on developing and establishing the Inhumans in the MCU, several years before the debut of the Inhuman Royal Family.
• When originally conceived as a film, the show was to be Chapter 11 of Phase 3 in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before being removed from the schedule. However, a film centering on the Royal Family may still happen in the future (and possibly the cast from the show might get recast).

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