‘Inhumans’ Director Addresses ‘Doctor Strange’ & ‘X-Men’ Comparisons

Marvel’s Inhumans arrived on the big screen this weekend – and some have already pointed out its parallels to other Marvel properties.

Roel Reine, who directed the first two episodes of Inhumans, was asked about the subject during a recent interview with The Independent. In particular, some have begun to wonder about the visual similarities between Karnak’s (Ken Leung) powers and those seen throughout Doctor Strange. While both Marvel Cinematic Universe characters have time-reversing capabilities, Reine revealed that any parallels between the two are completely unintentional.

“I was not really thinking about Doctor Strange much.” Reine explained. “Now, thinking about it, it does look like that.”

Reine went on to say that while their powers might appear the same on the surface, Karnak’s use of his abilities has an entirely different context.

“It’s more of an analytical thing.” Reine added. “His special skill is being able to see the worst versions of what is going to happen, which is a big problem for him. There are other scenes which are funny because he only sees the bad version of it and has to recoup to see the good version. They give me a lot of freedom to design the visual effects like I want them.”

With those visual similarities squared away, there still is another Marvel-related elephant in the room (at least for viewers learning of the Inhumans for the first time). Which brings us to…

X-Men

The ‘Inhumans versus Mutants’ debate has existed amongst Marvel fans for quite some time – and is being exposed to a whole new audience now that Inhumans has arrived in live-action.

With 20th Century Fox continuing to build out their X-Men shared universe of films, Reine said that creating a narrative difference between the two was a priority.

“Yes, [that was important] for me and the showrunners.”

So what, in Reine’s opinion, makes the Inhumans different? According to him, it lies in how the members of each group handle their powers.

“What’s really different is the X-Men are born with their special skills; they’re very problematic in the human race. With the Inhuman race, they get their skills in a special ceremony. They’re closed in their own society, which itself moves to the moon. For me, that’s the key difference: they have their own society.”

Reine argued that the established society of the Inhumans allowed the show to have plenty of political undertones.

“It’s really scary how politics is going, how inequality between races, money or no money, is a big part of the American system. Then, when you look at the rest of the world, it’s still a problem. Even in my home country, the Netherlands, diversity is really a problem. Racism has come back, or it never disappeared, so it’s good you tie into these big problems, either projecting or timing them in. With Inhumans we did a really good job to marry that into the system. In the comic books you already have that, so we used it in the series. It’s very grounded, and you can relate to it easily because it’s happening on Earth.”

Before You Go

Marvel’s The Inhumans premiered in IMAX theaters on September 1st. It will debut on ABC on September 29th.