After a long and rocky road that saw The Inhumans go from being a scheduled big screen tentpole film for Marvel Studios to being tossed aside for other characters like (the re-acquired from Sony) Spider-Man and The Black Panther, the property landed at ABC as a TV show. And after a couple of bad official photo releases and a less than overwhelming teaser we finally get the first full trailer for the show and it aint good. So join me as I point out what is wrong with The Inhumans show and the one thing that they seem to have gotten right.

The first problem is the fact that Iwan Rheon is doing one of the worst American accents that a British actor has ever done. It sounds super weird and he can’t seem to maintain any consistency with the accent at all. Every scene in this trailer the guy sounds completely different. Since The Inhumans live on the moon and are an alien race why not just let the guy use is natural accent? Rheon is a great actor who has impressed me in previous outings on MISFITS and GAME OF THRONES but this dodgy accent is not working at all. Rheon does pull of the weaselly vibe one expects from Maximus The Mad.

Then we get to Anson Mount as Black Bolt, the leader of The Inhumans. Black Bolt’s power is that his voice is capable of massive destruction. I mean a whisper from Black Bolt can topple a mountain. Now this requires that Black Bolt never speak which I was wondering how the show would handle since having the lead of a show basically be a mute doesn’t seem like something a network TV show would be down for. And just how the show would visualize Black Bolt’s powers was something I was very eager to see.

Sadly the voice power is visualized in not much different a way than the “Canary Cry” is shown on Arrow and Mount shows a weakness at being a non-speaking actor because he looked like he was constipated in all his scenes in the trailer.

Despite a massive amount of clowning for the fact that Medusa’s wig looked like something a neophyte drag queen with very little money would wear, the show hasn’t seemed to done anything to make Medusa’s hair (which is also her power) not look like a cheap Party City wig.
The hair just lays flat as hell on poor Serinda Swan’s head even in scenes where Medusa looks to be in danger and you would expect her to activate her hair to defend herself.

Crystal is my favorite Inhuman and she was basically shown as a damsel in distress in all of her scenes from the trailer. This irks me because Crystal controls the elements which means she is a genuine badass in her own right and should be doing more than being easily captured or being dragged through the jungle by Triton.

Speaking of Triton…dude looks very blah. Its like they painted a guy in a bald cap green and slapped a pointy fin on his head.

And furthering the uninspiring design of this show…Gorgon just looks like a dude from the waist up (and since his hooves look to be a pain in the ass for everyone involved he’ll likely be shown 99% of the time only above the waist) which makes me wonder why he’s not sporting his tiara or even comic book Gorgon’s signature facial hair? Anything to make the guy look distinctive would be an improvement. I do like his stomping effect though.

I was a big fan of Ken Leung from his time on LOST so I was pretty stoked about him getting cast as Karnak but the quick shots of Leung fighting has me feeling less than optimistic that he will be able to effectively pull of the martial arts mastery that is a hallmark of what makes Karnak so cool. Not sure of it is Leung or the fight choreographer but somebody needs to improve and do it quickly.

There is one bright side in this mediocrity though. Lockjaw, the teleporting family pet of the Inhuman Royal Family looks great and seems to have more personality than everyone else in his family.

And the effect to demonstrate Lockjaw’s teleportation doesn’t look bad at all. It’s not what I would have come up with but it also looks cool enough. So at least they haven’t screwed up Lockjaw.