inhumans

If you can’t say something nice, make like Black Bolt and don’t say anything at all.  That may be what Marvel Entertainment and ABC are thinking now.  Their newest collaboration, ‘Inhumans’ was going to receive one of the splashiest launches of any TV series in history.  The first two episodes were shot with IMAX cameras and were going to screen in IMAX theaters across the country for two weeks before the series kicked off on ABC on September 29.

Emphasis on the word “were.”  Though no explanation was given, the first two episodes of ‘Inhumans’ will only be in theaters for one week, before vacating to make room for ‘It’ which opens on September 8.

While no reviews have been published yet, it’s said that the critics that have seen it just flat out hated it.  This was clearly supposed to be Marvel’s answer to ‘Game of Thrones’, but by most accounts, it’s more like something that goes in ‘The Porcelain Throne’.  It was screened for the Television Critics Association earlier this month and then the cast was brought out for one of the most awkward press conferences this side of Capitol Hill.  Apparently, the special effects STILL weren’t done at that point, as Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb sharply pointed out to one inquiring journalist:

“I can tell you that it was written on the material that you were given that the show that you have seen is not the finished product.  If you’re asking me whether or not it was done, it’s not. So to be perfectly honest, I don’t understand your question.”

If it was such an unfinished product… why show it?  They’ve used the same excuse in regard to the trailers which fans have picked apart online.  Once again, why show it?  Especially in a trailer, when you have to have other completed footage you could use instead?

Also word has it that these first two episodes were quickly cobbled together in 20 days, a ridiculously brisk time frame for any project, much less an IMAX production with huge, heavy IMAX cameras that have to be lugged around.

And finally, it doesn’t help that ‘Inhumans’ is handled by showrunner Scott Buck, the guiding force behind ‘Iron Fist’.  You know, the one Marvel Netflix show that seemingly no one liked?!  Why he was allowed to run another Marvel show is a mystery much less one with this high a profile.

Marvel Entertainment (ME) has been trying to make Fetch ‘Inhumans’ happen for years now.  When Marvel Studios (MS) still fell under the ME umbrella, ME basically forced MS to put an ‘Inhumans’ movie on its Phase Three roster.  It was supposed to come out after ‘Ant-Man’ and ‘Doctor Strange’.  At the time, there was more (forced) connection between the TV shows (which fall under ME) and the movies (MS) and the idea of the Inhumans became a major storyline on ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’  Then Kevin Feige got sick of the set up, went to parent company Disney and got MS emancipated from ME.  Now free of ME’s meddling, the ‘Inhumans’ movie got kicked to the curb, leaving ‘Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’ drifting with no big payoff in sight.  (Reportedly, the original agreement was that if MS made an ‘Inhumans’ movie, ME would allow them to make ‘Captain Marvel’, something they didn’t think would work because #girlshavecooties.)

Are you still interested in ‘Inhumans’?  Will you try and see it in an IMAX theater?  Or does this bad buzz make you want to wait until it comes on TV?  Or are you just planning to pass altogether?

Source: Comic Book Movie, ComicBook.com