JUPITER’S LEGACY
SFX GETS FACE-TOCAPE ON SET FOR JUPITER’S LEGACY AS MARK MILLAR’S UNIVERSE COMES TO NETFLIX
It’s a superpowered generation gap as Millarworld hits TV.
NO ONE EVER ACCUSED Mark Millar of thinking too small. The Scot is the mastermind behind such comic books as The Ultimates, The Authority and Superman: Red Son. Other creator-owned titles belonging to his Millarverse – Wanted, Kick-ass and The Secret Service – were all adapted into feature films. And, lest we forget, he also penned Civil War and Wolverine: Old Man Logan, which served as the inspiration for the blockbusters Captain America: Civil War and Logan.
Millar, however, imagined even bigger – if that’s at all possible – with Jupiter’s Legacy. Calling the upcoming Netflix TV series “Star Wars for superheroes,” he says that his lofty goal was to craft “the greatest superhero story of all time.”
IT’S MILLAR TIME
“I know that sounds like such a Stan Lee thing to say,” Millar tells SFX. “But I had 10 years at Marvel. I wrote Superman: Red Son at DC, The Ultimates and Civil War at Marvel. I had all this big stuff at Marvel. I did Kick-ass while I was there as well. I’ve worn a lot of big superhero boots.
“I thought, ‘Okay, if I’m leaving Marvel, I have to go larger.’ I came up with a story that has 10 times as many characters as any Marvel book I had ever written. It starts from 1929 and runs all the way to the end of time, covering countless generations going into the future of superheroes.
“But as ever, whenever you’re doing something big like that, you have to ground it and give the viewer or reader an entry point, which is a family,” he continues. “Everyone can relate to the family. Imagine if someone like Superman and somebody like Wonder Woman got married, how hard would it be to be their children? As the two most beautiful and
famous people on the planet, who everybody loves, they are beyond movie stars because they save millions of lives. Everybody loves them.
“And then you’re this 18-year-old girl with your 20-year-old brother. How can you possibly live up to this legacy after 100 years of these guys?”
Based on the comic book of the same name by Millar and illustrator Frank Quitely, Jupiter’s Legacy is the first TV project stemming from Netflix’s 2017 acquisition of Millarworld Limited and all its properties. The ambitious saga chronicles a generation of superheroes, beginning in the Roaring ’20s when they acquired their powers and banded together to form the super-squad the Union of Justice.
The six founding members comprise Sheldon Sampson/utopian (Josh Duhamel), his wife Grace/lady Liberty (Leslie Bibb), his brother Walter/brainwave (Ben Daniels), his best friend George Hutchence/skyfox (Matt Lanter), Richard Conrad/blue Bolt (David
Julian Hirsh) and Fitz Small/the Flare (Mike Wade). Tensions arise when Sheldon and Grace seek to pass on their crimefighting duties to their children, Brandon (Andrew Horton) and Chloe (Elena Kampouris). However, the siblings want nothing to do with the betterment of mankind, having cracked under the weight of following in their parents’ footsteps and the daunting expectations placed upon them.
“The idea came to me when I read Carrie Fisher’s memoirs,” Millar says. “She was talking about how even though she was Princess Leia, and everyone loves Carrie Fisher, she never thought that she really was special because her mum and dad [actor Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher] were two of the most famous people on the planet. That really stayed with me. I thought, ‘Even Princess Leia feels the sense of not living up to her parents.’ So I just incorporated that.
“Brandon and Chloe seem to have everything, but they have pressures unlike anyone else in the world,” he continues. “Brandon wants to be his dad and he knows he can never match up, which is soul-destroying for him. Chloe doesn’t even try. She buckles under the pressure and just gets lost in drugs and alcohol. She was the one her dad believed in most, but she thinks he’s ridiculous.”
THE ONLY WAY IS ETHICS
It’s a chilly December day in 2019 when SFX visits the Toronto set of Jupiter’s Legacy. Today’s sequence unfolds in the past, and finds the Union gathering in the Chamber of Secrets, the group’s secret lair located in a downtown public building. So far, this is the only occasion where the cast have been suited up together. It’s wall-to-wall capes and costumes.
