Secret Invasion finale: A waste of time and talent
The invasion has been thwarted, but this is hardly a victory for the good guys
TV Reviews Secret Invasion
Nick Fury got a happy ending, but at what cost? His friend Talos is dead. Countless other Skrulls are dead. President Mulroney has signed racism into law and emboldened however many J6-types to execute anyone they suspect of being an alien. Not just a Skrull. Any alien. Or hell, any person born off Earth, since that was his exact wording. You know who’s an alien? Groot. Drax. Nebula. Thor. Valkyrie. Korg. Forget the giant hand reaching out of the planet from Eternals that nobody talks about; will the MCU ever acknowledge that the United States effectively just declared war on a quiet fishing village full of refugees from Asgard?
I’d be more inclined to give Secret Invasion some props for going so hard, but I have zero confidence in the MCU to ever really do anything with this again. Nick Fury has potentially doomed an entire race of aliens, one that he vowed to protect, and he’s just going off to space again? Oh, the Kree are open to peace talks with the Skrulls? The same Kree who made them refugees in the first place? Out of the frying pan and into a very similar frying pan.
So yeah, I don’t think this was a particularly good finale, which means this wasn’t a particularly good series as a whole, but let’s go through the plot: Last week, Gravik told Skrull Rhodey to convince President Mulroney to bomb Russia as retaliation for the attack in the previous episode—but Gravik specifically wanted him to bomb the old power plant that he and the other refugees have been calling New Skrullos. The idea is that this would both start World War III and make Nick Fury mad since he supposedly cares about the lives of innocent Skrulls (though I am unconvinced of that now), but Gravik said he would call off the attack if Fury gave him The Harvest—a vial of liquid containing the DNA of everyone who was at the final battle in Endgame, which would give Gravik the powers of virtually every character in the MCU.
Fury shows up at New Skrullos and finds all of the dead Skrulls, and then he has a heart-to-heart with Gravik and admits that he failed the Skrulls. Except it’s not Fury; it’s G’iah in disguise, so the emotional beats of this scene—which are actually pretty good, as Kingsley Ben-Adir actually seems more alive here than ever before—are totally phony. We don’t know how Fury really feels about failing to keep his promise to the Skrulls, because this isn’t Fury, so why drag this out at all?
Anyway, Gravik uses The Harvest and tries to kill Fury with Super-Duper Skrull powers, only to realize that now Fury is actually G’iah and he has accidentally turned her into a Super-Duper Skrull as well. It’s tough to make a fight scene like this work, where both people have basically infinite super powers (because it will never be as imaginative as it could be), but I think it was at least pretty good. I liked the specificity of seeing them kick with a Hulk leg or punch with a Drax arm or do the Mantis “sleep” thing (I’m not going to bother questioning how G’iah knows that’s how Mantis’ power works), and the final wide shot of G’iah blasting Gravik in the stomach with a Captain Marvel beam was very Dragon Ball. Unfortunately, she’s now so incredibly powerful that we’ll probably never see her again.
As all of that is happening, the real Fury is going after Skrull Rhodey and President Mulroney with the help of Sonya, who is apparently just a straight-up good guy despite all of the mean stuff she seemed to be doing earlier. There’s a lot of “who are you gonna believe???” back-and-forth, but Fury eventually shoots Rhodey in the head and he turns into a Skrull, proving that Fury was right—and, apparently, instilling in President Mulroney a deep hatred of all other races. Good work, everyone.
And then it’s time to wrap everything up. The Skrull captives (including the real Rhodey and the real Everett Ross) are rescued and released. Sonya recruits G’iah in a “I’ll help you, you help me” scheme, with the two of them finding a completely unexplained warehouse full of people in hospital beds. Fury and Priscilla—now in Skrull form and insisting on using her real name, Varra—go back to space to work on those Skrull/Kree peace talks, but not before sharing a tender kiss (proving that Fury loves her even though she’s green).
And, of course, President Mulroney issues an address where he says he’ll pass a law identifying everyone not born on Earth as an enemy combatant, and there’s a montage of people with guns executing Skrulls and humans they thought were Skrulls in broad daylight and on live television. But hey, congratulations to Nick Fury on reconnecting with his wife even though he inadvertently encouraged the President Of The United States to launch a genocidal war against her people. So…a bit of a mixed bag here, in terms of successes.
Stray observations
- For the last time, I am dropping this episode down a letter grade over the A.I. intro. I think at this point I’ve made my thoughts on the use of A.I. in this context (and, ahem, some other notable contexts) pretty clear, and while I know this is a meaningless symbolic gesture, I think the symbol of that letter grade up there still says something.
- I’m already seeing some MCU fans claim that this episode revealed that Rhodey was replaced by a Skrull before Avengers: Endgame, but I saw absolutely zero proof of that. We know he was in the Skrull pod for “a long time,” but that could mean anything. So we don’t know when he and Ross were replaced, meaning we don’t know if they were Skrulls during any of their previous MCU appearances. I think that renders the whole thing kind of a waste.
- Specific MCU powers I noticed during the Super Skrull fight: Drax arms, Ebony Maw telekinesis, Hulk kick, Korg punch, Mantis antenna, Cull Obsidian punch, Captain Marvel blasts, Ghost invisibility (Ghost wasn’t at the Endgame battle, but whatever), and probably some more I didn’t recognize. A lot of these guys just have big monster arms. (Like I said, it’s hard to be as imaginative as a fight like this could be.)
- I said in my recap of the premiere that I would eat my hat if Sonya didn’t turn out to be a Skrull, and I was indeed wrong, so just…trust that I’m doing that right now? Mmm, yum. Hat.
- And that’s a wrap on Secret Invasion. I think, as a whole, the series was a waste of time, a waste of Nick Fury, and a waste of good performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Emilia Clarke, Cobie Smulders (even if she was barely here), and Olivia Colman. There was some good action, but the story just didn’t hold up. It felt less like there were things Marvel wanted to say or do and more like Marvel was sitting on the original Secret Invasion storyline and figured it should do something with it after introducing the Skrulls in Captain Marvel. But thanks for reading! The real Sam Barsanti will now be released from his Skrull pod with no memory of ever watching or reviewing Secret Invasion. Lucky!
204 Comments
Give me a 3 minute compilation of all of Olivia Coleman’s lines and I’ll happily forget I ever watched the rest of this snooze-fest.
I love how she calls up the President and tells him Nick Fury is coming for him and we the audience think it’s some ploy because we see him in Russia with Gravik. But no, everything she said was literally true.
I hadn’t even realized that. So her plan was just to trick the audience then?
Once you put all the pieces together, you realize they don’t go together.
I think Fury’s real goal was to get to Ritson and convince him to call off the strike. To that end, if Ritson is surrounded by guards, Fury can’t get to him. So he uses Sonya (who !Rhodey trusts) to get !Rhodey to move Ritson, which makes the guards vulnerable, and once all the guards are down, Fury can get to Ritson.
Exactly.
with the help of Sonya, who is apparently just a straight-up good guy despite all of the mean stuff she seemed to be doing earlier.
She’s always been Chaotic Good; she’s just really good at the Chaotic part. Otherwise I think I’m in agreement with you here; this finale felt like somebody rushing through the last 5 minutes of a blue-book exam and just jotting down as many points as possible before time ran out.
