What I’m watching: a disappointing superhero series

Date: 5/18/2021

On Netflix: ‘Jupiter’s Legacy’

The superhero film has come a very long way since the first live action adaptation of a comic book hero in 1941, when Republic Pictures brought “The Adventures of Captain Marvel” to the screen. That first adaptation was indeed a winner with a clever script, fine performances and great stunt work and special effects. The film is considered to be among the very best serials ever made, if not the best. (For the curious it’s available on Blu-ray as well as on YouTube. And yes, this is the original Captain Marvel, not the Marvel rip-off.)

I’m afraid, though, from there on out, the treatment of comic book heroes was not stellar, largely due to the idea that only kids read comics and they were a fairly easy audience to entertain. Superheroes were the subjects for serials, which were not seen as prestige entertainment.

All of that changed in the 1970s and ‘80s with the success of the Christopher Reeve “Superman” movie, the first two Batman films with Michael Keaton and then years later the success of the Marvel Comic films.

Superheroes are indeed big business. So big, as we have recently seen, that Warner Brothers shelled out a reported $70 million to finish and release the Zack Snyder version of his “Justice League” film.

Netflix has produced some very good entries in this genre with “The Umbrella Academy” and its own Marvel adaptations standing out. It’s latest offering comes from the comic book series of the same name by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely. I’ve never read the series, which is probably a benefit when watching this series. Any movie that is an adaptation from other source material has to stand on its own legs.

The story is a sprawling one that opens in 1929 and continues to this day. The leader of the team, industrialist Sheldon Sampson  (Josh Duhamel), leads a group shortly after the stock market crash to a mysterious island where they received their powers.

Sheldon is the most powerful of the team – a Superman figure – and is called “The Utopian.”

Since then, they have lived by a code. They fight crime and evil, but they don’t kill and they don’t get involved in politics.

Fast forward to today and this group of heroes, now called The Union, which includes some of their children, is fracturing. Sheldon’s son Brandon (Andrew Horton) kills a super villain at the point when the bad guy had vanquished all of the team and is about to kill his father. This action saves several members of the team – three were killed – but sets up the conflict for the series.

Was Brandon wrong? The Utopian thinks so, while Sheldon’s brother Walter (Ben Daniels), who has immense psychic abilities, doesn’t agree. Walter, known as Brainwave, thinks the team should have intervened more in World War II and should have prevented the Holocaust.

He argues The Union should adapt to the changes in society and to the threats they face.

The story cuts back and forth from the present day to the origin story. I’m afraid the most interesting aspect of the story – whether or not the code by which they live still applies in a very different world – is frequently obscured by the sprawl of the story and its many characters.

The eight episodes of this series is also hurt by the fact it does not tell a single complete story. The origin story, which takes up much of the running time, is incomplete, which means it will continue through the next series of the show. The show ends in a cliffhanger.

So many questions are unanswered such as where do the superheroes who aren’t children of the original heroes come from? Where do the super villains come from? Does Sheldon have a comb or hair brush?   

It’s not that “Jupiter’s Legacy” isn’t potentially interesting, it’s the filmmakers have a huge problem in how to organize the story into something compelling.

For the viewers with a casual interest in the genre, this may not prove to be the most enjoyable superhero production you’ve seen. For more devoted fans, this may be fairly irritating.