The Umbrella Academy Cast: Ellen Page, Tom Hopper, Emmy Raver-Lampman, David Castañeda, Robert Sheehan, Aidan Gallagher Creator: Jeremy Slater The world nearing an end, time travel and superheroes trying to reverse the apocalypse is the flavour of the season. While viewers are gearing up for Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, Netflix brings in its newest set of superheroes on a mission to save the world with The Umbrella Academy. With great power, comes great responsibility. This is a concept that is unacknowledged by our superheroes in The Umbrella Academy for the longest time. Based on the Dark Horse comic-book series of the same name by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba, the web series introduces us to a family of super-powered individuals, except that they have all been adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves a.k.a. The Monocle. The first season of The Umbrella Academy is a mix of the first two comic book issues, Apocalypse Suite and Dallas. While fans would immediately notice the difference in terms of tonality, story arcs and still love it, others could find it uncanny as far as superhero stories go. You see, The Umbrella Academy is not your average run-of-the-mill superhero show where things return to normal at the end. It is the story of a dysfunctional family where kids are subjected to immense physical and mental pressure so that they can learn to control their specific abilities. The series follows 43 children born on the same day across the globe with only seven of them making it to The Umbrella Academy set up by The Monocle. He numbers the kids according to their use to him and doesn’t prefer to call them anything but their numbers. This ever-brooding character often forms a point of contention between our heroes as they reflect upon their 'love deprived' upbringing and the personal trauma they all had to go through as kids. Naturally, they behave more as a flawed team than as brothers and sisters. The Monocle enacts his last plan in hopes of reuniting them after a fallout years ago in an attempt to save the world from an imminent apocalypse. The huge assemblage of actors, such as Tom Hopper (Number One a.k.a. Spaceboy), David Castañeda (Number 2 a.k.a. The Kraken), Emmy Raver-Lampman (Number 3 a.k.a. The Rumor), Robert Sheehan (Number 4 a.k.a. The Seance), Aidan Gallagher (Number 5), Justin H. Min (Number 6 a.k.a The Horror) and Ellen Page (Number 7 a.k.a. The White Violin) feels right at home. All of them are able to enact a very different take on people with powers. They are broken, especially Number 7 who has always been dejected and put on the sidelines as she is not special like the other six (at least that's what we are made to think of). But she's 'the extraordinary' of the lot which is revealed later in the show and forms the climactic cliffhanger scene in the final episode. For the most part of its run, the series keeps building up new mysteries but fails to address some pertinent questions as the curtains drop. It could be possible that showrunner Steve Blackman has reserved some of the secrets for the next season and in the meantime, the entirety of Volume 3 will hit the shelves sometime in August this year. So, there’s more to explore and the first season establishes the universe very well along those lines. However, the show is slow with too many silent spaces in between. The individual storylines of the characters take time to establish themselves and up to the fifth episode the makers are building plots, making their viewers familiar with 'The Umbrella Academy' and its oddballs. Watch it for the performances of a team of misfits as they traverse through a bizarre upbringing and a mission to prevent the end of the world. Rating: 3/5<doc-sep>Like most in the superhero genre, The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) began life as a comic book series. What is less common is that this award-winning comic book was created and written by a rock star. In 2006, the same year that My Chemical Romance released their rock opera album The Black Parade, its singer Gerard Way was working on his first graphic novel with illustrator Gabriel Bá. Set among a dysfunctional group of children and young adults with superpowers, raised within an academy run by a grumpy British man, the comparisons with The X Men are unavoidable. But this is an inch less-polished, scrappier version than that – making it more X Men spliced with the aesthetic of Terry Gilliam. And this would feel refreshing were this series made back in 2007, when the first book was published. But since then, the possibilities of gritty, cool and dynamic characters and their darker sides, set to eccentric soundtracks, have been thoroughly explored by both Marvel and DC, both on the big and small screens. Way’s story, at least, gives its characters a few superpowers beyond the bog-standard invisibility, flight, telekinesis and so on (though those are present too). Through a series of plotlines that are almost as cluttered as the superhero genre itself, we meet seven individuals who were all spontaneously born on the same day, to women who were not pregnant when the day began. Each was adopted by stuffy and cold billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore), brought to a mansion and raised by a robot that is programmed to be their mother (Jordan Claire Robbins), assisted by a talking chimp called Pogo (voiced by Adam Godley).<doc-sep>
Netflix It's been years since Universal initially picked up the film rights for The Umbrella Academy and in the decade since it first became a thing, the lack of news and positive updates has been a frustration but no extinguisher to the excitement. And thanks to Netflix, the patience shown by Gerard Way's army of fans and those who came to the excellent comic for different reasons has now been rewarded with an ambitious, hugely entertaining series adaptation. It's safe to say Steve Blackman's adaptation is one of the most impressive comic book TV shows of recent times, shrugging off some of the issues that blighted the platform's Marvel shows and offering up a riff on X-Men, Doom Patrol and The Haunting Of Hill House (add them all together with a Tim Burton-like eye for character generation and you have the formula for Umbrella Academy) that is truly great. It's far from a flawless show, but there's a lot to be impressed by here. Equally, it wouldn't be fair not to mention where it slightly falls down in the name of balance. First the negatives... Downs 2. The Mid-Season Sag Netflix Despite the show mercifully avoiding Netflix's usual superhero show length of 13 episodes - which inevitably means there are two or three episodes in the middle that lose their grip - The Umbrella Academy sags in the middle the same way Daredevil and his Defenders buddies' shows did. It's perhaps because there's not quite enough story to justify the ten episodes, which makes the exposition-heavy first episode a little confusing. The problem there, of course, is that that episode worked exceptionally well and it's the pacing established there that makes the sag so noticeable. It's not at all fatal, but it's a shame that it seems to be so emblematic of Netflix shows now.