What should’ve been a moment of tension — G’iah coming for revenge against Gravik — was undermined by the standard Marvel musical score. A fight like this didn’t need to be pumped up into “Epic” territory.
As far as Rhodey goes, I think we’re supposed to infer that he was taken shortly after the events of Civil War, since he needed trouble walking out of the facility. You can probably backtrack Everett Ross’ capture to either between the events of the first two Black Panther movies, or following Wakanda Forever.
To me the mild, if unpleasant surprise was Ritson going scorched earth. My initial thought was that he’d offer the Skrulls some amnesty, opening the door for Thunderbolt Ross to beat him in the election with his own xenophobic rhetoric.
He still had his Stark leg braces in the funeral scene in Endgame. He doesn’t have them in FAWS. I theorize he was going in for surgery to fix his ability to walk and got nabbed between both projects.
In FATWS Rhodey has leg braces on underneath his pants. You can see the glow of them.
Huh, did not see them!
The notion of the Rhodey who is kind of getting in Danvers’ face at the beginning of Endgame being a Skrull who was raised to revere her but is out of patience is a little intriguing.
But that would mean real Rhodey is in that pod for more than 5 years.
I think there’s room there to give Rhodey a story that’s really his — the man unstuck in time, in a sense. Doubly so given the ramifications of the Blip. But that would mean having more confidence in Marvel than I’m willing to summon at this point.
I was really hoping War Machine would make an appearance.
Rhodey could have been replaced after *any* MRI/MD visit as he was in his hospital gown. MCU writers will have some latitude as to when he actually got switched out.
Heck, they could have taken him out of a shower and decided that they didn’t want to look at his naked body every time they walked through the room.
Maybe Rhodey has always been a Skrull! They’ll reveal that the Rhodey in the pod is also a Skrull! And then they’ll find another Rhodes and he’ll be a Skrull too! It’s Skrulls all the way down!
I guess you might see some of this stuff peripherally in Captain America 4, but with Iger essentially saying that they’re out of the cranking out MCU TV shows business, where elese would you even think to see any of the ramifications of something like this be dealt with?
I can see the Kree-Skrull stuff being mentioned in The Marvels, what with Fury back on the station by then.
The notion of a Kree-Skrull alliance also raises the potential to see the current emperor in the comics….especially if you think they’re leading up to Young Avengers…
i guess i could see this leading into anti-mutant rhetoric, but that feels overcomplicated and, well, stupid. it’s been reported that harrison ford’s thunderbolt ross is president in cap 4 (obviously could be false), wonder if there’s gonna be a presidential election D plot in the marvels or something.
The Marvels? Nick Fury’s next appearance. Where in the recent trailer he goes so far as mentioning the skrulls…
I meant more of the anti-alien rhetoric/the world now gripped with massive paranoia and malice.
Word Of God: this plays directly into Armor Wars, which supposedly includes Kree-Skrull Wars elements.
none of this seems to really connect into anything else anymore. i don’t think it’ll be anything more than one line referencing rhodes ‘coming back’, just like i imagine all the connective tissue ‘the marvels’ will have will be fury saying ‘i was just back on earth’. considering noone seemed to watch or like this show i think the skrulls are going back in the box until fantastic four maybe.
I sort of don’t care, because my conclusion after a couple years of the Marvel live-action TV shows (everything since WandaVision) is that it was all a mistake and they never should have made any of these shows. As much as I enjoyed some elements of some of them, narratively the whole thing has effectively been a giant dud.
This was the absolute nadir of MCU TV. Looking back over the last 3 yrs of this, they need to just stop. WandaVision, Loki, and Haweye were fun and creative and featured Blist characters. But everything else is just D list characters in pointless plots with no real stakes.
Ghost wasn’t on camera at Endgame…and neither was Abomination (who was listed in the Harvest). Could they have been there? Sure. As for when Rhodey was taken, my take is simple: Post Endgame Pre Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Here is my evidence: Up to and including the funeral scene in Endgame, Rhody is wearing the Stark made leg braces to help him walk. In TFATWS he is not. So likely he was going in for surgery to help him walk and was grabbed at that point. This would also be after the rebel Skrulls had lost all confidence in Fury and would track for when their plan would really go into high gear. Probably will be more clearly resolved in Armor Wars.
We know the real reason is that the MCU is caring less about it’s own continuity these days but it’s fun to see fans speculating that it’s something other than them being lazy. Must I remind you that in Age of Ultron Banner was like “Black Widow I love you cuz I cant have kids” and then recently it was revealed he has a Hulk son? We all know Rhodes-as-a-Skrull will never be mentioned in the MCU again. C’mon now.
Banner’s ‘I can’t have kids’ is arguably more because he’s aware that a Hulk kid would be extremely dangerous so he can’t be allowed to have kids than just that he’s been sterilized by the gamma radiation. But for the two years on Sakaar when Hulk was in control, Hulk dgaf.
I’m sure Sakaar had a better choice of chicks that could handle a Hulking (if you know what I mean). And that could handle that birth…
I thought the implication was either that he’d Hulk out during climax and crush her to death, or his gamma-jizz would kill her with radiation poisoning.Evidently he found a strong enough mate on Sakaar.
I always hated the trope that Banner can’t have sex because he would hulk out (and it’s corollary, anything that raises his heart rate would do it). It’s anger that makes him hulk, not chugging red bull. He should be able to get his heart rate up and he should be able to have (non-angry) sex. If anything, he should be sexin’ it up all he can to keep the rage away.
It’s anger that makes him hulk, not chugging red bull. To be fair, if this is the workaround for Thunderbolt Ross to Hulk out it’d at least be funny.
Now I want to see this
“That’s my secret, Cap. I always hate-fuck.”
Just as long as it’s not hate sex!
My thought was simply that he has no idea how a Hulk-baby would gestate, and that the risk would be in the mother bringing the child to term safely. I don’t want to get too graphic here, but I can see there being complications with birthing a green rage monster.
Banner saying he can’t have kids was because he didn’t want to get excited and turn into the Hulk while having sex with a human woman.
It didn’t mean he’s sterile.Whoever Skaar’s mother is in the MCU, clearly she could handle it.In the comics it’s Caiera, who’s a super-tough baddie.
Well he couldn’t have kids with humans….and his son is half alien….
In FATWS Rhodey has leg braces on underneath his pants. You can see the glow of them.
Huh, did not see them!
Ghost might have been there off-camera, but that wouldn’t have made his powers, which come from the super-suit he built, any more accessible via his DNA.
MCU Ghost is a she.
As noted by Kikaleeka MCU Ghost is a she and powers are internalized, not suit based.
Ghost used to work for SHIELD, right? And Abomination was in prison for a long while. Fury could easily have gotten hold of their DNA.
Ghost was a SHIELD agent/assassin and Abomination was in custody. They could have just chucked their blood samples collected from places other than Endgame (Ghost from her agency medical and Abomination from jail) into the tube as well.On the subject of SHIELD, a lot of people have said Agents of SHIELD did the whole sinister duplicates storyline better with their Life Model Decoy (LMD) arc in Season 4.
