Jupiter’s Legacy Review
Netflix recently dropped the live-action adaptation for their new series Jupiter’s Legacy which was based on the comic book written by Mark Millar with art by Frank Quietly. Is it a good investment of your time or should you be watching Invincible instead? Here’s my Jupiter’s Legacy review to help you decide.
The Plot:
The series is set in two timelines, the present time with the original heroes, the Union of Justice, are older and post-Great Depression America where the main heroes were still younger. In the present, there’s turmoil and friction between the young and the new generation of heroes especially when it comes to adhering to “The Code”. In the past, its an adventure of sorts with six individuals led by Sheldon Sampson aka The Utopian lead a team of his friends and colleagues to discover a mysterious island that may hold the promise to salvation.
Casting:
The three solid castings here for me in Jupiter’s Legacy would be Leslie Bibb as Grace Sampson aka Lady Liberty, Josh Duhamel as Sheldon Sampson aka The Utopian and Ian Quinlan as Hutch (but that’s kind of a stretch too, I’ll explain later). The show leans towards Duhamel for a majority of the part. But sometimes the casting’s too flimsy whether its the story set in the present or the one in the past. But if we want to oversimplify things, Duhamel’s OK playing an old and weary Superman archetype who cannot accept the fact that society and the world is changing and the old ideals he was clinging to either needs to be revamped or needs to be changed. And this is one reason I liked his performance here, he’s so helpless. Really can’t do anything for all his power as the world he lives is has become alien to him. Plus he’s also continually being pushed to the limits in raising his son, whom he is grooming to take over his role in the future.
Other cast here are just OK. Their roles are minor anyway but I did like that they cast Anna Akana here in this series as Raikou.
Although that really doesn’t matter for reasons I can’t mention any further in the risk of becoming spoilers.
The Visuals
I’m going on the record for this Jupiter’s Legacy review to say that the visuals here are spotty and hit-or-miss. There were some moments in the show especially the superpowered fights that feature bad to terrible effects. Like there was a scene where one of the younger generation of heroes power up for a punch and I’m suddenly thinking “Man, Legends of Tomorrow had better visuals” and that’s saying A LOT.
The flying animation and CG could have done more work too.
What I am impressed though is how they managed to take scenes from the book and give it a real, live-action treatment. Like these panels from the book:
TV Series
Pacing
Jupiter’s Legacy needs to up and improve their game when it comes to pacing. I totally understand what they want the audience to know and see but they way it was executed was sooooooooo dragging. Not gonna lie, I found myself tempted to fast forward scenes here and there and it’s not just for the flashbacks. Even the present scenes had so really dragging moments.
Complexities:
It shows that they wanted to do a lot of things here so they dump one exposition after another using the Sampson brothers and to some extent Hutch and Chloe but there’s just so much. This muddles the experience and drags it down. It feels like there were so many things they still wanted to drop but the writing is limited especially if they want to have some neat reveals here and there. This makes the series cold and lifeless, a far cry from the comic book (swear this is the last time I’m even referencing the book).
Verdict:
7/10
Give Jupiter’s Legacy a shot, lower your expectations (because even if they want to be Invincible or The Boys that will never happen). Be ready to have the remote and fast forward at the ready too because it can be boring and trust me there’s very little exposition you’d be missing.
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