A large table sits in the middle of the soundstage. The heroes are engaging in banter at the expense of Blue Bolt and his “power rod” weapon. “You know what they say about men who talk about their rods?” quips one do-gooder. The conversation soon turns towards establishing the code of ethics that will guide and govern them over the next 100 years.
This code plays into how the Union operates. Sheldon swears and stands by it… and it’s what breaks up the gang down the road. More specifically, it divides George and Sheldon. As a result, George embarks on his own journey, and eventually becomes a prominent villain with a serious beef against his former colleagues.
“Best friends make the worst enemies, and that goes double here,” Millar explains. “George is a superhero who realised they were essentially maintaining the status quo and catching bank robbers while the real crooks were sitting at the top of the big companies, stealing from all of us. The others were fighting for the American Dream in the old days, but George was the first to see the big picture.
“He got radicalised in the ’60s,” he continues. “George was hanging out with the
Black Panthers, William Burroughs and all the counterculture people. He basically became revolutionary Batman – and he’s not wrong in his thinking, so it only makes him more attractive to audiences.”
The Boys, Watchmen, The Umbrella Academy and Daredevil all helped to usher in a new superhero regime: dark, gritty and brutal. Not that the Jupiter’s Legacy comics shied away from graphic content (Grace’s bloody showdown, anyone?) Nonetheless, Millar says that this show’s narrative isn’t necessarily a vehicle for such savage violence.
“Kick-ass, Kingsman and Wanted were quite similar, too,” Millar says. “There was a thematic similarity to them, which was somebody who wasn’t killed and suddenly has an opportunity to show how violent they could be. That seems
George realised the real crooks were sitting at the top of the big companies
to be the story arc. I love them and I’m really happy with them, but Jupiter’s Legacy is an entirely different set of muscles. This feels like Godfather II or Once Upon A Time In America. It feels quite sophisticated.
“Like Godfather II, you have a story about a father and son,” he continues. “It shows you the storyline of the son happening at the same time as the story of the father at the same age. In the flashbacks, you have young Sheldon, when he’s at the same age as Chloe and Brandon. It’s showing you the similarities and differences in the world at the same time. It feels very elegant, and that’s [thanks to] Steven Deknight [Daredevil, Smallville, Angel]. He’s the one who created that structure. All I had was two separate books. He blended them together into this flashback/flashforward format. It works so beautifully.”
Millar also credits Deknight’s “eye for talent” in amassing such an impressive cast. As the original showrunner, Deknight led the charge, before departing over creative differences. He was consequently replaced by Sang Kyu Kim (Altered Carbon, The Walking Dead). Although Millar applauds Deknight’s vision and commitment, he notes that this labour of love was a team effort.
“Television is kind of like that,” Millar says. “That’s the one thing I have discovered with television compared to movies. A movie tends to be a screenwriter, a director, and a producer telling them they can’t afford to shoot that scene. That’s the relationship in a movie.
“Whereas television has hundreds of people around the table. It’s an entirely different way of telling a story. There’s so much content. A movie, you spend 18 months making two hours worth of material. Television works much faster. You need more people on the ground, decisions made faster, and everyone is chucking out ideas.
“Steven was the guy who had the gas,” he adds. “He got it going. This wouldn’t look like this without Steven. Steven was the prime mover in this for me. I love him and I’m a huge
Television has hundreds of people around the table. It’s an entirely different way of telling a story
fan of his. But there were an awful lot of other people who came in and shaped it and moulded it.”
Millar once stated that Jupiter’s Legacy was one of the best things he’s ever written – and it seems he still loves it… “Sometimes it’s hard to look back over your own stuff because you can only see the mistakes,” Millar says. “I can only think, ‘I should have cut that scene or done this or that.’ But I’m really proud of Jupiter. When I reread it as we were starting to work on the TV show, I was pleased with how it looked.
“It stands up really well,” he concludes. “It was important to me that the adaptation was going to be good, too. The trick is to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you! Then it always looks good.”