Oh yeah, they definitively could have gotten the DNA from some other time, just going on what Fury said. Basically the Harvest was from the Battle of Earth. Off camera works, adding in data collected at another time also works. Many ways to skin that cat.
je-sus. i had held off watching this but binged the first 5 with a couple friends last friday (and a bottle of four roses)…and these are my most-mcu-friendly friends i have…and wow we hated it. absolutely the worst thing the mcu has released, even worse than things i think are more poorly made. just sooo fucking boring and full of info-dump after info-dump.any ‘revelation’ was handled in the most annoying, frustrating way, the 212 million (!) clearly went mostly to pointless digital de-aging, there wasn’t even any fun action or espionage stuff and the most interesting/watchable stuff was some moments of some of the performances, that’s it.i’ll keep watching this crap but this was far and away the most annoying thing the mcu has put out. what a waste.olivia colman rules, at least.
Yeah I can’t imagine MCU fans enjoying this show…. I know there’s a whole toxic section of the fanbase that cry when they have women leads or progressive storylines… but this isn’t even that.
It’s just so boring and long and nothing…
It’s nice that MCU fans finally have their The Rise of Skywalker.
Hopefully this bring the toxic fans and the non-toxic fans together in mutually not caring about Secret Invasion. One can only hope.
Now if only James Gunn would hurry up with his Amalgam crossover film (that only he has the power to create) and broker peace between the MCU and DCU.
todd philips’ ‘hyena’
Oh man it wasn’t good but it wasn’t total goddamn nonsense like RoS.
I’d love to see how it could achieve that “oh no clone Thanos suddenly returns! And uh, G’iah becomes Zombie Tony Stark!”
Also Thanos has a fleet of Death Stars and the Avengers ride horses on them.God what a mess that film was.
This is a show built heavily around the use of antisemitic and antimuslim conspiracy theories in order to create a paranoid feeling of terror and helplessness in the main characters and audience. But to get there it sacrifices its goodwill in creating its single best metaphor for refugee crises. And then it has the nerve to not only humanize and lionize its own metaphor for the CIA torture program, it then throws out a chance to actually interrogate the methods and motivations of its “sympathetic” villain against the man who used him by only pretending to have that conversation and instead killing him without ever letting him even interact with that user.And then it wraps it all up by handwaving a decades-long genocidal war against that refugee metaphor. Off-screen. During the show. But not mentioned or shown or described in detail at all.Yeah, whut…?In the end, it was either poorly thought out, lazy, and reactionary. Or it was originally well-written but then heavily rewritten and edited to be made reactionary to stop whatever Bradstreet was trying to originally do.
whenever the show would bring up a ‘real heavy topic’ it felt like it was already patting itself on the back for it before they even started.
In the end, it was either poorly thought out, lazy, and reactionary. Or it was originally well-written but then heavily rewritten and edited to be made reactionary to stop whatever Bradstreet was trying to originally do.
I’ve read they did multiple reshoots. It makes interested in the behind the scenes drama of what happened. Did the reshoots cause this steaming pile of garbage or was it always that way?
At least you had a solid bourbon choice 🙂
That price tag blows my mind, as it is not on screen anywhere. The few fight effects looked BAD.
There are actual problems with this show. There are actual things that a skilled critic could address. There are actual plot issues, pace issues, dialogue issues, theme issues.
Which makes it all the more infuriating when Barsanti ignores them to make complaints that demonstrate his complete lack of media literacy: Nick Fury got a happy ending, but at what cost?Fury didn’t get a happy ending. The only good thing that happened to him was reconciling with his wife. In all other regards, he is worse off than where he started. President Mulroney has signed racism into law and emboldened however many J6-types to execute anyone they suspect of being an alien. Fury explicitly called that out. It wasn’t even an implication or subtext, it was DIRECTLY STATED DIALOGUE, SAM.Forget the giant hand reaching out of the planet from Eternals that nobody talks about They talked about it in She-Hulk. Nick Fury has potentially doomed an entire race of aliens, one that he vowed to protect, and he’s just going off to space again?He set them up with a new, better protector. Oh, the Kree are open to peace talks with the Skrulls? The same Kree who made them refugees in the first place?How could that be worse than the Kree not trying to make peace? Sonya, who is apparently just a straight-up good guy despite all of the mean stuff she seemed to be doing earlierFalsworth is like Fury: A spy doing horrible things for good reasons. She isn’t a “straight-up good guy”, but she was also never a “bad guy” in the first place. a completely unexplained warehouse full of people in hospital bedsThat’s all the other people the Skrulls had been replacing, beyond just the “important” ones they needed quick access to the memories of. Fury and [Priscilla/Varra] go back to space to work on those Skrull/Kree peace talksSo Fury isn’t just running off to space to abandon the Skrulls’ cause after all. You’re contradicting yourself now. I guess we shouldn’t expect you to pay attention to what the characters in the show say when you can’t even pay attention to what YOU say. I know this is a meaningless symbolic gestureIt’s not meaningless. It has LOTS of meaning, just not the meaning you want it to have. It means your score cannot be trusted, because you’re admitting yourself that it’s not what you actually think the episode deserves. Rhodey was replaced by a Skrull before Avengers: Endgame, but I saw absolutely zero proof of thatFor once, you’re right. It is stated several times that Gravik didn’t even begin his plan until the Blip. Everyone saying it happened before then pays just as little attention to the text as you do. The real Sam Barsanti will now be released from his Skrull pod with no memory of ever watching or reviewing Secret Invasion.Whichever version of Barsanti you are doesn’t inspire much confidence of having watched the show despite reviewing it.
I have a comment that I think is still in the grey’s that explains when the Rhodey Switch probably happened based on his leg braces. Post Endgame Pre FAWS
That’s my take, too. A Skrull wouldn’t have continued faking a disability when he was about to drown under the destroyed Avengers HQ.
The evidence for it being pre-Endgame seems to be mostly that he’s in a hospital gown, which would indicate he was replaced shortly after Civil War. But I did notice that the episode clearly sets up an answer for when it happened when Ross asks that very thing, but then weirdly doesn’t give any answer. So what I imagine happened is that originally there was an answer there, but then COVID completely screwed up the schedule for the entire Phase 4 and 5 and it wouldn’t make sense anymore, but they also didn’t have time to reshoot the scene so they just snipped it out.
My read on that was more like “how could he possibly know how long he’s been here when he just woke up & doesn’t know the current date yet?”
That’s the kind of thing that speaks to whoever wrote the dialogue on this show not knowing how to write dialogue. Characters were constantly saying things that made no sense in context, that they would never say. Ross wakes up and asks Rhodey how long he’s been there. What the fuck? He should have said “Where the hell are we? What’s going on?”
What’s funny is it’s his complete lack of media literacy that will absolutely get his job replaced by AI. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. That is all.
In case anyone cares, this commenter who is incredibly mad at the writer has not even seen the show:
“There’s people (myself included) that have been not watching this and just reading the recaps and honestly this finale review sorta cemented that I made the correct choice. But I do agree with you that I think it’s Barsanti’s emotional investment in this/his shortsightedness, that resulted in him not even considering spoiler warnings. None of this looks good on Barsanti professionally. The first whose jobs to be replaced by AI will go kicking and screaming tho…”
100% this anger is based solely on the fact that they insulted the use of AI and this person uses AI.
Then cosmicghostrider is just as bad as Barsanti. Thank you for shedding light on this.
He’s also literally said multiple times that anyone who doesn’t hate Quantumania is mentally ill.
I appreciate you actually reviewing this episode for us. Can’t wait until they fire Sam for being a hack.
