THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY

                         The Umbrella Academy: A Solid Entry from Netflix!!!

 
On one day in 1989, 43 infants are inexplicably born to random, unconnected women who showed no signs of pregnancy the day before. Seven are adopted by billionaire industrialist Sir Reginald Hargreeves, who creates the Umbrella Academy and prepares his "children" to save the world. In their teenage years, though, the family fractures and the team disbands. Fast forward to the present time, when the six surviving members of the clan reunite upon the news of Hargreeves' passing. They work together to solve a mystery surrounding their father's death, but divergent personalities and abilities again pull the estranged family apart, and a global apocalypse is another imminent threat.

Well the concept of the show itself is not really as great as it first sounded. It is at best a very good derivative; a little bit of an X-men story( Jean Grey) and a portion of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (The Destroyer of Worlds Arc) and you have the Umbrella Academy. The storytelling however is quite good and entertaining,  at least it was able to keep viewers interested until the show picked up steam. Character development is not up to scratch, barring the brilliant work done in developing the character of Vanya only. The conflict was a little too Predictable and the focus of the entire show a tad too misplaced. The series information had this as a show about a superhero family, and that is just plain wrong both figuratively and metaphorically. They just cannot be referred to as a family, they were never one and still fail to be one. At best they are a team of misfits trained under one roof or Umbrella.
A more in-depth look at the show will reveal that it has a good premise upon which it ought to take off. The concept may not be all too original as mentioned before, but it still doesn't lack creativity. The plot element is good and interesting, however the story telling is a little too laid back, slow and quite boring in the beginning. Contrary to other Netflix super hero shows that suffer from a strong start and slow/ boring mid-seasons, this show never really hit the highs with its early episodes. In fact, the show really started to happen from the 6th episode, meaning there were 5 technically wasted episodes, which achieved basically nothing other than introducing a character whose influence in the scheme of things was limited at best. We feel the show paid too much attention in trying to tell a family story from the 1st 5 episodes, rather than exploring the incredible world of being super powered. One thing they certainly got wrong was not paying much attention go detailing their character powers, and assuredly, they do have some very incredible powers.

That being said, mention must be had of the fact that the show's scripting team did a lot of work creating and developing the character of Vanya Hargreaves through majority of the earlier episodes of the show. Perhaps the much attention paid to detailing her character nuances left a little too much for viewers to deduce her final standing in the show's conclusion. Perhaps from the 3rd episode it was already all too clear that Vanya and Leonard Peabody/ Harold Jenkins were going to be the source of conflict. This essentially waters down the suspense / thrill factor and creates a longing for the show to end as soon as possible.
Character performance is a little on the positive side.  Robert Sheehan(Klaus) and Ellen Page( Vanya) were particularly solid on screen. The roles they undertook needed performances capable of creating sympathy and relatability and they delivered quite well. David Castaneda(Diego), Emmy Raver-Lampman( Allison) and Aiden Gallagher( Number 5) were also above average in their performances. However as of yet, Aiden's performances have elicited mixed reactions from viewers as he had to undertake an adult role in a child's body, and make it work. His role is quite hard to call and very difficult to judge. At some point he was brilliant and at some others he was just plain annoying and a bad fit. Tom Hopper(Luther) had to be the poorest of the pack. He just didn't sync, his performances were just off and maybe because of the Incredibly poor CGI imaging of his character, he was an annoying eye sore for the entirety of the series. His ability to make questionable decisions while being poor at his role was all the more annoying.

The conflict element in the show was strong when it finally was unveiled in the final three episodes of the show. The make-shift conflict that was introduced in the earlier episodes to keep viewers hooked was everything but compelling. The Commission was at best a sham, Cha-Cha(Mary J. Blige) and Hazel( Cameron Britton) were at best good intermission acts. The only reason they won't be referred to as comic acts is because they put in a lot of effort to make their characters compelling, apart from that, they were just little cogs in a huge machinery, shown to even be incompetent at being sources of conflict. Disappointing.
Fight scenes were just okay. Perhaps in 2015/16 this would have ranked as a show with good fight scenes. But having taken time to appreciate great fights in DC's Titans and AMC's Into The Badlands, I think it'd be quite unfair to call this 'good'. We rank it okay.
CGI employment was shitty. Luther looked like an overblown cartoon mash up made by a school Kid. It was an eye sore, and totally unimpressive. It was one singular factor that made or marred the series as a whole. It has become a norm for Netflix to make its shows solid, not only from incredible storyline and Creative concepts but also ensuring to employ above average use of CGI. Works such as those employed in The Punisher, Daredevil, Luke Cage etc are all good examples of where Netflix got it right, while they got it wrong with this one here.

All of the above pale in comparison when compared with Conflict Resolution. If ever there was an aspect where a show had to deliver to save some face, it is in resolving the conflict which was done with amazing creativity, panache and boisterous ingenuity. The decision to resolve the conflict the way the show started it out was absolutely Genius, and Creative when you factor in the decision to create a factor capable of affecting the space-time continuum, even though the event had occurred already.
On the franchise side of things, it offers the show a lot of options going forward. It allows the creator finally tell a 'family story' it so wanted to tell but failed to tell in the first season.

Overall, it's a very huge entry into Netflix's superhero collection of shows having cancelled it's arrays of Marvel shows. Perhaps it's association with Dark horse comics may really kick off with the initial good first impressions made by this show. In so far as you are patient enough to get over the initial 5 episodes, you will enjoy the concluding 5 episodes and surely wish there were more for you to chew on.

From us here at FCA, it's a definite recommend. You must just see this show, if not for anything, at least for the marvelous conflict resolution and good storytelling employed. If you are unfamiliar with the stories of Phoenix(X-Men) and Daisy Johnson( S.H.I.E.L.D) then the concept itself will make a huge impression on you.

Based on: The Umbrella Academy, by Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá
Developed by: Steve Blackman, Jeremy Slater
Starring:
Ellen Page
Tom Hopper
Emmy Raver-Lampman
David Castañeda
Robert Sheehan
Aidan Gallagher
Mary J. Blige
Cameron Britton
Colm Feore
Adam Godley
John Magaro
Composer: Jeff Russo
Production company(s): Borderline Entertainment, Dark Horse Entertainment, Universal Cable Productions
Distributor: Netflix

FCA's AppR: 7.9/10