Look, you can take some issue with the visual blandness or uniformity of tone with the films, but you have to admit that Marvel have done a pretty remarkable job of building a creatively mostly strong (even the worst of their films don’t suck too badly compared to some other tentpoles), commercially bulletproof, pop-culture dominating narrative universe. But on the TV side? Not so much.
Essentially operating as a separate entity (enough so that crossovers between the nominally-in-the-MCU shows and the movies have all but dried up), they started off ok — the first season of “Daredevil” was pretty good when The Kingpin was involved, “Jessica Jones” was strong, if over extended. But on the whole, the output has been cheap (“Agents Of SHIELD”), or dimly lit and badly-plotted (the recent Netflix shows). We’d thought “Iron Fist” and “The Defenders” might have marked some kind of nadir for Marvel’s TV work. And then came “Inhumans.”
Not so long ago, the superheroic royal family were intended to be a key part of the MCU, with a movie announced for the end of Phase 3. Instead, the property ended up at ABC, under the stewardship of “Iron Fist” showrunner Scott Buck, and it’s become a bit of a punchline ever since the first footage emerged, and even more so when reviews dropped after its brief, not very profitable IMAX release at the start of this month.
Nevertheless, the show finally debuts on ABC this Friday, and before it’s cancelled, sorry before it’s aired, one last trailer has dropped to try and lure you in. And in fairness, it’s probably the best of the trailers to date, mainly by making the smart decision of focusing on massive CGI dog Lockjaw, who’s quite clearly going to be the best thing about the whole thing. He’s a good boy. Yes he is.
Anyway, this seems to give quite a lot away, so if you’re some kind of completist and masochist and actually want to watch the show, you might want to look away. If you’re looking for a handy precis without actually subjecting yourself to the series, you can watch above and below. “Inhumans” stars Anson Mount, Iwan Rheon, Serinda Swan, Eme Ikwuakor, Isabelle Cornish, Ken Leung, Ellen Woglom, Sonya Balmores and Mike Moh, and the two-hour premiere hits ABC at 8/9c on Friday.