If they didn’t do it by now as they should have, then they’ll never do it.
I’m not around here enough to know whether the person who wrote this article is a hack or not, but this show is a big piece of shit.Not sure an F type of shit but definitely a 212 million dollar type of shit.No joke. Disney-Marvel wasted 212 dollars on this turd.
I’ll add that the show like, totally forgot that Rhodes IS an Avenger who, for whatever reason, it doesn’t get mentioned super often has the exact same powers as Iron Man. It seemed so weird when Rhodes himself was like “we don’t want them getting ahold of our powerful friends” in episode two cuz like…. HE IS WARMACHINE. There’s literally an Armor Wars film in development. I don’t understand the show just totally forgetting about War Machine…. Rhodes was a Skrull!!! In Iron Man 2 they explain that the War Machine suit can only be piloted by Rhodes cuz it’s programmed for him specifically so why weren’t the Skrulls using the fact that they had Skrull Rhodes to utilize his War Machine suit….. like…. what?
“He set them up with a new, better protector.” At this point don’t they need everyone they can get? Like sure they’ve got a superhero but the entire US government just declared war on them.
And on New Asgard. Valkyrie might stick up for them too because of this.
It’s not meaningless. It has LOTS of meaning, just not the meaning you want it to have. It means your score cannot be trusted, because you’re admitting yourself that it’s not what you actually think the episode deserves.*sigh* I’ll… I’ll stick up for Barsanti here *twitches*. He has mentioned exactly how much he is dropping his score and why in every one of his reviews. If he gives it a D, that means he really thinks it’s a C because he doesn’t like that A.I. was used for the opening credits.I just hope he never finds out a movie used the content aware fill tool for the poster.
But he’s taken points off for the same thing multiple times; that’s not valid scoring. Also, it screws up review aggregates for him to do this.
It makes more sense to me to have taken that point off for every episode than any individual episode, since the same credit sequence is used for every episode. But I agree that it screws up review aggregates. I also think that it’s more self-aggrandizing and moral posturing than truly “meaningless.”
aw no! not the review aggregates! if they didn’t want to be reviewed poorly they shouldn’t have done things reviewers didn’t like!
to be fair to Barsanti I would agree with him that I don’t think *the show* itself realizes just how badly Fury comes off in it by the end, like it would be one thing if they were clearly and intentionally having him regress as a character for the sake of story but based on the Marvels trailers we’ve gotten, it seems like nothing that happened in this series (i.e. Talos’ death) will affect him moving forward and back to business as usual for him, which reflects badly on this series as a whole
I hate on this site a lot, but one thing I’ll always love are the sputtering nerd meltdowns every time this sam barsanti guy isn’t sufficiently deferential towards entertainment for children
Your inability to read what I actually said is the reason you’re not getting un-greyed. I’ll repeat it again: There are actual problems with this show. There are actual things that a skilled critic could address. There are actual plot issues, pace issues, dialogue issues, theme issues.Barsanti SHOULD lay into this disappointing series. But he should lay into the problems that actually happened, not problems that he just made up because he wasn’t paying attention. Factual errors in reviews are always bad, even if the work being reviewed deserves mockery.
oh god eww please dont screenshot me you weird nerd
What’s “funny” is that, since you don’t get a notification from this, you only found out what I did by lurking back through this thread again looking for it. Yet somehow I’m the “weird nerd”?
we’re all weird nerds here.
That’s fair.
Thank you for dealing with this Sam crap – unfortunately the reality seems to be that even publications like AV club can not afford to have actual people with a degree review for them, but need to rely on freebies. Shouldn’t there be someone signing off on these articles, like an editor in chief or similar? Idiocracy, here we come!
AV Club’s parent company is gradually chasing away all the old talent, presumably to dismantle the whole thing for a tax writeoff or some crud. Most of the quality writers who’ve been jumping ship can easily find work elsewhere. Barsanti, however, has to either ride this out or find an entirely new career field.
I wanted to really like this one and it had all the makings of a really interesting show, but beyond a handful of good scenes it went largely nowhere. The conspiracy part amounted to “Hmm, is this guy a Skrull? *shoots him* Yep, he was!” Even still an F is a little harsh.
Even by MCU standards this was ass. A badly written made-for-tv movie that got chopped up and slightly padded out to stretch it just long enough to get 2 months of subs.The hostages get freed and suddenly the radiation is no longer a threat? (minor nitpick, I know)How did they spend $212 million on this?
They needed the hostages to survive so they could be mined for memories, so the room they were kept in must’ve been better insulated from radiation than, say, the literal reactor room.
Oh, I figured that, but they and the people there to rescue them still walked out of there with no protection on whatsoever.
I can’t tell you how many times I went like, “this is fucking stupid, but if I suspend disbelief…it’s fine”Don’t know why I couldn’t come to terms with this show being terrible
Man, I tried. I know a massive suspension of disbelief is required for these movies/shows, and for most of them it’s not that hard. But this…. I just couldn’t manage it. I’m jealous of the people like say Kevin Smith who are just so happy to see the characters they love in comics being on screen that even the worst stuff is still cool to them. That’s actually a good thing.
Actor salaries. It certainly wasn’t spent on production values or sfx.
If this is the best writing a human can do, then bring on the AI overlords and tell the WGA guys to find work at the Starbucks they are walking by.
Do I mean Bradstreet or Barsanti?
Yes.
I side with you on Barsanti but in regards to show writers I think you need to attribute a little more nuance to your take. Painting with broads stroke will results in years of generic be-careful-what-you-wish-for programming.
Not everyone is meant to have a glorious Hollywood writing career. Kyle Bradstreet clearly isn’t.
I’d like to point out that Sam Barsanti’s job is more or less the same as Doddario’s character’s job in White Lotus season 1. He’s a puff-piece writer. I’d probably be a little embarrassed telling people what I do if I were him (The AV Club used to have more prestige than this but alas).
Sam Barsanti probably doesn’t have any skills to fall back on if an AI takes his job and he isn’t very skilled at his current job to begin with. Yah I’d be super freaked out if I were him too although because I’m not him I can speculate that it’s his life choices that got him stuck in this spot. Although it’s not fair to assume he had foresight he also went into an “easy” career and he doesn’t even excel at it. He doesn’t get sympathy from me because this is just decades of laziness (probably) catching up with him.
Pick up a shovel, Barsanti.
kill yourself and everyone around you
You’re weird.
Have you considered not being a petulant cunt in defense of a deeply mediocre Marvel TV show? Jesus.
He wasn’t defending it. Bradstreet is the head writer of the show.
If this is the best writing a human can doIt isn’t, so what the fuck are you talking about?
yoo an F?
I’ve liked everything MCU has done, even stuff people hated like Dark World. Now those were varying degrees of like, but I still liked them. Secret Invasion is a first for me. It’s not good. By any means. It’s incredibly bland and dull. It keeps saying its a “spy thriller” yet displays none of the characteristics to the point where I’m convinced the people around the show don’t know what “spy thriller” means. The budget for this show is absurd for what we actually got. Everything about this was a failure. I wanted to like it. I like many of the people involved, some of who tried their best to make the material feel worthwhile (Cheadle and Colman gave good performances), but there’s just nothing redeeming here. I’m well aware that the Secret Invasion story from the comics wasn’t all that and has its own problems, but there’s a path to take some of the ideas and inspiration to come up with something compelling. The writing and directing team did not do that here. Silly and trivial AI protest aside, the series really is worth D and F grades.
