That probably sums up the feeling after watching Season 1 of Jupiter’s Legacy, one of the new additions to Netflix, and apparently in the 'top 10’ in India right now.
Not, that this is a new feeling. So many of the OTT series we end up watching, leave us with this feeling. It’s the feeling when on one side we feel cheated at having invested the time day after day to finish the season. While on the other side, reminding ourselves ‘what would we have done with that time anyway’, being stuck at home in a lockdown! Fair enough, says Netflix back to you. One more series, one more week passing by, moving on.
Based on the comic book series of the same name by Mark Millar and Frank Quitely, #JupitersLegacy is set in modern-day America, a world filled with superheroes and supervillains belonging to the group called Union. Born over generations, since the 1920s, when an original group of 5 ordinary men (and a woman) are gifted superpowers on a remote island after they are considered ‘worthy’, this motley of young, old, and middle-aged superheroes are fighting crime, supervillains, cosmic disasters, and their own internal feuds and politics. All this, while maintaining the “code” - the all-important set of 2 rules that they all live by, (remember the age-old superhero adage “with great power comes great responsibility”) Rule #1. They will never govern Rule#2. They will never take a life. And as the 21st-century world gets worse with every passing day, living by these codes gets harder and stokes an inner conflict within the Union. Between the traditional-and-still-the-most-powerful stalwarts (most significantly driven by their leader, the Utopian) and the others, especially the younger generation superheroes, including his own son, Brandon, the successor and the future Utopian. This becomes the central plot, along with a myriad of battles between the good and the bad guys, the emergence of an all-powerful Thanos-like villain, Blackstar, and parenting troubles all around between the super-parents and their super-children.
With so many supers in one series, one would have expected at least some good action, if not a good story. But the series disappoints in both. There is some action here and there, and a semblance of a story. But between problem children and tracing the origins of their power in the 1920s, the series loses its bearing. The series is not able to get its point of view right. It is very American in its sensibility, but it’s neither the collective-patriotic-American-Marvel nor the individualistic-dark-American-DC and without an overall point of view on life, it fails to connect with the audience. The loose narrative around trying to live by the morals and a code, in a world that increasingly doesn’t have a place for it, is poorly delivered and fails to lift the story-telling. The actors deliver average performances, themselves struggling to be convinced about their characters.
As the fumbling scenes get to the season-ending-climax of a cliff-hanger, we are left with a big fat “meh”
Unfortunately, the only legacy that this series leaves behind, is our all-precious TV remote, which numbly reaches out to browse for the next series that we’re willing to give our not-so-precious time to.
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