Inhumans Star Eme Ikwuakor Tells The Truth About What Went Wrong With The Show - Exclusive
"Inhumans" is widely acknowledged as one of the few out-and-out failures associated with Marvel since the advent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 2008. Originally announced in 2014 as a feature film that would premiere in November 2018 as part of Marvel's Phase Three slate, the movie was instead repurposed as a TV project under the Marvel Television banner, which was at the time separately run from Marvel Studios although also owned by parent company Disney.
When the first two episodes of "Inhumans" debuted with a two-week run in IMAX theaters in late September 2017, followed by a premiere on ABC-TV, the show was met with almost universal derision. Fans were confused by seeing what essentially looked like a TV movie on IMAX screens instead of the Marvel spectacles they had come to expect. Even on TV, the visuals, costumes, design and some of the acting was deemed cheap and atrocious. After its eight-episode run, the series was quietly canceled by Marvel and ABC (Marvel Television was later folded into Marvel Studios).
What went wrong? In the comics, the Inhumans — a race of enhanced humans given astounding powers via experiments conducted by the alien race the Kree during the early days of humankind — had a rich mythology and cast of characters, and were seen by some fans as a replacement in the MCU for the X-Men, back before those characters returned to the Marvel Studios fold.
Actor Eme Ikwuakor, who played the Inhuman named Gorgon on the series, has his own ideas about why the show went south. "I wish that it would have been better received," he tells Looper in an exclusive interview. "You can't help what people are going to like and what people don't like."
Eme Ikwuakor's theory on why Inhumans flopped
Eme Ikwuakor, currently starring in Roland Emmerich's new space disaster yarn, "Moonfall," is quick to say that the actual production of "Inhumans" was a positive experience for him in many ways. "One of the things I always wanted to do was to play a superhero," he says. "That was one of my goals. Being able to do that was actually a dream. It was playing this character of size in Hawaii, with such an amazing cast who are still all friends today. That's a gift that I'll never take away."
Ikwuakor is equally fast to elaborate on what he thinks was one reason why "Inhumans" sank. "I think one of the things that made it a little bit tough was the way that it was released," he explains. "We were getting compared to movies instead of being compared to, in my opinion, what should have been an ABC television show. I think that's probably one of the things that made it difficult to really get off the ground because they're expecting to see 'Thor: Ragnarok' on TV when we had the budget for something on The CW or 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'"
Ikwuakor adds that another source of fan speculation — that the Inhumans would stand in for mutants in the MCU — didn't do "Inhumans" any favors.
"People thought that we were trying to replace the X-Men, which we weren't trying to do at all," he says. "It sucks because you wish that it could have gone farther and you wish you could have done more, but it was still a gift to do it, and the relationships that we had were just amazing."
"Inhumans" can be streamed in its entirety on Disney+.