WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the first three episodes of Invincible, available to stream now on Amazon Prime Video.
The ad campaign for the 1978 film Superman: The Movie famously touted "You Will Believe A Man Can Fly," as its special effects zipped Christopher Reeve through the air. There is a long history of flight in superhero media representing its status as one of the most iconic abilities that a character can have, and one that untold audiences dream of. But flight in superhero media has never felt as real as it does in the new Amazon series Invincible. With its mechanics outlined in the dialogue and its animation and sound design granting it heft and depth it has never had before, the art of flying has never soared so high.
At the start of the series, protagonist Mark Grayson has yet to manifest superpowers. While his father is the high-flying hero Omni-Man, it's not until Mark accidentally hurls a trash bag into the troposphere that he delves into the world of super-heroics, and toward the end, he requires one-on-one tutoring sessions with his father that provide the bedrock to how flying will work. And for as commonplace as the ability to fly is in the genre, it's actually quite rare that it's ever explained.
Occasionally, there will be handwaved explanations behind the mechanics of flight. Superman has been proposed to "manipulate gravitons," or heroes like the Vision will "shift their density to be lighter than air." But rarely do such explanations ground the audience in what it actually feels like to fly. In Omni-Man's explanation, he relates it to something the viewer can understand: learning to walk. He explains that it takes conscious thought and direction to balance oneself, much like how a baby needs to purposefully place each step and focus on remaining upright.
He then connects that to the actual feeling of flight and how exerting it is like tensing a muscle. In teaching Mark to fly, he says that Mark will need to let his momentum carry him forward, though it will be difficult at first because his sense of balance is so accustomed to the mechanics of gravity that purposefully letting oneself fall is like urinating yourself after years of instilling bladder control. Such explanations eschew the pseudo-science of Superman or Vision's and opt instead for grounding the reality of flight in the audiences' own experiences by analogy. With the story and dialogue recognizing it, the animation then takes it away.
Throughout the first three episodes, Mark grows into his role as Invincible, and fans see it in his flight. He takes wide corners, steadily learns to slow himself down before landing, and eventually, tumbles through the air effortlessly. His acrobatic movement and use of momentum reflect his father's lessons while also fulfilling the raw fantasy of grounding the audience in his boots. He looks like he's having fun, and because the narrative spent time drawing viewers into his experience, the audience has fun with it, too.
It's almost odd that an animated work can make flying feel so much more real than it ever has been in live-action, but the reasons why are clear. By spending time explaining flight and then executing it, with a sense of inhabiting real physical space subject to gravity and weight and momentum, Invincible manages to elevate a rote part of the genre into something extraordinary. Just like with toddlers, it seems the genre had to walk before it could run, and it's only now that it can truly fly.
Invincible stars Steven Yeun, J.K. Simmons, Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Gillian Jacobs, Andrew Rannells, Zazie Beetz, Mark Hamill, Walton Goggins, Jason Mantzoukas, Mae Whitman, Chris Diamantopoulos, Melise, Kevin Michael Richardson, Grey Griffin and Max Burkholder. The series is produced by Skybound, and executive produced by Robert Kirkman, Simon Racioppa, David Alpert and Catherine Winder. New episodes are released Fridays on Amazon Prime Video.
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