Superhero-themed movies are no longer a guaranteed box office hit. Most of those movies these days, in fact, do not do so well as we have become bored with the fancy special effects and heroes being perfect citizens. They just don’t seem real. As the genre produces flop after flop, many movie producers have recognized this issue and have made adaptations to the genre. Some prefer to continue the traditional good versus evil stories, while others are making innovative changes.
One such series is “Invincible,” an Amazon-produced animated superhero show that has been a massive hit with viewers and critics. It garnered a Rotten Tomato score of 99% and an IMDb score of 8.7/10. The eight-episode series was released exclusively on Amazon Prime. The original comic did not come from Marvel or DC, but from Image Comics, which has made classic hits such as “The Walking Dead.” The comic ran from 2003 to 2018, publishing a total of 144 issues.
The TV show follows the same plot as the original comics. It talks about Mark Grayson who is the son of the world’s greatest superhero, Omni-Man. Mark discovers his powers at the age of 17 and is taught how to use them by his father while having to deal with normal teenage problems. Sounds pretty boring, right? I had the same thought at first, believing it to be just another generic ripoff of other superhero shows. You can see a lot of similarities to Marvel’s concepts. There are the Guardians of the Globe (who resemble the Avengers), the Teen Team (similar to the Teen Titans), and a secret government organization (like S.H.I.E.L.D). The various superheroes in the show bear striking resemblance to other ones we’ve seen before.
A sense of boredom flooded me right up until the end of episode one. At the end of that episode, the Guardians of the Globe receive an emergency signal from Omni-Man and rush back to their base. There, they meet Omni-Man, who slaughters them all. This gory sequence reveals that Omni-Man is the true villain in the story. At this point, the show splits into two storylines. One follows Mark Grayson as he bears the burden of being a superhero and navigating through high school drama, while the other is the deconstruction of Omni-Man’s identity. The two storylines intertwine perfectly. After the climatic finish of episode one, episode two was relatively calm until a dramatic fight broke out, always keeping the viewers in their seats.
Speaking of the fights, they are insanely entertaining. Rated as a TV-MA show, the animators did not hold back when drawing the bloody fights. In the last couple of episodes where Omni-Man is finally confronted by his son, Omni-Man uses every trick he has to demonstrate to his son how fragile humans are and the need for him to rule over them. Thus, he causes havoc in cities, killing millions.
“Invincible’s” production crew did not just excel at producing violent scenes but also at multiple other aspects. One really interesting and important aspect of “Invincible” is that the show did not show Omni-Man’s true color until the end of the episode. To be completely honest, revealing the main antagonist at the beginning of a show or even making the antagonist almost unbeatable is not unique. But revealing it at the end of a seemingly-cheery episode is unheard of. It destroys the mindset that viewers had initially. Also, it gives the viewers access to information that no one else knew—Omni-Man was the killer. It gave the show a different sense of tragedy as the viewers already knew what was going to happen but felt powerless to prevent characters like Mark from approaching the revelation of the truth. A lot of the emotional value came from the great cast, starring actors like J.K. Simmons.At the end of the day, “Invincible” is worth a watch, as the show created characters that can be living, breathing people despite being superheroes, and the audience can connect with them beyond just the fights.
