Marvel’s Inhumans TV trailer suggests a waste of great characters

Oh no, this is bad. Marvel’s Inhumans TV series has its first trailer, and it looks like a dismal low-rent sci-fi train wreck. Which is not the fault of the source material. Watch for yourself and judge, but I have thoughts:

The show has some promising aspects, including Iwan Rheon from Misfits and Game of Thrones as the lead foil. But the main protagonist, Black Bolt, as portrayed by Anson Mount, does a very bad job of acting in the few scenes he’s in during this very short trailer, and the sets look like they were put together from Stargate TV show lot sell-offs, hastily repainted.

The Inhumans are a Marvel group that has always been a bit of an outlier in the universe, but it’s one that has resulted in some terrific story arcs and characterizations, too. Black Bolt, the leader of the human-adjacent, mutant-like (but not mutant) society of beings, is a stoic ruler who can’t speak (his voice is powerful enough to destroy worlds with a whisper). In the comics, his silence is replete with many layers of characterization, and his wife and queen Medusa acts as interpreter and perfect counterpoint.

In this trailer, the unmasked Black Bolt looks like a boring extra in a cheaply made Game of Thrones cosplay outfit, placidly tolerating Rheon’s verbal attacks, which are made in a weird put-on Americanish or something accent that does the accomplished actor no favors.

This could still be good, but it’s hard to envision that when the trailer is this lame. It’s also co-produced by the same guy who acted as showrunner for Netflix’s Iron Fist, the only truly bad Netflix Marvel show. Weirdly, it was all shot using IMAX cameras (even though it’s targeting a TV run on ABC), so any issues with lame sets should be amplified.

Rather than getting your hopes up for this, go read the excellent 2013 Inhumans trade paperback instead.