Marvel’s Inhumans is the next series to come from the comic book publisher’s television division, joining Agents of SHIELD on ABC. The show got its first full-length trailer today and, while fans had a number of concerns over what they saw, one stood out: Medusa’s hair.
Here’s the thing about Medusa’s hair: It’s more than just something she keeps long for beauty reasons. Medusa’s hair is, well, inhumanly strong, and is capable of stretching past its already considerable length. Medusa herself has complete mental control over the movement of every individual strand, allowing her to perform feats of incredible strength as well as fine motor control, like lifting or smashing objects, as well as using her hair as a whip, lockpick, rope or simply hundreds of extra hands. Medusa’s hair is her central superheroic characteristic, that’s why many fans thought it was crucial ABC and Marvel get it right.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/8774147/medusa_marvel.jpg)
Except that they didn’t. They got it so very wrong.
Instead of being wild and untamed, the wig that Medusa can be seen sporting in the trailer is lifeless and flat. It may seem innocuous, but fans of the comics were upset that more attention wasn’t being paid to the character.
You can do a talking raccoon right, but you can't design a wig that doesn't look like a Halloween outlet store? #medusa #Inhumans
— dQniel Kaufman (@dQnielK) June 29, 2017
I'll give one thing to the Inhumans trailer: never have I seen a wig struggle as hard as Medusa's did in it. It was truly a feat
— Mel-leficent (@jane_anon) June 29, 2017
The Inhumans would be OK if it was a university film project. Medusa is so bad, she looks like a basic attempt at cosplay.
— ･ﾟ. ﾟ (@shesvexed) June 29, 2017
The core issue people seem to have with the wig is that it makes Medusa look like a minor character when in reality she’s a core member of the Inhumans. Inhumans will follow Marvel’s royal family of sorts, focusing on a race of metahumans simply called Inhumans. Medusa is known for being one of the most intelligent and complex characters in the Inhumans’ race — every bit the equal of her husband, the mute king, Black Bolt — but her character, as seen in the trailer, doesn’t carry that same vibrant effect.
This could be written off as just an issue that comes with producing a trailer, but showrunner Scott Buck has specifically pointed out that Medusa’s hair, while incredibly important, was a problem for the team. Getting the animation right and making it look as cool as possible, like artist Jack Kirby did in the comics, was tougher than they imagined, Buck told Entertainment Weekly in May.
“It is very difficult. Even now, it’s still a process,” Buck said. “It takes quite a long time in post to make that effect work. We have some of the best visual effects people available working on our show. We still haven’t seen the final version of it; it’s very much a work in process.”
Arguably the most egregious, Medusa’s hair isn’t the only facet of the trailer that fans took issue with. Many pointed out that considering Marvel is selling this as an IMAX-worthy production for the first couple of episodes, it should look infinitely better than it does right now.
Marvel’s Inhumans was originally slated to be a feature film but Marvel confirmed last November that it was being made into a TV series instead. The show will premiere its first two episodes in IMAX on Sept. 1. It will then be carried over to ABC on Sept. 29.
