Jeph Loeb Defends Marvel’s Vision For ‘Inhumans’

The first two episodes of Marvel‘s The Inhumans are playing on IMAX screens and while the reviews haven’t been great Marvel television chief Jeph Loeb is sticking by the vision for the show.

One of the critiques of Inhumans is that the project, which currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was better suited for a theatrical film as originally planned instead of a television show. However, Loeb told CBR that he felt Inhumans was a story better suited to the small screen because of the characters.

“We never really approached it as something that was going to be spectacle first and family second, and so I think one of the things that we do well is to ground our characters, to be able to take the time in order to get to know our villains… This was an opportunity for us to be able to tell a story about people,” Loeb said.

To an extent Loeb does have a point. Television affords more time to explore characters and their relationships as compared to the limited time in film. But unlike other Marvel television offerings, such as Jessica Jones or Luke Cage which are set in New York, the Inhumans have a far larger setting — namely the moon — that pose a financial and production challenge not usually seen in television. But Loeb explained that the experience of bringing Ghost Rider to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. served as a benchmark as they went into making Inhumans.

“In the first two hours alone there are 600 visual shots… and that is not something that we had ever done or ever taken on. Each of those experiences pose different challenges while you’re trying to make a regular television show. A lot of people came to us at the beginning of [Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] last season and said to us, ‘How are you going to do Ghost Rider? That was a feature property. How are you ever going to compare with a feature property?’ I think we held up pretty well, not just for television,” Loeb said.

While Ghost Rider did turn out well on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the one consistent positive in Inhumans reviews is the all-CGI Lockjaw it will be interesting to see what audiences think of Inhumans when it makes its small screen debut later this month.

Marvel’s Inhumans is now playing in IMAX theaters. It will premiere on ABC on September 29th.