The first Netflix series from the mind of Mark Millar, Jupiter’s Legacy was based on the Image Comics series created by Millar and artist Frank Quitely, and it was hyped up to be Netflix’s new big show in the tradition of Stranger Things and Umbrella Academy before it even started filming. But a series of behind-the-scenes problems, including the replacement of original showrunner Steven S. DeKnight with Sang Kyu Kim and a ballooning budget reported being as high as $200 million dollars led to a lackluster first season and a quick cancelation from the streaming network.
There are many lessons that Netflix and other streamers can learn from Jupiter’s Legacy. Some may be more obvious, while others dig into the meat of the series, what it represented, and what else was happening in the world of pop culture at the time.
10 Cut Your Losses
Original reports stated that Jupiter’s Legacy had a budget of $9 million an episode, which would have equaled up to $72 million for the season, which is no small change but is also pretty cheap for this kind of series. In the end, behind-the-scenes problems and reshoots ballooned the budget to upwards of $200 million, meaning Netflix spent over twice what they had planned.
This is a common issue in filmmaking, where a studio throws good money after bad, trying to fix a problem that lies not in the budget, but in the story.
9 Not All Properties Are The Same
Jupiter’s Legacy is just the latest comic book property to run into the gold rush problem. After Tim Burton turned Batman into a blockbuster sensation in 1989, studios rushed out to get their hands on any masked heroes they could find without realizing that the real secret behind Batman was Burton’s talents and the character’s universal fame. Movies like The Shadow and The Phantom came and went, failing at the box office.
Now, in the new age of superhero popularity, Netflix wants in on the action and after their success with Umbrella Academy, they wanted to try a more traditional superhero-looking show. The problem is, the general audience doesn’t know Jupiter’s Legacy like they know the Teen Titans or Flash, so they have no initial burst of interest in the property.
8 Make It Different
Jupiter’s Legacy is, essentially, a skewed telling of the Superman Family and the Justice League. The story could fit in between the pages of Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ Kingdom Come, showing how as heroes became more violent, Superman began to question his place in the universe.
The problem is, other shows, movies, and comics already have the overly violent heroes’ angle covered. Amazon’s The Boys, based on the comic by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson is the biggest one around, but DC’s Titans and Doom Patrol also fill that slot pretty well, not to mention Netflix’s own Umbrella Academy and Amazon’s animated Invincible, which had the bonus of coming from Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead. For Jupiter’s Legacy to stand out, it needed to do something different.
7 Keep It Simple
A quick and easy way to have saved budget and time on Jupiter’s Legacy would have been to cut the flashback storyline showing how the heroes got their powers in the 1930s. That aspect of the series didn’t add much to the story of the season and could have been saved for another time.
Saving the origins of the first generation of heroes for another time would have given the first season more time to focus on the children of The Utopian and Lady Liberty, along with the family dynamics, and it would have simplified the season to help audiences get acclimated to the universe.
6 Take Your Time
On the subject of the flashback sequences comes another lesson; a TV series doesn’t need to throw in everything at once. Take the time to build the world you’re introducing audiences to before getting really wild with it. Spend more time with the characters interacting so that the audience really learns who they are before tossing everyone into the deep end of the pool.
This is something Invincible handled very well. The first episode set up the big issue of the season, but the season itself took time building to the really wild stuff, allowing audiences to get to know the characters.
5 Pick A Surrogate
While Jupiter’s Legacy is an ensemble series, meaning there is no one “lead,” every ensemble series with an overarching story still needs an audience surrogate to help them gain access to the world of the story. In The Boys, Hughie fills that role, while everyone but Number Five handles that aspect in Umbrella Academy. Even Friends had this, as Rachel filled that position in the first season.
In Jupiter’s Legacy, every character is on the same footing, so there is no one on the show who can ask the questions the audience may have about the characters or world, leaving the viewers feeling confused.
4 Cast Carefully
On paper, Jupiter’s Legacy had a great cast. Josh Duhamel and Leslie Bibb are great actors who can carry a show on their own. The problem lies not with them, but with the parts they are playing. Partly due to some makeup issues, but also a case of miscasting, these actors don’t fit the roles they were given.
No one questions if Duhamel has the look of a hero, but he doesn’t have the look of a tired hero. Nor does Bibb. The two leads are too modern and young to play characters who have lived for over a hundred years. These were roles akin to Ben Affleck’s version of Batman, but the difference between Affleck and these two is that Affleck has the signs of hard times in his voice and eyes.
3 Makeup Matters
One thing that certainly hurt the performances of the actors was the makeup. Aging up much of the cast for present-day scenes left them looking fake, and the wigs and beards didn’t help. Putting the actors under so much makeup limits how much they can use their facial expressions when acting, and a whole lot of acting lies in facial expressions.
The same issue exists in Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, mainly because aging up actors is amazingly hard. Audiences know what older people look like, and can tell when the facial structure under the makeup doesn’t match up with the wrinkles and wigs.
2 Have Some Fun
Dramatic storytelling is great. The never-ending battle between good and evil and how it leads to gray areas that no one is sure how to handle makes for engaging and intense shows. But without some fun sprinkled in, the audience will get exhausted, and an exhausted audience stops watching. That’s why shows like Jupiter’s Legacy need to mix in some fun with the doom and gloom.
Umbrella Academy is a show that handles that mixture very well, as do The Boys, Doom Patrol, and Invincible. Audiences need to see characters having fun in order to feel something when those same characters are at their lowest moments. Sadly, Jupiter’s Legacy has very little fun mixed in with the drama.
1 Find The Moment & Stay With It
Most shows have a moment that lays out what the series will be about for at least a few seasons, and that moment tells the audience what kind of show they’re watching. Supernatural‘s moment is when Sam comes home at the end of the first episode to find his girlfriend killed in the same way his mother was killed; this tells the audience that no matter what, Sam will always be trapped in the world of demons and monsters and connects it all to his family.
The moment in Jupiter’s Legacy seems to be when The Paragon goes against his father Utopian’s rules and kills a supervillain in a fight, suggesting that the show will be about the growing anger between generations, but that story often falls to the wayside for long detours that don’t connect.
About The Author