“The invasion has been thwarted, but this is hardly a victory for the good guys”
Spoilers, Motherfucker, you DO speak it.
I don’t go into a recap not expecting spoilers, obviously. But you get this subheading just from a list of “Latest” and I haven’t seen the ep yet.
I yell from the greys: Do better guys.
I’m sympathetic to your cause, but is this really that much of a spoiler? Were you really expecting Earth to be taken over by Skrulls in an MCU TV show, and have it not be solved by the end of the series? Or did you think there would be a more straightforward victory for the good guys? Talos’s fate (a real spoiler in the review) is something that could have gone either way since he’s a supporting character who’s not especially popular. Other than Infinity War, what Marvel property ends on such a downer that completely changes the status quo? Maybe Asgard’s destruction, but Asgard isn’t Earth.
There’s people (myself included) that have been not watching this and just reading the recaps and honestly this finale review sorta cemented that I made the correct choice. But I do agree with you that I think it’s Barsanti’s emotional investment in this/his shortsightedness, that resulted in him not even considering spoiler warnings. None of this looks good on Barsanti professionally. The first whose jobs to be replaced by AI will go kicking and screaming tho…
“There’s people (myself included) that have been not watching this and just reading the recaps and honestly this finale review sorta cemented that I made the correct choice.”
So you’ve complained and whined more than anyone in this thread about the show and Barsanti’s recaps, and you haven’t even watched the show? Haha, awesome!
Yep, I have no sympathy for anyone complaining about spoilers in the text of a story clearly labelled a recap, but even for recaps the writers here should treat headlines and subheads as no-spoiler zones. I mean, this is basic reviewer etiquette, right? But then, what can we expect after that f***ing Succession spoiler? Standards?
well what did you think was gonna happen.
It was really more the “hardly a victory for the good guys” that was unviewable spoiler stuff. Not the did-the-Skrulls-take-over part of it.
Though that’s also still, obviously, a spoiler one shouldn’t put in a subheading of a show called “Secret Invasion” no matter how one “no duh”s it.
i guess i just always blame myself for seeing the spoiler, not the place for having the spoiler.
The usual “Why are you going to a website that you know will have a review of the episode on its front page when you haven’t seen the episode yet and don’t want any spoilers” response.
Barsanti is so fucking insecure about AI taking his job. This is embarrassing for him.
you have made 20 fucking comments about the same thing, legitimately put a fucking gun in your mouth and pull the trigger, the patterns will be more interesting than reading the same smug cunt shit a billion times. fuck off!
That montage sequence near the end where it all goes to hell is basically what I was expecting the whole series to be. Womp, womp.
My biggest disappointment: Sonya should have been revealed as a Pink Kree and been the one to offer the peace deal. Also, it wasn’t made explicit but I think we just saw the beginnings of MI:13 and Black Air, though having Pete Wisdom show up would have been nice. I did think G’iah was going to be revealed as Abigail Brand, but they never did give her a human name. No matter; she’s obviously the MCU version of the Sentry, so if Feige brings her back we can look forward to Emilia Clarke playing another overpowered pixie who’s destined to go mad and will need taking down.
Sentry is rumored to be in Thunderbolts.
If it ever happens
How on Earth are they going to be able to come close to adapting Sentry?
Great question, no clue.
The fact that Sonya wasn’t a Kree working both sides or trying to hunt down Skrulls or going rogue and cutting a deal annoyed me completely for the last four episodes. She just screamed, “I’m a horrible person but the only one who will work with you.” If the Kree had switched tactics to soft power in order to convince the humans to kill the Skrulls for them — brilliant. As it stands… nope, no point.
Sentry is rumored to be played by some guy from The Walking Dead.
This is the second MCU thing I’ve skipped. Very glad I dipped after episode 2. I’m a completionist but I’m okay with saying I missed this one (as well as Werewolf by Night – not for me).
Too bad you said Werewolf by Night is not for you. It’s legitimately one of the few bright spots of this generally crappy post Endgame era.
Marvel had a real opportunity here to break out of their box and lean into the obvious mystery/paranoia of a spy thriller. Somehow, they decided to ditch that for something of a mess. There was never any suspense, never any mystery, or paranoia. They could have done something really interesting in making Fury a Skull for decades. This show could have followed a Blade Runner theme. There was aspects of the writing that could have led to this. Talos’s unwavering dedication the “i am not with him becuase I am with you’ His marriage to a Skrull, the numerous mentions about how Fury was not the same since coming back from the snap (the mixing of the two minds). The whole “who you can trust” from the marketing, they never did anything with. Imagine this 6 episodes still with the rogue group, but not trying to take out humanity, and Fury and Talos trying to track them down and expose them. lean into the sypcraft of it. Then in the end getting the news that Fury died decades ago, but he and what he had promised was so important to the Skrulls, that as he was dying he allowed a Skrull, Talos’s relative, and his wife’s real Skrull husband, to fully copy his mind and appearance. That the extreme of their abilities is to completely take over another mind and appearance without the ability to ever change again. Now that as a kicker, after all the tracking down after al of the really not knowing who to trust would have actually something. In a lot of ways this show echos one of the other worse outings, in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. A rogue group trying to have a revolution, and the “heroes” fumbling around becuase the writers/showrunners cannot figure out how to make the characters have an individual story within a larger plot. neither aspects work and both are worse off of the execution.Sure there were hints of direction and ability to be good, but it just came off like everyone submitted a story idea and they all mushed them together. They had all the actors of high enough quality to have something really amazing, and they gave us this.Did this really do anything for the characters? Outside of Coleman and Clarke, i dont think so. In the end, it really feels like they had started with goal of “we need to bring in the super skrull” how can we force this in. For a good long while now, years. The proprieties, the characters really feel like too little butter scrapped over too much bread.
I think in both instances the show had the idea of a rogue group trying to have a revolution, the producers saw that the characters actually made sense, so they did their best to stop the audience from sympathizing with the revolutionary characters.It’s how the Flagsmashers go from not killing anyone in the first three episodes to a bombing in the last five seconds of Episode 3. The Flagsmashers were completely right — whoops, they’re terrorists.They did the same thing with the Skrulls here but they moved the terrorist face-heel turn earlier and it was harder to stitch it all back together coherently. Build up how desperate the Skrulls are for a home. Then in Episode 1 have Gravik say he wants to erase humanity off the planet. But now 50% of Gravik’s moves are inane: save the plane he originally wanted to blow up to start a war because he… really wants a plane more than he wants a war, target the Skrulls with a nuclear attack he can’t control, have all of his people turn on him because a mission failed and have him kill a bunch of his own people to shut them up? Come on.
Yes to all of this, though I did think Colman was basically just playing the Julie Louis Dreyfuss character with a British accent. I’ll still always like to watch her work, but the character was particularly engaging. That’s not on her, or any of the actors because blame for this lies entirely with Marvel management and, shocking to me at least, a writer who came from Mr. Robot.
I want a Coleman/Dreyfus face off ASAP.
