Marvel’s Secret Invasion trades in superheroics for paranoid spy action

TO put it lightly, the once seemingly unstoppable Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a bit of a rocky patch. After hitting a satisfying conclusion in 2019’s Avenger: Endgame, the continuing adventures of these characters in the pandemic era has not been as well embraced as what came before.

(That being said, the most recent MCU entry, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 was very well received).

Secret Invasion, set to premiere on Disney+ Hotstar on June 21, hopes to be a return to form with its more grounded focus on spy thriller action, with its creators citing the gritty tone of Captain America: The Winter Soldier – generally considered to be one of the MCU’s best movies.

They’ve also namechecked Andor, last year’s Star Wars series that avoided the franchises’ fantasy aspects, with an emphasis on human drama.

The six-episode series also comes packed with an all-star cast as Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury – a supporting character in the MCU since 2008’s Iron Man – takes the lead. He’s backed by Don Cheadle, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke, among many others.

Following the events of Endgame, Fury has taken a step back from the Avengers, spending time away from Earth on a space station. It’s only after an urgent message from his close allies, former SHIELD agent Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and friendly Skrull Talos (Mendelsohn) that he returns.

Taking a comic book spin on current events, the villains of Secret Invasion are the shape-shifting Skrulls, who have been living on Earth as refugees since the 1990s. Under the leadership of a militant leader Gravnik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), they hope to spark a war between the United States and Russia so they can take over the planet.

The Skrulls, who are normally green-skinned aliens, have the ability to change their appearance at a moment’s notice, which means that any person can secretly be a Skrull. The show does a good job of mining the paranoia that comes with that, as anyone could be an enemy, which is further complicated because not all Skrulls have villainous intentions.

Clarke’s character G’iah is one of those Skrulls. She’s Talos’ (Ben Mendelsohn) daughter but is now working with Gravnik for her own reasons. This theme of characters being torn between competing obligations and allegiances is all over the show, even in Fury, who up to this point in the MCU has been portrayed as a steadfast leader – to the point of being almost one-dimensional.

As the focus of the show, Jackson is more than capable of handling the material, though seeing as he’s 74 years old don’t expect him to do much in the way of stunts. Much of the action in Secret Invasion (at least in the first two episodes) is as far away from the high-flying superheroics of the MCU – even though the bad guys are aliens. There are a lot of foot chases and hand-to-hand fights.

Really though, the major appeal of the show is seeing the stacked cast bring depth to characters that would normally appear in maybe five minutes of a movie. Fury and Rhodes (Cheadle) have appeared in numerous MCU projects but have not shared a scene before. In episode two, Cheadle and Jackson really get to sink into the relationship of the two characters.

While Secret Invasion has a good start, it doesn’t exactly blow you away. Though the first episode is mostly set in Moscow, it’s not really convincing and can look cheap at points. The political drama isn’t exactly subtle or something we haven’t seen before, and the writing doesn’t really take risks.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Disney+ Marvel shows have a tendency to fizzle out before they end, with some shows having pacing issues and ending in obligatory effects-heavy action scenes. Hopefully, Secret Invasion doesn’t fall to those depths and is able to keep its unique approach to Marvel storytelling.

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Below is a transcript from the global press conference for Secret Invasion that took place earlier this week. It has been edited down for clarity.

Every Marvel movie and TV series has a role to play in the grander MCU. What was Secret Invasion tasked with accomplishing?

Kevin Feige: Well, there are story points that people will see of the course of the series, obviously. But Jonathan came into my office a number of years ago, when we were thinking about what kinds of shows to do on Disney+. And he came in with this idea of translating the great Secret Invasion storyline from the comics in a darker, grittier spy show, which we hadn't done.

And we love to do different genres for everything, and this was an attempt to really dive back into things we touched upon in The Winter Soldier, Captain America 2, but hadn't in a while, and really delving into the tone of a spy show. And seeing a very different dynamic between Fury and Talos than we had seen in sort of our '90s buddy action movie, Captain Marvel.

There's a lot of comparisons between Secret Invasion and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which is one of the most widely beloved Marvel films to date. Can you talk about the tone of the show?

Ali Selim (director): Well, I think it's a very human show. It's the Nick Fury story. He's a human. He does have his own version of superpowers, but they're not like superhero superpowers. And it's a story about him putting his feet back on the ground once again after some time.

And I liked the espionage, political-thriller element, and we went back to look at The Third Man, and The Conversation, and things like that are very grounded and really human. And I hope that we brought enough of that to create the tone.

And then there is, without spoiler alert, there is a point in the story where Nick Fury realises this is his own battle, and he sort of becomes a classic American western hero. And the tone sort of shifted in the later episodes to Nick Fury as John Wayne.

So can you bring us up to speed on where we find Nick Fury?

Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury): This is my second appearance post-Snap, and he's been kinda gone for a while. He's a little tired, a little vulnerable, but coming back to Earth because he's been summoned. And we'll see what happens. Got a bad knee now. Not so happy.

This is your first time as Rhodey (a.k.a. War Machine) without Iron Man or any other Avenger with you. Was it weird entering this new path?

Don Cheadle (Rhodey): It was great. Look, I've known Sam for a long time, and, you know, we've spent a lot of time, you know, talking about what it would be like to work together, looking for projects to do together.

So the central relationship between myself and Sam, and this is, you know, it was very important to me and I was very glad to be brought on. I don't think it was originally conceived that Rhodey was gonna be in this. But when it came to me and Sam called me, I was really excited about leaning into it.

What influenced the tone of Secret Invasion that's quite different from the rest of the MCU?

AS: Well, I think it's the script, which was brilliantly written. I think it's the fact that it's the Nick Fury story, rather than a superhero story. And I think it's the fact that it really tried to delve into very simple human emotions, like trust and suspicion and the personal life of Nick Fury and inner life of Nick Fury. So it's very different than people flying through the air.

SLJ: See, but I don't think it's just a Nick Fury story, 'cause we got all these other interesting people that are, [flowing?] around through it? It's a Gravik story, it's Emilia's story, it's Olivia's story. It's all these people that they're being introduced to that make you want to say, well, s***, I want to go home with them too, see what's happening.

And it's a great ensemble of people, you know? And Rhodey being who he is in this particular series, as a political animal that we haven't seen before, and his relationship with Nick, that there's some undercover s*** happening there that was really interesting.

But Nick Fury happens to be the generator of a lot of that, but he leads you to all these other people that are really, really, really, really interesting. – The Vibes, June 18, 2023