World class actors, a writer from Mr Robot being a showrunner, unlimited budget for stunts and action scenes
But I’m not enjoying it, it started out promising, abit of a slow burn but isn’t going anywhere or as epic as it should be.
The main villain Gravis is a bit of a joke, he isn’t scary, menacing or emphathetic. There isn’t time to build chemistry between Talos and Gaiah. Fury doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing, just reacting to events, just same vague idea of stop the Skrulls.
There isn’t any suspense to who is or isn’t a Skrull, no paranoia which was basically the entirety of Mr Robot.
The Skrulls also haven’t really succeeded in much, the first bombing resulted in a boring hearing where the Skrulls grilled another Skrull.
They kinda threw away a surprise Skrull reveal very early on. Where Martin Freeman, someone who never interacted with Fury is a Skrull and gets killed off and doesn’t affect the plot. But Maria Hill who’s been with Fury since the first movie isn’t a Skrull but is killed off for some reason. It would have been super cliche, but also built on the sense of paranoia that Fury didn’t know how long Hill had been a Skrull over the years. Now Fury’s only ally is already a Skrull. There’s no suspense at all, no Among Us, who’s the imposter
It’s lack of vision, and corporate control. These amazing writers and directors who signed in for this project did it for the bucks. They delivered a cookie cutter product, as the boss asked them to. They didn’t approach it with passion, with innovation, with blood-pumping mystery and intrigue. It’s just a well-paying job to them, and a resume line. So, it doesn’t come out good.
At this point, I dislike ALL marvel TV shows on D+. Loki was the best for me, but they kind of destroyed his character, so that fell flat too.
From the Star Wars side, the first 2 seasons of Mandalorian were good, and also Andor. Neither Boba Fett nor Kenobi were good (they felt as flat as Marvel shows feel). Andor is probably the most well done show in the whole of D+. And the reason for it is simple: Tony Gilroy was left alone to realize his vision, a vision he always wanted to do, but wasn’t given the opportunity before. In fact, Disney was completely hands-off. Neither Kennedy nor Disney interfered, because they believed that the show will be kind of underground (and indeed, they didn’t market it much). So they kind of ignored it. The ONLY thing they asked Gilroy to change was the F-word in the last episode.
But in the Marvel side, everything goes through Kevin Feige, and everything get homogenized so it appeals to everyone. Hence that final feeling of blah.
For Marvel to survive, they need to give voice to talents to provide us with a unique vision, like we’ve seen with Andor, or Joker (while at the same time, keeping the timeline intact, of course).
Loved Mr Robot, but I think most of the genius of that show came from Sam Esmail. One of the biggest drivers for that show was an air of mystery and intrigue which Secret Invasion doesn’t have at all. Instead of showing skrulls impersonating people from the first episode, they should’ve literally not shown a single skrull until episode 5 to make you question who is and isn’t a skrull. On top of that, having both the skrull and non-skrull versions of the characters out and about would be great for driving speculation, intrigue, buzz, etc. Trying to figure out why there’s inconsistency in how characters act and interact with each other could’ve made it a much more engaging show but Marvel really dumbed it down.
I’ve been pretty whelmed by it. Feels like they didn’t really use the concept to its full potential. So far everything has felt like you could see it coming a mile away and none of the stakes feel real. Maybe they’re playing the long con and I’ll feel silly for calling it obvious if they pull some huge twist at the end, but I’ve been so bored with it up to this point that I don’t even know if I’ll watch to the end. ¯
\(ツ)/¯
