‘Marvel’s Inhumans’ & ‘The Gifted’ Review: Fox’s Mutant Series Timely, ABC’s Hapless
With all the Marvel series coming in the next few months, the superhero giant will be taking up a lot of small screen space – for better in the case of Fox’s The Gifted, and certainly for worse in the case of ABC’s wooden Marvel’s Inhumans.
Starting out with a “Mission Accomplished” proclamation, wig covered intimacy and some Moonscape Brutalism architecture, the September 29 debuting eight-episode Inhumans may be the worst thing Marvel has done for TV, as I say in my video review above.
Created by Scott Buck, who was also the showrunner on Netflix’s flailing Iron Fist, the tale of the secluded mutagenic Terrigen Mist enhanced race long known to comic readers, is seriously stilted in its scripts. Despite a little bit of juice provided by Game of Thrones alum Iwan Rheon as the rebellious brother of ruler Black Bolt, played by Anson Mount, Inhumans also has an H.R Pufnstuf feel and look – and yes, as anyone who saw the Imax screenings that started on September 1 knows, I am referring to the terrible wig that Serinda Swan wears as Medusa.
On the other hand, starting out with bullying both by some high school jerks and a hostile federal government that treats mutants the way some are hoping to see Dreamers handled, the Bryan Singer directed pilot of October 2 premiering The Gifted is actually quite good, as I also say in my video review above.
Sure, there are elements of being derivative of Heroes, but the Stephen Moyer and Amy Acker-starring original series from Matt Nix of a family with mutant children on the run in an America that doesn’t want them free, sets the stakes legitimately high in a timely tale.
Complicating matters, as the teens, played by Natalie Alyn Lind and Percy Hynes White,
start flexing their powers is that they are exactly the kind that their federal task force prosecutor father, played by the True Blood alum, puts away under the harsh anti-Mutant Laws. Statutes that the looming Sentinel Services makes ICE look like the Keystone Cops.
Pivoting off the launch of The Defenders on Netflix last month, and before the November debut of authority fighting Runaways on Hulu and the criminal killing Jon Bernthal starring Punisher, also on Netflix, Inhumans and The Gifted certainly offer variety – though likely not in the way Marvel would prefer.
For more of my take on Marvel’s Inhumans and The Gifted, click on my video review above. Tell us, as more Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil are on the horizon too, which new Marvel show will you be watching in the next month?
RelatedHow Marvel’s Hulu Series ‘Runaways’ Is A Response To Trump America – TCA
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