The problem Marvel seem to run into (and probably most superhero films/TV) is they want to play around with genre, but they never really commit to it because they worry about the dummies their audience not being able to follow along (and, of course, they need to string along the hardcore fans with nods to significant comics stuff), so we get this watered-down, confused genre muddle. This show wanted so badly to be a cool paranoid spy thriller, but it ended up a little more like dad-lit classic Tom Clancy.**(Not that there is anything wrong with that, if, again, they would commit to the genre)
Whoa back, the deal with Tom Clancy books(I mean I stopped reading around Rainbow Six) is that they’re obsessed with “realism” past the point where it starts to get boring. That does NOT describe anything with this show at all, not even in the context of its sci-fi-magic world! It would have been a huge step up, lol. They would have spent a whole episode on the technobabble of the Super-Skrull machine.Hey does anyone remember the Judas bullets from Luke Cage? Getting ahold of those, or some other thing we’ve already seen, or something that’s a tease like “Adamantium” would have been a better way to take him out than a stupid punch-up with someone who for no reason just figured out how to better exploit all the same powers.
There’s something interesting that the alien species that looks identical to humans was given land (even if it may have been sitting empty, since it was the village shown being destroyed by Nazis in the First Avenger) and the ones who look wildly different are ostracized, despite them claiming land that is staggeringly dangerous for humans to occupy.It really should have been mentioned, considering that Fury has talked about his experiences with racism several times.
Racism is a theory that says that humans are divided in races and some are superiors to the others. In reality races don’t exist and humans are mostly al the same. Aliens are not humans and are indeed different from humans. Aliens are not a metaphor for “Black people” in fact that’s exactly the opposite – seeing them as thus is racist because it says thatBlack people are not humans.
I mean you could do something addressing this if the two species had arrived or been introduced to Earth in exactly the same context as one another, but a comparison between the two isn’t really able to be done as the Skrulls arrived in secret on Earth, and they didn’t have an Avenger member as an advocate for their species.
I believe Ritson’s only exposure to them was his being attacked (and also saved) and Fury called him out on his bullshit at the end, so it was sort of mentioned.Maybe if they had mentioned it at some point, “hey Fury the Asgardians got land, why didn’t we, or why haven’t you asked, etc. etc.” But the whole thing was about hearts and minds or whatever, and I guess Thor earned enough good will for them?I don’t know, we’re giving too much thought to a very mediocre show.
“the Skrulls arrived in secret on Earth”Because that’s how Nick Fury arranged it, so that they would do spy shit for him and make him look like some super agent
at this point, Marvel can (clearly) afford to make Good Content. it can even afford to make Bad Content, because bad things get press. but Secret Invasion was something Marvel cannot afford right now (and i do mean right now, with Barbenheimermania running wild). it was Irrelevant Content. it was content you’re better off just skipping, because it’s definitely not good, and really wasn’t horrid enough to get that kind of “wow this really blew” clout. it was just…there. no one who watched it will remember it in a month. no one who hasn’t watched it will be given any compelling reason to ever watch it.
this was just…nothing. Marvel can’t afford much more of this.
The show had a lot of issues, maybe a C- or a D+. This review is an F.
Goddamnit. I’ve defended this show, I thought it was better than every critic thought because somehow I KNEW BETTER. Fuck this finale was terrible. Unless they’re setting up a dark version of the comics’ Secret Invasion plot, this was a total waste. Is the MCU really going hard on the “kill the refugees” storyline? No fucking way unless DeSantis has actually taken over Disney. Cool, the most powerful superhero ever, of all the MCU, is roaming around. I’m sure that won’t be an annoying narrative plot hole FOREVER.Does it mean that G’iah will show up in The Marvels? Probably not! Why? Because whatever man.Who was that blonde dude in the weird coma thing at the end? My first thought was it was the knock off captain America from Jessica Jones (that or Homelander). Does it matter? PROBABLY NOTFuck I tried to like this show so hard.
white vision has been floating around the mcu for almost 4 years now.
Hes probably Dr. Manhattaning on Mars or something. I’ve never been one of those people that thinks the MCU is struggling under the weight of continuity or too many superheroes just chilling on earth, but G’iah’s new powers really fuck EVERYTHING up
How? I’ve seen articles about this, and comments about this, the show didn’t have time to explicitly lay out how powerful she was, there’s dozens of ways she could be limited that the show didn’t have time to explore. It’s not like she blew up the sun or something, she punched a hole in some dude.
2.5 years, by both audience time (winter 2021 to summer 2023) and in-universe time (November 2023 to early 2026 [GotG vol. 3]).
that’s almost 4 years.
Doing absolutely nothing. Not to mention Captain Falcon was been flying around for 3 yrs.
Enough is enough! I have HAD it with these MOTHERFUCKING SKRULLS on this MOTHERFUCKING PLANE!
*PLANET!
Honestly, I think we needed a mention or a shot of G’iah and Fury doing a mind-meld-xerox face copy or whatever to explain the end monologues. Then we could be like, “Oh Fury really does feel that way because G’iah scanned him, real Fury just would never say that shit out loud.”Also, did Gravik want the Harvest from the get-go, or did he decide to ask for it when all his other shit went sideways? It’s rough enough when the “spy movie” plot is two antagonists improvising around each other. The expectation is A) Bad guy has solid straight-forward evil plan B) Good guy probes their way in. This is like “Whack-a-mole vs Whack-a-mole” rather than “Spy vs Spy.” So, it’s messy.I think, unfortunately, this secretive stuff with plot leaks, and “can’t let this-and-that leak to the internet hate potatoes” has led to actors like … well, all the actors on this show … to be totally without scripts except for the pages they get day to day. If this show’s script was the one everyone signed on to… I mean. I would hope (?) or guess out of $200 million that Jackson got $70, Cheadle got, like, $30, Mendelson and Clarke each got $15. Script pages flying everywhere. The President of the United States pushed around a hallway like it’s a Benny Hill Show skit. E.T. ending where Elliot kissed E.T. on the lips. Nutty, nutty nuts. Largely improvised feeling show.Lol, set up for a season 2.
So fury’s solution was to give ultimate super powers to a genocidal maniac in the hopes that those same powers in giah would be able to beat him? What kind of assinine strategy is that? What a waste of tv
https://mattthecatania.wordpress.com/2023/07/26/secret-invasion-revealed-to-suck/
Fury utterly failed the Skrulls. President Ritson calling for Skrull genocide could’ve been an intriguing midpoint to the thriller, but it’s just an
infuriating downer ending that probably won’t be addressed elsewhere. I didn’t expect Fury to cure xenophobia with an impassioned speech, but
he could try to do something. He doesn’t volunteer to evacuate any
Skrulls except the wife he’s been neglecting. He just cavalierly
abandons all those refuges to ethnic cleansing.
Secret Invasion feels like an MCU series
designed to appeal to people who hate the MCU. While the MCU formula can
be grating if if not handled deftly, this doesn’t automatically mean Secret Invasion
is quality just because it’s dour & looks unmemorable. Sam Jackson
& the rest of the stacked cast deserved better than this dud. I’ve
been disappointed by MCU shows before, but none have made me as outright
furious as this.
…And Maria Hill died for this! :’’’’(
I can’t wait for Super G’iah to return and job out to Galactus!
I hated this harvest crap so much. It was fan fiction from a 10 year old.
They could have at least put some limitations on it, like you can only use 1 power at a time and only for like 30 seconds. Or, have it wear off after a while. Honestly, I would have done the anti-climactic climax: He uses the harvest to give himself all the powers… But, it’s too much, and he blows up.
