The Flickering Myth team react to the first trailer for Marvel’s Inhumans…
Marvel’s Inhumans series dropped its first trailer yesterday [watch it here] and the online reaction has been overwhelmingly negative. What did the Flickering Myth staff think of this first look? Read on to see how much our writers matched up with public opinion…
Shaun Munro: Scott Buck’s the showrunner, so of course this looks and plays incredibly flat. It did almost nothing for me, unfortunately. I imagine the IMAX treatment will just enhance how cheap it all looks.
Tai Freligh: I know nothing about the Inhumans at all, so I went into this trailer with no preconceptions. It looks somewhat interesting, but I’m not sure I can handle another show where Iwan Rheon plays a Ramsay Bolton type of character. If so, I’d be rooting for him to get killed off right away as I can’t handle more of that. The show just looks and feels super cheesy and I’m not sure it will last an entire season.
Scott Watson: Oh dear…. is my initial thoughts. The CGI for Lockjaw is disappointing. Iwan Rheon has the most bizarre of accents. It looks done on the cheap and for the life of me I can’t understand why Marvel would allow for a separate Inhumans show when they introduced them so well (I think, personally) into Agents of SHIELD. It’s going to confuse everyone, I’m assuming it’s unlikely to tie back in any way to SHIELD. It needs to do a lot to lift it above what’s looking to be a very mundane warring space family soap 
Ben Robins: It should be intergalactic Game of Thrones and instead it looks like a particularly hammy episode of Doctor Who. No thanks.
Rachel Bellwoar: Was looking forward to this based on Iwan Rheon’s casting (he’s known for playing Ramsay now but before that had completely different, i.e. not evil, roles on Misfits and Vicious) but this doesn’t look great. Happy to be proved wrong, and don’t know anything about Inhumans, so thought it would be cool to have a superhero show where don’t have expectations about the characters, but visually, this doesn’t seem convincing.
Ricky Church: This did not excite me at all. Like what the rest of you have said so far, I know little of the Inhumans having only read a couple stories featuring some of the players. The thing I got excited about the most was Iwan Rheon as Maximus the Mad, who played a key role in Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run leading up to Secret Wars. Much like what Ben said, this could have been a sci-fi take on Game of Thrones, but just looks really, really cheap. Aside from Rheon, we don’t get an idea of what the rest of the cast is like and, based of this, I’m not totally convinced Anson Mount can pull off a silent performance. Seeing it in IMAX might be cool, but will probably more highlight the cheapness of the sets and CG.
Eric Bay-Andersen: I’ve loved what they’ve done with the Inhumans in Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. (a very underrated show in my opinion), but this just looks dull and weird. I’ll watch the series anyway, but this trailer hasn’t given me any reason to be excited about it (and I’m not even sure what it’s really about?).
Helen Murdoch: One of the most boring trailers I’ve seen in a while. No hint of intrigue, bad CGI and am I the only one confused by Iwan Rheon’s accent?
Anghus Houvouras: Holy hell, that was awful. Seems like IMAX cameras were a poor choice because it exposes the terrible cinematography and bargain basement special effects. So cringe inducing. So terrible. I would LOVE it if they added the banner FROM THE SHOWRUNNER WHO BROUGHT YOU IRON FIST AND THE LAST TWO TERRIBLE SEASONS OF DEXTER…
Gary Collinson: And from the visionary director behind The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption, The Condemned 2 and Seal Team Eight: Behind Enemy Lines.
Joking aside, I share everyone’s disappointment. I assume all of the footage is from the first episode, but the trailer does a very poor job of selling the series and the characters, especially to anyone who’s unfamiliar with the material. I’ll probably skip this in IMAX and wait for it to hit TV.
What did you make of the first trailer for Inhumans? Let us know in the comments below…
Marvel’s Inhumans explores the never-before-told epic adventure of the royal family including Black Bolt, the enigmatic, commanding King of the Inhumans, with a voice so powerful that the slightest whisper can destroy a city. After the Royal Family of Inhumans is splintered by a military coup, they barely escape to Hawaii where their surprising interactions with the lush world and humanity around them may prove to not only save them, but Earth itself.
Inhumans will premiere in IMAX theaters on September 1st, with a two-week run for the first two episodes, before the full eight episodes air on ABC from September 29th. Featuring in the cast of the series are Anson Mount as Black Bolt, Iwan Rheon as Maximus, Serinda Swan as Medusa, Ken Leung as Karnak, Eme Ikwuakor as Gorgon, Isabelle Cornish as Crystal, Mike Moh as Triton, Sonya Balmores as Auran, Henry Ian Cusick as Dr. Evan Declan and Ellen Woglom and Chad James Buchanan as as-yet-unrevealed characters.
Originally published June 30, 2017. Updated November 30, 2022.
