The Boys Meets Invincible In Netflix's 8-Episode Sci-Fi Series
Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.
Ever since Robert Downey Jr. burst onto our screens as Tony Stark, traditional superheroes have taken over the pop-cultural landscape. Half the movies in theaters, and half the shows on streaming, revolve around a superhero like Batman or Superman swooping in to save the day. Right now, the best show on television is Lanterns and the most popular movie in theaters is Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Audiences love the fantasy of the caped do-gooder showing up to fight evil and protect the innocent. But it’s ultimately a pretty naive view of the world, and plenty of subversive superhero satires have pointed out that naivety. Watchmen was the first to suggest that maybe having superhumans in the real world wouldn’t be so great. The oversaturation of superhero cinema has given rise to similar anti-superhero stories like The Boys and Invincible, cutting through the safety of a good-versus-evil narrative to give an evildoer the unlimited powers of Superman.
As the MCU and the DCU have turned casual superhero fans into hardened cynics, these satirical subversions have provided a refreshing change of pace. But they haven’t all been as successful as The Boys; Netflix’s own superhero parody, Jupiter’s Legacy, was a one-season wonder.
Jupiter's Legacy Is Mark Millar's Version Of An Invincible-Style Superhero Parody
Mark Millar is one of the most prominent comic creators working today. He wrote seminal Marvel titles like Civil War and Old Man Logan, then went on to create some of his own seminal titles: Kick-Ass, Kingsman, Nemesis — he’s a bona fide hitmaker, with his own label, Millarworld. In 2013, Millar debuted an original superhero comic inspired by Star Wars, King Kong, Roman mythology, and the Golden Age of Comics. Jupiter’s Legacy set out to thematically tie the superhero myth to the American ideal, and it ended up being a pretty great comic.
In 2021, Netflix turned Jupiter’s Legacy into a TV show, hoping to create another hit franchise like Kick-Ass or Kingsman. The series follows one generation of superheroes — the Union of Justice, led by the Utopian — who set a certain moral standard for supes going forward. Then, it shifts to the next generation, including the Utopian’s own children, and they struggle to maintain that moral standard in an increasingly complicated world.
It’s a sharp deconstruction of the simplicity of superhero stories. It’s nice to imagine a world where a good guy in a cape will show up to stop the bad guys, but human beings are a lot messier than that — there are no “good guys” and “bad guys.”
Jupiter's Legacy Has Lots Of Great Action (Despite Its Overstuffed Plot)
Although the comic book had been well-received by critics, the TV adaptation was panned. It has a “rotten” score of 40% on Rotten Tomatoes, and while the critical consensus praised the series for its superpowered fight scenes, reviewers seemed to agree that the narrative was much too slow and overstuffed to land effectively. But, five years later, I’d argue that those critics treated the show too harshly. It’s no Invincible, or the early seasons of The Boys, but Jupiter’s Legacy delivers more than enough memorable characters, exciting storylines, and dazzling superhero action to leave viewers satisfied.
When it premiered, Jupiter’s Legacy pulled in impressive viewing figures, but Netflix still cancelled it after one season. The lukewarm reception from critics and audiences didn’t give them much hope that the same viewership would come back for season 2.
A show like Jupiter’s Legacy is very expensive to produce, so it needs to be a guaranteed smash hit like Stranger Things to secure a blockbuster budget for another season. That’s why Netflix tends to be particularly trigger-happy when it comes to cancelling sci-fi shows like Altered Carbon; it takes a lot of visual effects just to bring the characters and their world to life on-screen.
Jupiter's Legacy
6/10
- Release Date
- 2021 - 2021-00-00
- Network
- Netflix
- Showrunner
- Steven S. DeKnight
- Directors
- Steven S. DeKnight
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Elena Kampouris
Walter Sampson / Brainwave
-
Leslie Bibb
Fitz's Grandmother
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.