TELEVISION REVIEW: Invincible: Season 1 (Amazon Prime)

(Flight - Hans Zimmer)

Animated television shows and feature films frequently involve a sacrifice of some kind. In the case of children's entertainment, it could be anything from plot to script or art style.  As the intended audience for content gets older, it can grow more refined to reflect the aging audience but that doesn't always happen.  It's a rare thing to see animation with superb story, scripting, art, and direction.  It requires forethought that just...doesn't seem to happen that often when the content isn't live action.

Fortunately, that's not the case where Amazon Prime's 'Invincible' is concerned.

Okay, stop right there.  Let me take a moment and make very clear the fact that 'Invincible' is NOT A CARTOON FOR CHILDREN.  We'll get back to this in a moment but for any of you sitting there thinking of talking to little Tina about a new television show, this ain't it.  If you have younger kids watching, you might just want to be aware of this.

Based off of a comic series of the same name by Robert Kirkman, 'Invincible' is the story of a high school boy whose father is secretly the world's greatest super hero.  As is frequently the case in these types of setups, the boy soon comes into his own powers and immediately becomes privy to an entirely new world full of dangers, delights, and faces that he never new existed.  It's a story about a boy trying to live in two worlds at the same time.  It's not a particularly new story but Kirkman tells it very, very well in his comics.  Fortunately, said comic content translates nearly perfectly to animation.  Fans of the comics have almost unanimously rejoiced in the faithfulness with which the vast majority of the comic has been translated to the screen.  The few changes that were made to allow the show to flow more smoothly have also been largely applauded as improvements over the source material.

Make no mistake: This is not a comic for children.  One of the semi-novelties of 'Invincible' is its far more realistic take on how the business of super heroes existing would actually work in 'the real world'.  Some of you may immediately reach for comparisons to the type of content from another Amazon show, 'The Boys', and you'd be right to make such a comparison.  Adult themes, adult stories, blood, violence, more blood, some really super-hero level violence...but it's all packaged very well beside a very strong story, script, art style, and general direction.  It's also far more balanced than 'The Boys' is when it comes to how it employs its violence.  Sometimes 'The Boys' comes off as too 'Tarantino' with its levels of blood and gore.  'Invincible' doesn't shy away from it but it feels much more purposeful.  This is all helped by the absolutely insane roster of actors who showed up to voice characters.  J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Zazie Beets, Walton Goggins, Clancy Brown, Zachary Quinto, Mahershala Ali, Seth Rogan, John Hamm, and on and on.  

Oh, and Mark Hamill. Because Mark Hamill. 

None of the voice acting feels cheap, overdone, or otherwise compromised.  People are here taking it seriously and it shows.

'Invincible' is a very good television show that just happens to be animated.  It's not for kids, and it's much, much better for it.  Season one just finished dropping on April 30th.  Thank goodness seasons two and three have already been green-lit.  There are 12 different story arcs that they could turn into television seasons, and they seem like they're using one arc per season at this point, which is only good news.

Strap in, folks.  This one's a doozy.