Not long after returning from Comic-Con, where Marvel's Inhumans series took another round of thrashing because it looks like crap, I joked with fellow PDCer Mae Abdulbaki about their decision to have Roel Reine direct the first episode. Reine has done some good work, like his straight-to-DVD Death Race movies, but he's not known for the highest quality flicks, with his WWE movies being especially terrible. So if you were making a TV series that would first debut on IMAX of all places, Reine is probably not your guy, which made the decision to hire him pretty strange.
Speaking with CNET, Reine revealed the reason Marvel wanted him so bad, and it's because they knew his work. They wanted Inhumans done fast and cheap, and they knew Reine could give them that...
"I think they liked me for the job because I was able with my action movies to shoot in a very short time, or with very low budgets, action that looks like a big-budget movie. The schedule was super-tight. I had TV schedule time to shoot it with Imax cameras, 20 days to shoot two episodes. It’s nerve-wracking but I come from a low-budget film world, so 20 days for me is luxury."
That's not a knock against Reine. The guy just does what he does and has found his spot. However, it doesn't sound good that Marvel was trying to cut corners and rush through a major series effort like this, which may explain why it looks so bad. I think a lot of the blame also has to lie at the feet of showrunner Scott Buck, whose Iron Fist series didn't look good either.
Maybe this will all turn out okay and Inhumans will be better than it appears. Inhumans hits IMAX theaters on September 1st, then moves to ABC for an 8-episode season on September 29th.
