Watch The Hyperions on Altitude.film and other digital platforms from 28th February, 2022.
Synopsis
In 1960, Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum invented the Titan badge – a device that enables humans to have a particular super power. An unusual family of superheroes emerge but the family fractures only to return years later demanding they get their badges back.
Review
If, like me, you’ve been craving the return of The Umbrella Academy and its evolved ideas about the superhero family, then writer-director Jon McDonald’s The Hyperions is a much watch.
The film follows Professor Ruckus Mandulbaum (Cary Elwes), a scientist who has invented technology which alters the DNA to produce superpowers. His invention sits within a device known as a Titan Badge which creates heroes (or villains) out of its wearer. In 1960 Mandulbaum is lauded for the creation of a superhero team featuring the teleporting Maya (Elaine Tan) and two young children, Vista (Penelope Mitchell), who controls minds, and Ansel (Alphonso McAuley), who has super strength.
The crime-fighting team were the heroes of the hour. But Mandulbaum’s fierce protection of the mission leads him to make questionable decisions. With Vista and Ansel maturing and forming their own ideals, Mandulbaum cruelly removes their powers, replacing them with newer, younger heroes.
Twenty years later Mandulbaum is seeking to cast another group of young heroes for the third iteration of his team. He now also hosts a weekly Hyperion Club television show which broadcasts their heroic exploits to the nation. Fed up with their post-power existence, Vista and Ansel stage an entirely botched attempt to steal Titan Badges from a museum exhibition. The attempted heist leaves the museum on lockdown with a number of hostages. It triggers an emotional confrontation with their former mentor which speaks to the core values of family.
The Hyperions is rife with big-budget action, but neither is that the point. The film uses the superhero world in which its characters exist to explore the notion of family. It’s a portrait of the emotional chasms which can exist between parents and siblings when disapproval begins to creep in.
Elwes inhabits Professor Mandulbaum with a pompous self-belief which is rocked by the realisation his actions may have been the cause of current events. His performance has echoes of Doom Patrol‘s Niles Caulder and aforementioned Umbrella Academy‘s Reginald Hargreeves. He’s the kind of father figure that nobody would envy and Elwes’ performance succinctly communicates this to the audience.
Penelope Mitchell and Alphonso McAuley perform admirably in a film which is delightfully understated. McDonald makes a number of interesting choices with take The Hyperions on a divergent path from other superhero fare. Its stakes are emotional rather than dramatic. Likewise the pay off is the resolution of childhood emotional scars.
There’s no big-bad and no third act battle to save the world. Whilst that is likely to put off some fans of the genre, if you can see the film for what it is – an intelligent and thought provoking exploration of the effects of superpowers – then there’s much to enjoy.
Verdict
The Hyperions is an understated and complex exploration of family framed by the idea of superpowers.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
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