So we finally finished watching the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy and the final experience was on the whole enjoyable. There were significant differences between the comic books and the series but as I've been repeatedly telling friends on social media, it's the sort of discipline that isn't necessarily better or worse than the original. If anything it's a truly distinct creation that merits independent review (and scrutiny).
The Netflix series is like a remix of the first two volumes of the comic book series and tried to marry different aspects of both books into a new story of its own. And that sort of creative effort should be appreciated, right? They came up with a new story that was close enough to the original but still different so that comic book readers would still be surprised.
Naturally I'm not 100% happy about all the changes and the decisions made and let's not get into that just yet. Plus it's still a fairly new series, so no spoilers and all that.
But it's still a pretty strong story and one that nicely focuses on how the Hargreeves kids are still a family even if they're totally dysfunctional because of an overly manipulative father figure who mainly gathered them because of their superhuman abilities. And that's pretty messed up on its but as is the trend with millennial programming the showrunners decided to up the potential drama factor to eleven.
Major points for finding a way to keep Number Six strongly involved in the story. They also added more dimension to the characterizations to both Number Two and Number Four.
We could have done better with Hazel and Cha-Cha. Vanya's story went from being understandable to more annoying but I may present a different opinion from most.
But the second season is bound to explore new territory and I'm still excited to see where things will go.
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