I mean they didn’t really have time or the need to put limitations or whatever on her powers yet, the fight wasn’t that long, so who knows how powerful she really is? People concerned that she’s suddenly the most powerful thing ever are extrapolating way too much based on like a 5-minute sequence. She could suck at controlling the powers well, I didn’t really want a whole sequence of them trying to figure out how to use the powers because that would have been like an entire episode or something. I mean it would have been more realistic or whatever, but there’s no reason to believe like, Groot, wouldn’t be way better at using his own powers than she would, and I believe that’s similar to Fantastic Four-powered Super Skrull in the comics.
Still never found out why Goose scratched his eyeball! Fury has Flerken-Vision!! What, is it legally owned by the Captain Marvel crew? I want Fury’s eyeball to explode into alien tentacles. Why can’t I have my fun things? Poop.
I’ve watched every D+ MCU series and it’s difficult to describe why I disliked each of them. But there was always just something wrong with them. Sometimes it was bad dialog, sometimes bad direction, pacing, story. Maybe it’s just there were so many things wrong with them it was somewhat disorienting.
Increasingly happy with my decision to bail on the MCU.
Yes, I was not happy with the overall arc and pacing and how they executed this story line.However, I’m also tired of the “I’m going to drop it a whole grade for the AI intro” each and every one. There are things to be concerned about AI… if the studio typed in “ChatGTP, write me a six part television series based on Marvel’s Secret Invasion” and got the script that way, that would be a major problem (though, frankly, it might not be worse than what they came up with here).But the opening titles, a team utilized it to create a specific style of visuals and annimation. People used it as a tool… like they use all their CGI programs and photo editing and such. This does not appear to be a case of computers replacing people, but people using them as a tool. It feels like “I’m dropping Jurrasic Park a grade because they used computers to fake dinosaurs in some shots, they should have done it all practically as they did in 75% of the shots.”
I apologize in advance, I didn’t read the article. The show reviews here are generally not great and the first comment i saw made me think this is no different.That being said, I don’t dislike the show as much as I should. Everything about the final episode is just terrible though.I don’t know what I expected, but everything felt unearned and frankly seemed just too unbelievable, even for marvel, and is just terrible writing.I won’t reveal spoilers, but everything just fell into place in 5 minutes and we are just left with, “ok, crisis averted. No need to double check anything, we’re good.”
The finale introduced a nice and flashy finish as well as a plot hole with regards to the use of a certain Captain’s powers?It’s established by the tail end of Ms. Marvel that the use of Kamala’s energy based power entangles her with Carol Danvers. Also if we are to go by the revelation in the trailer for The Marvels it doesn’t stop with her. All of them seemingly are entangled to swap places with each other whenever their light based powers are used… Which brings us back to the finale battle between Gravik and ‘”The idea is that this would both start World War III and make Nick Fury mad since he supposedly cares about the lives of innocent Skrulls (though I am unconvinced of that now),”’B-B-But Nick Fury tried to talk down the president from what he’d mandated and when that failed he asked Priscilla(really Varra but still very much his wife) to come with him to the space station.Also‘”…the final wide shot of G’iah blasting Gravik in the stomach with a Captain Marvel beam was very Dragon Ball. Unfortunately, she’s now so incredibly powerful that we’ll probably never see her again.”’Not so fast. I’d be genuinely surprised if we don’t see her again in the upcoming movie all this most likely ties into called The Marvel’s.‘”The real Sam Barsanti will now be released from his Skrull pod with no memory of ever watching or reviewing Secret Invasion. Lucky!”’Nice finish. I knew you were going to give it an F overall due to the No Man’s Sky inspired AI opening to every episode.But I do wonder if this show’s place on the timeline should be altered to some time before Ms. Marvel due to the aforementioned details (or lack thereof).Also as far as how Rhodey got replaced I suspect it must’ve happened while he was still recovering from the events of Captain America: Civil War. Do note he’s still wearing the hospital gown he has had since directly after the Civil War.In a nutshell I suspect he went to go piss swatted at what he thought was a fly. He missed only for the fly to reveal it was actually a Skrull and swat him back which lead to him being knocked out. It then somehow snuck him out when no one was looking maybe knockout gas who knows. It then assumed his identity and donned his gown.
Up to this point I thought Moon Knight was the bottom of the barrel for Marvel shows where stuff happens that means absolutely nothing to the rest of the MCU,but along comes Secret Invasion and turns over the barrel, scrapes all the nasty stuff off and drags it to hell.
What a colossal waste of both good actors and my precious time.
This show was a pretty convoluted and sloppily written mess and nothing close to the paranoid spy thriller they tried to market it as. It felt cobbled together and all the rewrites an reshoots really showed. Gravik’s plans never made any sense because his actual motivations seemed to change from episode to episode. A good spy thriller way can have a final reveal that brings the contradictory parts of an antagonist’s plan into focus, but this never happened. There were scenes and plot points that felt like they were from a different script. The whole Harvest thing could’ve been a really good reveal, for instance. It’s a good motivation for Gravik to be sick of being a pawn in Fury’s schemes and digs into Fury’s duplicitousness as a character. The first episode even felt like Gravik was setting up to continuously use what he knows about Fury to taunt and isolate him until he gave up the location of the Harvest. Instead, all of Gravik’s plans, if they had succeeded, would’ve ruined any chances of… anything. I particularly hated the Fury and Gravik scene this episode. It was decently acted, but the prior episode telegraphed that there was fully body Black Widow tech, so it was obvious it was G’aih, not Fury there. Any emotional impact of the scene is stolen (not to mention this tech apparently can vastly change your mass while still having you interact with objects around you), hinges on G’aih convincingly acting like Fury, while also faking radiation poisoning. On top of all that, Sonya, Fury and G’aih’s plan makes no sense. Sonya and Fury single handedly were able to take down a whole hospital and convince the president to call off the nuclear strike. They didn’t need G’aih-Fury trying to trade the Harvest to Gravik to have him call it off through fake-Rhodey. There was literally no reason to have G’aih-Fury bring the Harvest to Gravik other than the highly contrived plot point that Gravik would try to kill Fury with the super skrull machine, just so the show could have a super skrull fight.
G’iah doesn’t need a full-body veil. She’s a Skrull.
It seems like Marvel once again just took the name from one of their crossover comics just to get people excited and then just…meh.
As somebody who read the original Secret Invasion comics, I can state unequivocally that I was not excited to see it adapted for the small screen, because it is a total mess of an ungainly Marvel crossover event that is somehow even more terrible than this misbegotten TV series was. I urge everyone not to read it. The only good thing about it was setting up the next event, Dark Reign, which had plenty of its own problems but at least had an interesting beat or two.
I’m scared at what they’re going to do with Secret Wars.
Then again, Ritson ain’t gonna be President by the time we get to Cap 4.
If I remember correctly even though the original Super Skrull had the powers of the FF he wasn’t as powerful as each individual member, i.e. he wasn’t as strong as the Thing, his flaming ability wasn’t on the same level as the Torch, etc. His power lay in the fact that he could use all of their powers at once.
It was a fucking dreadful choice for this Harvest Super Duper Skrull thing.
