Secret Invasion

With the Marvel Phase 5 arriving, they could've made a sort of a come back after the mess Phase 4 was, but they continue to be stuck, in this particular time around it seems they are making the old Marvel stages irrelevant.

There is a limit to the amount of super heroes and villains that exist in Marvel where it just become senseless, even with the Multiverse, in this story they are still facing threats on Earth (actually USA as always) and none of the major super heroes appear which makes no sense specially when the threat is as big as the antagonists on Secret Invasion, a shape shifting alien race that can infiltrate to the highest level of governments a destroy a world from within... Nonetheless I was actually expecting this show to be good, it started nice but the first problem started with lack of context, Fury has been away for a long time and now he comes back as a shadow version of his former self, a beat down man and we have no context as to why, throughout the series they try to give this context but it doesn't make too much of an impact. We follow along just for the character to do a full circle...

More bad decisions, killing off a character that has been present in MCU for quite some time and this character's death was as underwhelming as the character participation on the franchise as a whole, we had a moment of USA military arrogance which always annoys me personally, but I am getting side tracked... This all could've been overlooked but then the last episode arrives and I cannot stress how absurd that final battle was and how much of a middle finger it is for every single super hero movie that came before... really, all powers each with a particular explanation, they are given just like that? I don't want to give away to much, it reminded me of a particular scene on the old Fantastic 4, just laughable.

I am becoming hopeless to a recovery from the hit Phase 4 took on Marvel, I see mediocrity going forward.

I know that Secret Invasion has had some mixed reviews but after just finishing it I can say that it's entertaining enough to watch. It stars Samuel L. Jackson, who's back as Nick Fury, as he takes on the shapeshifting alien race named the Skrulls who's becoming a huge threat to the human race. Also returning are Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), Rhodey (Don Cheadle) Maria Hill (Colbie Smulders) and Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman). They also bring in some serious newcomer talent in Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Dermot Mulroney, Kingsley Ben-Adir, among others. With that much talent it would be hard for this series to fail. Everyone I just named all give terrific performances and makeup for some uneven writing. As most reviews have already stated this is unlike most Marvel series as it has a more serious tone. I would definitely recommend this to any fan of this genre and definitely any Marvel fan.

Let me start with what this series isn't. It isn't exciting, original or in the least bit interesting. The path it treads is well worn and has been done better so many times before. The majority of the characters are immediately forgotten due to their sheer blandness and similarity to one another. I don't think it understands what it's trying to be. Is it a superhero series or or a tepid spy thriller? It presents as yet another hodgepodge of cliches and tropes, packaged under the Disney/Marvel banner. The character of Nick Fury and his tired quips is now at the point of being a parody of who he used to be.

There is no secrecy here, there is no invasion in here, there is just... terrible writing as always.

In 2019 when I first watched Captain Marvel and saw how they butchered Skrulls in there, I already knew Marvel just ruined one of their best storylines and there was no salvaging it.

Secret Invasion is one of the most interesting and somewhat complicated comic storylines I've seen. I haven't read the comics but The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes' Secret Invasion storyline was enough to convince me how good this story is and how mind-blowing and intense a live-action of it would be.

But Disney Plus, like the trash-making machine it is, unsurprisingly took it and made one of the most boring and uninteresting pieces of you know what with it just like every other MCU show it has crapped out in the past couple of years.

But I understand that a storyline on this scale couldn't've been done in the main MCU films because it would be so hard to pull off and also having the Infinity War Saga would make it difficult to incorporate the story in there. I understand that they don't have the budget to bring more actors from the MCU in here, even though it had a movie-level budget of over $200M. And it is then fair to review the show based on its story and not what other story it should've been. The problem is, the new story of this show is just soooo bland and boring and they don't even care about doing anything interesting with it.

If I had to talk about the problems of this show, this review would go on for paragraphs after paragraphs and IMDb's word limit is only 10000 characters, so I make a list of pros and cons instead.

The bad:

• AI intro

• Tv show that had a budget twice Oppenheimer's looks low-budget

• Inferior story and plot to the original in every way imaginable

• A colossal waste of Emilia Clarke

• Awful characterization where you don't even care about already-established characters you cared for once

• Terrible villain which seems to be a tradition at this point with D+ MCU shows

• A movie cut into uneven episodes sold as a weekly show but it isn't a weekly formula

• Terrible pacing as always

• The whole world is Secretly being Invaded but this global scale is never presented and is never felt

• They don't even have enough material to keep the already small season above 30 minutes

• No character development

• There is no tension or secrecy in the story

• There is no Secret Invasion because the villains are practically nonexistent and don't do much

• The villain ultimately becomes a copy of Flag-Smashers

• You will not care about anything in the show because of the awful writing. Not the characters and certainly not the story

• Random character deaths for the sake of shock value without first even establishing the character

• A 6-episode mini series with "30-minute" penultimate and finale episodes, have time for filler episodes where nothing happens

• Very little action or espionage compared to constant nonsense dialogue

• Taking zero advantage of this Skrull infiltration plot device to make the story even a little bit more interesting

• Butchering one of the coolest storylines that could've been an Avengers movie with a better story than the first two Avengers

• Not many twists and turns

• They lay out the plot with the literal first line of the show and give away every advantage they have on the viewer's not knowing the whole picture

• Terribly written character motivations and presented in a worse way

• Very dull and boring storytelling

Now what I liked about it

• Some of the few action scenes that are in this show are pretty decently choreographed and CGIed and they look good

• The music is decent

And yeah, that's it!

I wouldn't say this show is necessarily worse than Ms. Marvel even though I gave that a 5, but I give it lower because I didn't expect much from Ms. Marvel and got a mid show. With this show however, I am aware of what a good storyline they butchered and I give it an even lower score.

If you have unfortunately seen every MCU show up to this point like me, then it really shouldn't be a surprise to you that this show is another Disney Plus trash with terrible writing.

I would recommend you start away from this hot garbage and go watch The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes instead. It's way better than anything MCU has done, at least on Disney Plus maybe and you'll see what a missed opportunity it was for them with having that Captain Marvel script.

I just cannot imagine having billions of dollars and burning them on these shows that aren't even for die-hard Marvel and MCU fans, let alone a casual audience. I cannot fathom someone actually enjoying this and think it's well-written. But I guess if the subscriptions keep coming, why stop making the mid shows, right?

Take a good premise, an absolutely stellar cast, a reportedly generous budget and somehow get.....this???

This badly made, cheap-looking, muddled, dull, bland excuse for an espionage/action thriller?

The occasional scene where individual performances occasionally manage to elevate the awful material aside, this was an absolute train wreck.

Confusing narrative, badly shot, character motivations all over the place, what should have been major.plot revelations (and character deaths) were tossed away without any sense of import or gravitas.

God knows where the reported $200m budget went, this had the production values of a daytime soap apart from the obligatory CGI finale (which sets up more narrative problems for the future in itself)

Looks like it was reshot extensively, someone needs to carry the can for this bin fire.