Skyler Orton
Amazon Prime’s adaptation of the classic Image comics title Invincible recently finished its fourth season and fan reactions have been genuinely enthusiastic. Writer Robert Kirkman and his team have reliably put out strong seasons of television, faithfully adapting one of the greatest superhero stories of all time. However, since the show’s initial release fans have intensely criticized the animation.
In many ways those detractors aren’t wrong but they also aren’t completely right so let’s talk about it.
The Animation is Bad
This is the common statement that even many of the biggest fans of the show are quick to point out. And depending on the scene that’s not entirely wrong. Look at this compilation of mistakes or cost cutting measures from the newest season (minor spoilers ahead) for an example.
For example, many point out the reuse of character models, or character injuries looking similar. I would like to posit that this isn’t that nearly as big of a deal as many say it is. This isn’t exactly uncommon across the film industry and it makes sense to cut down on the budget. Most importantly it didn’t detract from my experience watching the show at all.
This post demonstrates some of the more concerning animation problems in the show that I will concede aren’t incredible. The use of “popsicle stick” animation for a lot of the flight scenes is quite jarring. However I think there’s also an irony in some of the shots that have this stiff animation. The irony is that while the animation is a little silly, the backgrounds are beautiful and highly detailed, especially the city shots. It’s not necessarily a case of wanting one over the other, obviously both detailed backgrounds and smooth animation would be ideal, but I can excuse the occasional stiff moment if it looks good overall.
The Celebrity Cast
Whenever the animation is brought up usually the celebrity cast is brought up right behind it. People point to smaller parts being inexplicably played by major stars instead of established voice actors. However, this being a talking point for the show’s current problems is incredibly disingenuous for many reasons. Firstly, the series has phased out the worst of the stunt casting as time went on. For example, in the character Titan’s first appearance in season one he was played by Mahershala Ali but after that he was recast to a less established actor with more voice work named Todd Williams.
However, even Ali’s casting wasn’t bad on its own. Many fans treat voice acting and screen acting as entirely separate disciplines but that’s not true at all. Ali has a decent career in voice work such as his fantastic performance as Uncle Aaron in the Spiderverse films as well as his Oscar nominated roles as a screen actor. The same goes for Mark Hamill’s small role as Art, Invincible’s mentor and costume designer. Hamill will always be best known as Luke Skywalker, but he has a huge voice acting career performing iconic parts such as The Joker. This doesn’t stop many from calling his part stunt casting even though he does a genuinely fantastic job. Just check out season 4 episode 5 for an example of how fantastic he is in the part.
So how does this tie into the animation? Many fans call it a waste of budget to splurge on bigger name actors for smaller parts. To an extent these criticisms are valid (see Simu Liu as Multi-Paul) but the worst of it has slowly phased out as the show matured. So why in Season 4 when the animation is bad, do fans still point towards the celebrity cast when it hasn’t been nearly as big of a problem in several seasons?
It’s also worth pointing out that while the leads are played by stars like J.K. Simmons and Steven Yeun these roles are 100% worth the extra money since their talent is what makes these integral parts work at all. While they are less criticized than the supporting cast, I do see the criticism every once in a while and it always feels unfair to me. While their parts may eat up budget it’s worth it and likely doesn’t notably detract from the animation.
The Competitors
Another thing that many fans point towards is Invincible’s contemporaries have far better animation. The main example used is Netflix’s animated adaptation of Konami’s Castlevania games. I will say that Castlevania’s animation is much better than Invincible’s and it aimed for a very similar release timeline to Invincible. However, it is very unfair to call the situations anywhere close to the same thing.
Castlevania had far shorter episodes than Invincible does which makes it much easier to make high-quality animation considering the circumstances. Amazon is putting out almost eight hours of TV every year. What we get is very impressive from that angle. Other contemporaries of Invincible include shows like Arcane which have incredibly expensive 3D animation which are nowhere near the same style as Invincible. This makes the many comparisons between the two feel like comparing apples to oranges. However Arcane is a great example to discuss the single biggest defense of the animation which is…
The Timeline
Invincible is a huge sweeping story that ran for 144 issues on its original run at Image Comics. Creator Robert Kirkman wants to adapt the entire story in this show without missing a beat. This is obviously a lot of TV but most people probably don’t realize exactly how much. Kirkman typically estimates anywhere between 7-9 seasons and in one interview even mentioning wanting to get up to 11. The show has also hit a steady pace of a season a year after Season 1 became a global hit. In order to get the necessary seasons in a reasonable amount of time the show can’t have as detailed animation as a show like Arcane.
Arcane has two nine episode seasons that took years to develop. Most people don’t realize that Season 1 started development all the way back in 2015 and lasted up until the first season’s release. That method truly did work for Arcane and its first season especially is a perfect season of TV. While most shows aren’t going to be to that standard, it just shows that animation takes a lot of time and in order to hit the needed number of seasons Invincible has to crunch a little bit.
The Animation Is Good
The true irony about the animation complaints is that while the examples fans point to are rough, the animation on average is very high quality when it counts. For example, take season 3’s climactic fight between Invincible and Conquest. That’s only a small clip but the bump up in quality for a big moment like this is noticeable. Every show has its goofy moments but those are definitely not reflective of the final quality of the show. For every PNG slide there’s many more dynamic fight scenes that get the weight they deserve. From that perspective the occasional mistake or dip in quality doesn’t drag down the ultimately incredible whole.
In Conclusion
Invincible is without a doubt the best piece of superhero media on the market right now animation and all. The common complaints it gets have worth but are more often than not disingenuous to the final product Robert Kirkman and his team are putting out. I wouldn’t change a single thing about the show because in reality the animation the fans compare it to isn’t something that the show can, and needs to, realistically achieve. As a huge fan of both the Invincible comic and the show I can’t wait to see where they take it next. Regardless of whether or not the animation problems are ever fixed, the show will be fine because at this point it’s so popular it may as well be…
