- How are you doing, you wonderful nerds?
Scott here.
Yes, I'm bald now.
This is a weird kind of camera angle.
We're working on a bunch of other stuff.
You can see the green screen back there.
But if you recall last month, when I was traveling,
we had a couple other nerdy YouTubers step in
and make videos for this channel.
And you guys seemed to respond to it well and like it.
And I thought it was a cool idea.
And that's something that I kind of want to
do a little bit more of moving forward
is spotlighting other nerdy, comic book YouTube channels,
and showing people other channels
that maybe you haven't heard about
and maybe you want to go subscribe to.
I mean, this channel's called NerdSync.
It shouldn't just be me.
It should be a whole bunch of cool geeks, and nerds,
and dweebs, and dorks, and all sorts of stuff
coming together, syncing together.
It's a grand old time.
So today, I want to introduce you guys
to the Readus101 channel.
And he has a lot of stuff to say
about Marvel's new Inhuman show.
So, take it away.
- So, I'm not gonna lie.
I know nothing about the Inhumans.
What I do know is that fans of Black Bolt
initially wanted Vin Diesel to play the character
before Marvel handed him a script with the lines I am Groot.
But a lot of things changed since then.
Instead of getting an Inhumans movie,
we're getting an Inhumans TV show
whose first two episodes are going
to be aired in the theaters as if it was a movie.
Oh, and Black Bolt won't be
wearing a comic-accurate costume.
Now, like I've said before,
I have very limited knowledge of the Inhumans.
I'm like Jon Snow but without the resurrection bits.
But finding out that the only thing
that I kinda knew about Black Bolt
wasn't making it into the Inhumans television show
caused me to roll my eyes farther than that one GIF
of Robert Downey Jr. doing it from the first Avengers movie.
Now according to Screen Rant,
who actually interviewed the Black Bolt actor, Anson Mount,
he addressed why such a decision was made
as far as he was concerned.
Quote, "Dude, one of the tricks of this kind of adaptation
"from the graphic novel world to a live-action is to,
"you have to ground it.
"You have to ground it in a way
"that makes these characters more accessible
"to a viewing audience rather than a reading audience.
"It's a colder medium.
"They are not participating.
"Even if the novel is graphic, it's still a hotter medium.
"There are certain aspects of the character
"in the world that are a bit more grounded
"than what you'd see in the graphic novels, but,
"I was about to make a brilliant side thought
"and it just left my head,
"but it'll come to me," end quote.
I'm sorry, what?
You have to ground it?
The Inhumans television show has
been confirmed back in May of 2017
that this takes place in the same cinematic universe
where a scientist transforms into
an eight foot tall, rampaging, green monster
whenever he gets just a tiny bit upset,
where six OP MacGuffin stones reside,
and where a godlike figure is the embodiment of a planet
whose human avatar is Kurt Russell,
but your character can't wear
a more comic-faithful costume because you can't make it
more accessible to a viewing audience?
You have a giant bulldog
who is half the size of a Hummer limo.
How is that grounded?
Captain America also exists in the same universe
his character is in.
And while his costumes have definitely had modern
and realistic variants over the years,
there are still elements of the classic costumes,
such as his mask that has been
creatively converted to a half helmet,
that made it in all of the movies,
and it's still accessible to a viewing audience.
The same can be said of Iron Man, Ant-Man,
Doctor Strange to a certain extent, and Spider-Man,
whose iconic red-and-blue costume,
even with all the technological advancements that were made
in the recently released Spider-Man: Homecoming,
steps completely out of the realms of reality grounding
that modern superhero properties tend to focus on.
But honestly, I don't blame Anson Mount for why
he possibly believes that grounding a superhero story
is completely necessary nowadays.
I blame Bryan Singer.
His 2000 X-Men movie helped revitalize
how we can see superhero films
and, in a way, brought them back from the brink of death.
But this is also when we saw our first instances
of adapting a superhero film outside of how Richard Donner
and Tim Burton set it up before, realism.
The most obvious example of this was seeing the X-Men
not in movie variants of their individually unique
superhero outfits from the earlier comics,
but matching black outfits.
Even Hugh Jackman's Wolverine,
one of the most iconic X-Men still to this day,
and known for his unique mask and costume combination,
was placed in one of these outfits
with no mask throughout the actor's career as the character.
A movie featuring super-powered individuals
with different and unique abilities
fighting for justice and equality in the world
in which the majority of the population
both fears and hates them
had their costumes changed for the sake of realism.
Their costumes!
Now in Marvel's defense, more specifically,
Marvel Studios, they realize that
this level of thinking is somewhat ridiculous.
When it comes to their movies,
they've learned that things like costumes
and abilities don't have to be turned down
to retain the audience's attention.
Instead, there just needs to be
a combination of good story, compelling characters,
and a combination of good leadership and vision.
I mean, yes, Vision himself helps out a lot.
But I'm talking about the other type of vision.
That's why the Guardians of the Galaxy
movies did surprisingly well.
James Gunn didn't try and ground it by thinking
the concepts would be too much for a common moviegoer.
He focused on staying true
to the characters and the source material,
which involved putting in a walking tree
and a raccoon with a gun fetish into the movie.
And it's because we've been so conditioned
to the grounded level of superhero storytelling and movies,
all of us who were surprised it did well only were still
because we thought it wasn't done in a way that,
using Anson Mount's own words,
"Makes the characters more accessible to a viewing audience
"rather than a reading audience."
Look, I'm fully aware that the same showrunner
for Inhumans is the same as Iron Fist.
I know that there's a chance the reason
why these decisions were made is
because he's under that same grounded mindset.
But with the way the CW DC shows are being handled
and are still being entertaining,
not to mention that superhero films have evolved
since the days of Batman and Robin,
I would like to argue the fact that as long as
there is passion and care for characters and story,
we don't need to stay in the realm
of grounded superhero adaptations anymore.
To quote Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus,
"Now's the time to take chances,
"make mistakes, and get messy."
Guardians of the Galaxy Volumes 1 and 2
were the two steps forward we needed to show
that we're ready to step out of this grounded comfort zone.
I'd hate for the Inhumans, a series about a race
of metahumans created by aliens and Celestials,
to be our one step back.
- Make sure you go check out Readus's channel.
Link will be in the description down below
or at the end card, whenever that pops up.
I would highly recommend his video
about Netflix buying Millarworld
if you want some more of his opinions about comic book TV.
And also, let me know what you guys think about spotlighting
other comic book YouTubers on this channel,
if that's something that you're interested in,
if you'd like to see more of, give me your thoughts.
I'm also open to suggestions if you have other channels
that you think we should showcase here.
We have so many great videos coming up for you guys.
I've been working on a thousand of them all at once,
which is why you haven't been seeing too much of me here.
But make sure you hit that big, sexy subscribe button
and the bell icon if you want to be notified
every time we post a new video.
I gotta say, the notification squad are some of
my favorite people on the planet.
I love you nerds.
Speaking of nerds I love, we have to thank our patrons,
especially Cristoffer Lange, Keaten Lampert,
Mike Harvill, Kendra, Elizabeth Moncel,
and the rest of the wonderful nerds
who support us over on patreon.com/nerdsync.
I will see you guys next week
when we talk about Superman and the KKK.
That's gonna be a fun time.
Until then, my name is Scott,
reminding you to read between the panels
and grow smarter through comics.
See ya.