Marvel’s Secret Invasion series review

Secret Invasion, the fourth episode of which can now be seen in the Disney+ video library, was supposed to be a series with two aces up its sleeve. On the one hand, this is a project from this superhero universe aimed primarily at adults after a long time. And then agent Nick Fury himself, until now mainly a gray eminence in the background of the Avengers’ activities, finally goes into action.

Selling the charisma of 74-year-old Samuel L. Jackson is not difficult in many scenes. One smile, one gesture is enough to fix all attention on himself. It’s worse with the rest.

When aliens called the Skrulls who could take the form of specific people first appeared in the 2019 Captain Marvel movie, it was a pretty fun play on the ideas and practices of 90s Hollywood when the movie was set. The Secret Invasion series occasionally returns to this time in retrospectives. But most of the action takes place in the present, when a huge war is looming.

The creators have enough material for an adult story. A large part of the story is set in Russia, there are characters of the highest statesmen and diplomats. Secret Invasion could easily be a commentary on the current geopolitical situation, enhanced by a genre device in the form of aliens who have controlled many strategically important posts in human bodies for decades. And once there is open conflict, their ability to shapeshift becomes an ideal tool to build an atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia.

But the not very experienced creator and screenwriter of the series Kyle Bradstreet and director Ali Selim chose the worst path. They avoided both the option of making an amusingly over-the-top spy flick and the second option: building a relevant political thriller. Given how recently the Marvel franchise has not been able to even build a solid story about a group of superheroes clashing with a villain, it’s not really surprising.

The series expands the fictional universe with seemingly shocking insights, i.e. basically only about which of the minor, albeit long-term, protagonists hides the body of a green, wrinkled abomination with pointy ears and nefarious intentions under a human mask. Nineties science fiction Men in Black managed to convey a similar pearl to the audience in a single scene – and at least it was fun.

The main problem with Secret Invasion is that it takes itself too seriously. They stand on many plot twists, but they cannot surprise. They lack any background, such as the characters’ psychological reasons why they change their decisions by 180 degrees from one second to the next.

Instead of escalating paranoia, we just watch a series of random acts that move the plot forward. There are mere moments between “I’ll kill you” and “I love you,” and it’s rarely clear why such transitions occur. B-grade characters desperately play “A” political theater, which lacks both humor and lightness, as well as real intrigue.

There are moments when not only Samuel L. Jackson shines, but also actress Olivia Colman in the role of an agent who does not use gloves when interrogating prisoners. Both of them entertain with their presence in front of the camera and their ability to sell every sentence and look. However, actors of a similar format could be used much better.

The plot revolves around the efforts of a group of rebels and terrorists from the alien ranks to carry out a coup. What is its nature supposed to be, why is it happening after decades of Skrulls being on Earth, and is the world really at war with unfathomable consequences? All these important topics are circled indefinitely. And more important than the coherence of the strange conspiracy is that the hero Nick Fury can at the right moment say a hard-hitting speech like “What just jumped out of your reptilian brain?”

The creators repeatedly sell the contours of London, where part of the story takes place, trying to create the impression that something is really at stake here. And that this time it will be solved without the help of the Avengers team, to which one would-be fleeting sentence is dedicated. However, this only underlines the helplessness of the project, which, unlike cartoon comics, cannot call Thor or Captain America simply because it is a little easier to draw them than to pay for the presence of the actors who gave their faces in films and series.

When the director Russo brothers mixed trashy exaggeration and politics with the paranoia of old Hollywood thrillers in the Captain America movies with the subtitles Return of the First Avenger and Civil War, it was a fresh foray into new genre territory. Also because the role of pieces on the political chessboard was played by slightly naive superhero demigods, not guys in ties.

Less than a decade later, Marvel can no longer effectively explore and vary tried and true Hollywood formulas. Secret Invasion is not a dense paranoid sci-fi in the vein of period classics like the movie Invasion of the Body Thieves. And it’s not even a fun 90s type show Independence Daywhere Will Smith welcomes aliens on their home planet by punching them in the face.

There was no dark Marvel movie for adults or fun for the whole family. Just a random grouping of situations and moods that artificially keeps the audience awake.