Review 690: Secret Invasion

 

Secret Invasion is a plodding, boring, humorless slog that squanders the rich potential of its source material.

Based on the comic book storyline Secret Invasion by Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) learns of a clandestine invasion of Earth by a fraction of shapeshifting Skrulls. Fury joins his allies including Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and the Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) who has made a life for himself on Earth. Together, they race against time to thwart an imminant Skrull invasion and save humanity.

The idea behind this particular MCU show is an intriguing one, The shape-shifting alien speices, the Skrulls are planning to take over Earth by stealing the faces of world leaders and using them to infiltrate their governments. The original Secret Invasion storyline was a huge crossover event with loads of different heroes appearing This take on Secret Invasion is meant to be a much more intimate and more contained affair. But unfortunately, the director Ali Selim and showrunner Kyle Bradstreet (Mr. Robot) make some questionable and headscratching choices that push the story in some banal directions making it easily the worst of the MCU/Disney+ series to date. To say that this show is a disappointment would be a cliche at this point. The show is not lacking for interesting themes like Terrorism, Torture and Trust but none of them are given the time or the attention that they need to be explored in any depth.

Secret Invasion is very clearly inspired by espionage, spy thrillers of the last decade like Homeland and The Americans but it comes across as a pale imitation of those shows as opposed to its own thing.

I never felt the threat of the Skrulls, the show has no real interest in hiding them, forcing our heroes to look over their shoulders  their threat is so overexposed that the show was robbed of authentic tension and paranoia. Despite Fury promising the Skrulls in Captain Marvel (2019) that he'd find them a home, we never learn why hasn't done that yet - Was it impossible? Did he becomes distracted with the Avengers Initiative and the Hydra uprising? None of these questions are asked and we never find out. I find the first one a little implausible because as we've seen throughout the Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy films, there are plenty of uninhabited planets such as Morag, Svartalfheim or even The Garden from Endgame or maybe migrating to Xandar, it sounds to me like there were plenty of viable options. To me, this is indicative of how Marvel didn't seem to know what to do with the Skrulls.

What should be an Avengers-level threat instead just feels like an inconsequential, irrelevent threat in the grandeur scheme of things. It's basically every John le Carre adaptation you've seen before done worse. There is a scene in the third episode, Betrayed where Fury and Talos infiltrate the home of Navel Command Office to prevent the lauch of missiles at a United Nations aircraft. The whole scene plays out like that scene in Pulp Fiction where Jackson's Jules and John Travolta's Vincent are sent to take out those young hitmen without the interesting dialogue.

The show contains action but not that much of it and whatever action that happens isn't particularly impressive. The shootouts are painfully by the numbers and nothing we haven't seen before and done so much better. A convoy ambush in Ep. 4: Beloved, takes place on a flat roadside field.

Fittingly, Secret Invasion concluded on an underwhelming note with the finale simply titled "Home", the episodes into two "storylines" a final fight between G'iah and Gravik as Super Skrulls with an array of powers from both Avengers heroes and villains was sleep-inducingly dull with effects that look like they come from a PS2 cutscene although, admittedly, I did get a kick out of choosing which powers they were using. That fight is juxtaposed against an absurdly prolonged conversation in a hospital where Fury and Sonya Falsworth (Olivia Coleman) try to convince the President (Dermot Mulroney) that Rhodey is a Skrull. All they need to do is shoot him in the foot or something to show this but they let Raava the Skrull Rhodey argue his case before (spoiler alert) Fury, mercifully, shoots him in the head which he should've done in the first place. The whole scene feels drawn out and poitntless.

No, neither Carol Danvers or Daisy Johnson from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. show up. Nothing that feels like it has any meaningful consequences happens by the end apart from (spoiler alert) the President issueing a new bill that will cause world governments to hunt down skrulls which will more than likely never be mentioned again. By this point, the show still feels like it's in the introductory phase despite it being the finale.

