Spoilers Jupiter Legacy - New Netflix Show

I believe they have a contract with Mark Miller. They paid for his universe with the intent of creating a number of series--they wanted their own shared universe (most likely)--it doesn't seem they are prepared to give that up. I have not finished watching this series yet--it is just dull to me. But it is not the concept that is the problem. It is the execution. It is middle of the road at best. I can't take the "serious tone" seriously as there is not much depth to the themes or the plot, the characters are dull, and it is pretty heavy handed without having anything to be heavy handed about.

 

The series was simply (IMHO) bad and incredibly slow. Reading reviews online, people liked the parts in the past or the modern ones, but not both. Whenever the historical period changed, it seemed to viewers that the part they were interested in was being abruptly stopped to move on to something they couldn't care less about. Really, they inflated something that in the comics was barely two issues (and the part in the past only few pages - I didn't count them but I believe there were 6-7 pages top on how they get their powers).

I admit that during watching I often FF the parts in the past.

 

By the way, they made almost every character an insufferable prick. Why should I even care what happen to them?

 

So apparently between original shooting and reshoots this cost Netflix nearly $200m for 8 episodes. (None of which seemed to go on convincing wigs/old-age makeup.)

https://www.comicsbeat.com/jupiters-legacy-ends-after-one-season-and-200-million/

I'm willing to bet Supercrooks will be made for a hell of a lot less.

 

In the article there is a perfect analysis of everything wrong in this series.


Jupiter's Legacy has been cancelled...and two things have happened:
One - people are now actually talking about the show. Which, let's be honest, was not happening while the show came out.
Two - now that it's 'complete', we can start the autopsy. Let's dig into this mess. 1/?

First thing’s first, for those of you who don’t know – and not even people who reported the news knew (not that I can blame them) – Jupiter’s Legacy was supposedly an adaptation of a trilogy of comic maxiseries written by Mark Millar and drawn by a whole lot of great artists. 2/?

Specifically, the show itself takes its name from, and primarily was ‘meant’ to adapt, the first of these maxiseries – which takes place second chronologically. And I say ‘meant’ because, at 8 episodes of about an hour each…the show only adapts 1 issue of story. 1 issue. 3/?

This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. While I enjoy the comics, they are very compressed. With MANY important plot details either happening in-between time-skips, or off-page. So some of the show decides to explore and explain some of these blanks. But…overdoes it. 4/?

Not only does it try to expand upon one important plot thread that was glossed over in the comics…it makes the FATAL decision to actually set the entire series before the comics even begin. Which means that the entire season builds up to…the first issue of the comic. 5/?

And that’s a fatal mistake because of how the maxiseries is actually structured. Which is that – in the comic this is adapting – the PLOT DOESN’T BEGIN UNTIL THE THIRD ISSUE. So this show spends a season and ends before the PREMISE EVEN STARTS. 6/?

So, by the end of the first season, after 8 hours of show, the viewer is left with…nothing. A show about nothing. That has no real story, narrative hook, or gimmick. I cannot even fathom how you spent 200 mil on this kind of hollow product. But it gets worse. 7/?

It gets worse the show decides to apply these same methods to the character arcs themselves. To insanely backwards results. The most obvious of which being that the main character of the comic is turned into barely an afterthought in the show. 8/?

Now the show hasn’t forgotten about the main character – but that it’s decided that they need to BUILD UP to her. So, rather than expanding on that character – they give her worse traits, personality, dynamics, so that she can ‘grow’ in later seasons. 9/?

Of course, the character development for the main character in the comic starts when the premise begins – in the THIRD ISSUE. And, as we’ve established, the show only ends up adapting Issue #1. So we’re left with a horrible character that gets NO GROWTH, ARC, PERSONALITY. 10/?

To put this short, this was a show with no story, no narrative gimmick, no central premise, and no main character. Why would people care about anything this show has to offer if it is completely hollow? Add in awful effects and generally bad writing to boot, this was DOA. 11/11

One other thing – the show spends its runtime giving the most hackneyed “should superheroes kill” plot of all time. And in the end it doesn’t even have anything interesting to say about that topic at all. So you’re left watching something that feels 30 years out of date. 12/12

 

I wasn't expecting a cancellation, but I'm not that surprised. I thought the first season was good enough to deserve a second season, however, I see why it didn't get renewed. There were way too many flashbacks and that was very drawn out. I also thought the special effects and fight choreography needed work too. I did like most of the superhero costumes and I thought many of the characters were good enough or had potential, but I felt they needed to speed things up a lot. The last episode was underwhelming with the large exposition dump, when that should've been what the first season should've been about-

Spoiler

Brainwave's betrayal

, more like the original first graphic novel before they renumbered/renamed things.

While Millar is very prolific and makes pretty entertaining fare, I wish Netflix had did a deal with Valiant instead. I think they could get more out of those characters if they wanted their own superhero universe. But Valiant's ambitions were too high, a mistake on their part IMO.

 

Sounds like a train wreck. I was going to watch this but I doubt I will now.

 

It was a little derivative of all the other super hero shows\movies but I did like it by the end of the season. I was looking forward to season 2 and seeing why Skyfox was doing what he was doing. Too bad it's been cancelled.
Yet another "one and done" series ala Firefly.

 

Has anything with "Legacy" in the title been a hit? Tron Legacy, The Bourne Legacy, Jupiter Legacy (terrible-sounding title, BTW)... We'll see how the new Space Jam does...

 

I sincerely doubt that. Firefly still has a large and passionate fanbase 16 years after the movie and 19 after the show. Nobody's going to be talking about Jupiter's Legacy next week.

 

25 Million per episode?! Yikes. I saw the first episode but it didn't motivate me to watch beyond that.

 

Yep. One can like or dislike The Boys but at least people talk about it. Jupiter's Legacy? "Indifference" probably is the kindest word.

 

This was not a good show at all, although Netflix is a complete disaster. They cancel everything, it's really ridiculous. I mean, who's fault is it that you spent $200 million on this show?

 

And the series doesn't look or feel like it cost that much to make.

 

The Netflix model is that the shows they produce are intended to last at most three or four seasons. Beyond that the shows do not attract new subscribers. So you just need to go into any series expecting it to not last beyond three seasons.

 

There are some rumors of re-shooting and "creative differences" with a showrunner who left during mid-production.

 

I watched the final episodes last night. Can someone please explain to me why Sheldon was so obsessed about "the Code". The entire series I thought that would be learned through the origin story, but I guess I missed it?

 

You missed absolutely nothing. The show really believed to have something deep and intelligent to say about superheroes killing. But it was like 30 years late. And they didn't really have anything interesting to say, except "killing is wrong". I can agree, but please, can you kindly elaborate the concept at least a little bit?

 

After I wrote that question, I saw that from someone up thread that we aren't going to learn the motivation behind Sheldon's philosophy until the later as the entire series covered the first two issues of the comic. I can see why the showed failed after reading a little about the comics--we basically watched an extended prologue.

 

Someone said that the show covers only the first issue of the comics, and, reading it again, I tend to agree.

About the code (SPOILERS). In the comics the Utopian hasn't a real formal "code". The only rule that seems he wants actively to enforce is that superheroes must not interfere with politics. He's just a more uptight Superman and he really believes in the American democratic system. The "No Killing" subject never came up. Like Superman, it seems he's just trying to not actively kill his opponents, but there isn't really any discussion about it.