Yesterday in the annual Television Critics Association press tour, Hulu’s panel featured several of their upcoming TV shows, which included the streaming service’s first foray into the Marvel world, *The Runaways. Speaking at that panel were Marvel TV head honcho **Jeph Loeb, showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, and some cast members from the show. Several details about the show were divulged including this tidbit about how powers will be portrayed in the show.
Loeb says they try to respect the original material of the comic. Some of the kids' abilities are more subtle. #Runaways #TCA17
— Danielle Turchiano (@danielletbd) July 27, 2017
"The writing is really honest and grounded," Gardner says. "They're writing for human beings. They're not patronizing." #Runaways #TCA17
— Danielle Turchiano (@danielletbd) July 27, 2017
The term grounded is often abused and said to make excuses for cheapening a creative approach but sometimes, like in this instance, it fits. For such an untested concept in a streaming service that has yet to go Netflix-level big, it’s necessary for a show to find ways to sustain itself within the limits and disadvantages of long-form TV.
For those who haven’t read the series by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphonsa, The Runaways has a pretty zany concept to begin with. It’s book about kids and their villainous parents who dabble in time-travel, occult sorcery, alien technology, and dinosaur-taming, so a faithful live-action adaptation would be crazy expensive to begin with, let alone a limited-budget television show. The grounded vision they have for this show makes sense to an extent. The question is which parts should they tone down and which to retain.
Take Karolina for example, whose powers include the ability to radiate rainbow-ish solar energy around her. That’s a pretty expensive ability to pull off consistently in the show so it makes sense to ground that down visually. For a character like Chase, who doesn’t have any natural abilities but owns a pair of badass flame gauntlets, you can pretty much keep most of his visual flair around. Point is, some elements are adaptable while some are not. I’m hoping the creators pick the right elements to leave in the show. We saw a raptor in the leaked trailer so we know they’re willing to push some of crazier elements!
What do you think of the whole grounded and subtle approach to their abilities? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Danielle Turchiano