Director Ali Selim's direction is painfully uninspired; there’s no sense of poise or precision, the score by Kris Bowers is terrifically catchy, the cinematography is bland; the colours look very washed out and flat and there's a distinct lack of dynamism to the shot composition. Design-wise, this is one of the ugliest looking MCU properties released in recent years. Unlike many of the MCU/Disney+ shows to date, very little of the money spent leapt off the screen making the show feel cheap and small scale. We're presented with so many scenes of boardroom meets and Skrulls refugee camps which so unimaginative More often than not, the reality of the locations are obvious. The Vossoyedineniye Square where the first episode climaxes is very clearly filmed in Kensington Gardens in England.

Samuel L. Jackson remains splendid as Nick Fury. He has a wonderfully charismatic, engaging and non-nonsense screen presence that makes you want to see what he's going to do next. But this version of Nick Fury that we follow feels completely different from when we last saw him. At the beginning of the show, we're present with a Nick Fury who feels damaged, lost. He's been away from Earth for so long in part because he's worn out and uncertain of his place in the world following Thanos' snap and subsequent blip. But without that granular attention to detail, e're told he went to space and aside from one flashback to Infinity War, we don't really get much context to how he became this new version of himself. I get that he's been through a lot and that a lot of time has past since we saw him in his bit parts in Infinity War, Endgame and Far From Home but the show never went out its way to justify Fury's new downbeat behaviour. Everything that happens in this show is built off of his mistakes and broken promises and since that’s all we focus on, he feels like an irresponsible idiot.

Ben Mendelsohn also does fine work as Talos. With this show, particularly the first half, we see a character who is uncomfortable in his own skin. It initially seems like it's as much Talos' story as it is Fury's, but even then, his best material runs out of steam.  

Emilia "Daenerys Targaryan" Clarke is given the thankless role of Skrull G'iah. G'iah walks a very thin line between peaceful refugees and Gravik's terrorist faction yet despite these strong connections to both sides, her journey is without consequence or real challenge. I'll allow myself one nitpick, it was initially announced that Clarke would be playing Abigail Brand from the comics and the EMH cartoon series but instead she plays G'iah, Talos' daughter, a character I'd completely forgotten had appeared in Captain Marvel as a baby (which is probably why she didn't stand out to me). The end result is far less interesting than what could have been.

Kingley Ben-Adir is ok as the Skrull villain Gravik although a disadvantage to the character was that he was so level headed. That choice made his character feel somewhat one-note and he didn't come across as particularly menacing as a result. Here is a Skrull who was made a promise by Fury and now harbours a deep hatred for the man because he failed to keep his promise to  but it's a controlled hatred   Unfortunately, he never strayed far from the MCU's typical sympathetic vallain formula prevelent in Black Panther's Killmonger, Thanos and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier's Flag Smasher.

Aside from Jackson, Olivia Coleman seems to be the only other actor who's having any fun in this series. She plays Sonya Falsworth (get it), an eccentric and somewhat unhinged M.I.6 agent who has a friendly/antagonistic relationship with Fury. They have a wonderful double act that adds some much needed levity to the proceedings.

Charlayne Woodard is lovely playing Fury's wife, Priscilla but doesn't really come into her own as a character, much like everyone else in this show, she and her relationship with Fury feel so undercooked. They shared so few scenes together

Cobie Smulders' Maria Hill is bearly in the series. Only appearing in the premiere episode "Resurrection" before getting (spoiler warning) bumped off in the most unceremonious and tastless ways which comes off as a huge disservice to a character who's been part of the MCU since the first Avengers film in 2012.

Don Cheadle also returns as James Rhodes. I have honestly no idea why he's even here as his role felt inconsequential in the long run especially considering his position the story and is written into a corner that never lets him suit up as War Machine. A twist on his character involing the Skrulls didn't help.

Dermot Mulroney, Richard Dormer, Killian Scott, Samuel Adewunmi, Kate Finneran Even Martin Freeman returns playing Everett Ross from Civil War and the Black Panther movies but here in these roles, they're either underdeveloped or painfully underutilised.

Secret Invasion is a real snoozefest, 2/5.

The Anonymous Critic.