Im not saying this series was absolutely great but I really can’t be arsed to care about opinions on marvel stuff anymore. But, then again, don’t think most things in entertainment are as bad people go on about so I just get tired of the hyperbole and negativity after a while. I’m not saying just give everything a pass. At this point it feels like flawed just equals terrible and I don’t view entertainment like that. Enjoy the good in it question the other stuff but it doesn’t have to ruin everything for me. I just like enjoying stuff.
For the last time, I am dropping this episode down a letter grade over the A.I. intro. I think at this point I’ve made my thoughts on the use of A.I. in this context (and, ahem, some other notable contexts) pretty clear, and while I know this is a meaningless symbolic gesture, I think the symbol of that letter grade up there still says something.You might have something to fear there, since the AI is especially good at replacing formulaic, repetitive commentary.
I thought the show was ok, mostly forgettable, with some stellar acting and very shallow writing. One thing I do find interesting is that the principal plot reminds me a lot of what the CIA did with some soldiers in the middle east, being directly responsible for the later formation of Al Qaeda. I don’t know if it was on purpuse, but it was a really clever and deep story, that could have been far better explored. Kudos to the writers anyways, just trying seems amazing.Even the finale, with the president declaring war and mistrust, seems to echo the world post 9/11
I’m so glad I dipped out of the MCU for good. Relapsed a bit for GoG3 but still no real motivation to catch up on several mediocore movies and shows.
Well it wasn’t great but it was still better than this review…“I am dropping this episode down a letter grade over the A.I. intro”Man if you avoid or dislike everything that is done by ‘A.I.’ then you’re in for a rough time…
This is also an insane metric to grade something that’s supposed to be reviewed based on the merits of what a television show or movie is.“This movie used unethically sourced coffee during its filming, so it gets an F. I do not need to actually review the film, because everything else is ancillary.”
I think the word we’re looking for is ‘petulant’, Sam dropping a letter grade over the use of ‘AI’ in the credits is ‘petulant’.
Seriously. He made his point in the first episode review. For him to repeat it in every review, including mentioning every time that he was dropping each grade down a letter because of it, came off as childish and unprofessional. It was so bad that it even had me feel bad for the AI that did the credits and rooting for it – that tells you how bad it was.
Well now he’s out of a job, hopefully he finds work that he’s better at because he’s not good at writing reviews.
Disliking one thing doesn’t mean disliking “everything.” The problem was that the intro looks like A.I. It was immediately noticeable even before I read in the news that it was A.I. It looked like early drafts of storyboards — ideas that were never fleshed out. Each image was unrelated to the next one, so it felt mostly like a randomized montage. It was pretty embarrassing really.
I bailed on this a few episodes in. The plot was convoluted and the pacing was bad, and the ideas were unclear. And the whole idea that the Skills needed superpowers… idiotic. They already have superpowers as shapeshifters, which is devastating. Really devastating. In reality, without some sort of tell to give them away (or alternately without the memory harvesting thing they do to the victims), the Skrulls would completely take over, or worse, they would cause their enemies to self-destruct with paranoia. The Skrulls are the perfect insurgent that cannot be identified or distinguished. Such an opponent would either be able to take over everything in secrecy without firing a shot, or cause unstoppable waves of panic, paranoia and hatred if they were found out. So the basic idea of this show was untenable to begin with.
This show fucking blew. The super duper skrull with every fucking super power under the sun was the cherry on the shit sundae. What a stupid decision, and a nonsensical ending. Edit- the whole Harvest super duper skrull was on the level of a 10 year old kid’s fan fiction/action figure playing. “Wouldn’t it be like, awesome if she got EVERY SUPER POWER EVER?!? HOW COOL IS THAT!!!”Jeebus what a steaming turd.
no one ever said that the super skrull machine reliably transfers superpowers at 100% efficiency – also, you are still watching a comic book.Once back on Earth the Fantastic Four hid the remaining Skrull agents by convincing them to transform into cows. Reed hypnotized them into believing they were real cows. They were left in a field to graze for the rest of their lives.
I am about the biggest MCU fan/apologist you will find but yeah-this was not good. Such a shame-on its face the concept was compelling, and both Jackson and Coleman are such compelling performers, but the show just never went anywhere remotely interesting. Again, I am a very big fan of the MCU, but it is time for me to admit that the shows have been a sizeable step down from the movies. Wanda Vision was great. All of the rest of the shows have had their moments and charms, but have been very uneven. And Invasion wasn’t uneven, it was just bad.
Ironically, the A.I. Intro was the only part of the show that properly evoked the sense of unease and dread Secret Invasion seemed to be going for.
Ethical issues aside, the intro was quite good.
And all THAT doesn’t even get into –
Why the hell weren’t Marvel / Fury able to find them a new home? No planets in the galaxy, seriously?
Near 1 million Skrulls have been among us for 20+ years and NO ONE noticed? No slips, no public sightings, nothing? No one got into a car accident and needed emergency care? For real?
Did Fury actually DO anything? Aside from walk up and shoot the guy standing next to the President after knocking out an entire SS detail? His one bit of (minor) cleverness was just G’ia in disguise.
Gravik did a dandy monologue, but it wasn’t directed at the REAL Fury, making it pointless.
Is Olivia Coleman just the deadliest middle – aged woman alive? She just walked around and easily pwned everyone in front of her. What. The. Shit?
Even the “intrigue” of the series was DOA. We saw what Graviks’ plan was, and there was NO misdirection or secrecy to it. He was an angry kid, not a Bond villian or even decent at spycraft.
And we never got a WHY Fury peaced out on his promise to the Skrulls or WHAT he was doing in his space station. I mean…
Screw this awful show. If you thought it was better than She-Hulk you need to talk some shit over with your therapist. Your mom didn’t love you.
Nice to know that aliens come down, enslave a million people, try to assassinate us president, kill 7000+, POTUS now says we are going to war with them (described as a genocide because we fight all the same people back for trying to literally conquer Earth) because they are all one race the AV Club crowd reaction to that is “are we the real bad guys?” Its about optics mannnnn they are all greeeeen dude, I feel icky now….
Honestly, it seems like part of the problem here is that Marvel kind of hamstrung themselves by making the Skrulls a displaced persons metaphor in Captain Marvel, since it meant that they couldn’t really lean into the Skrulls-as-villains that this kind of plot demands.. They wanted to upend the traditional depiction and ‘subvert expectations’ (and, if we’re being cynical, get plenty of pats on the back about having a progressive take on the subject), but the whole thing with a paranoid spy thriller is that, well, the sides are clearly delineated, and one side is clearly established as having malevolent intentions to the other side. The whole conflict comes from the characters being unable to determine whether everyone on their side can be trusted, and the consequences are going to be dire if they trust the wrong person because the other side is fundamentally and intractably opposed to the side the protagonists are on. It’s perhaps not necessarily good vs evil, but it’s definitely benevolent vs malevolent. There needs to be a clear villain, for want of a better way of putting it. The problem is, when you’re trying to avoid villainising the people who are going around replacing people on the other side and corrupting them to their side for their own interests, it lets the air out of the conflict. A paranoid spy thriller isn’t really the best kind of narrative to use in order to simultaneously deliver a “both sides have a point and there are no goodies or baddies!” theme, since the whole conflict depends on one side being the ‘goodies’ and the other side being the ‘baddies’. I mean, John Le Carre was willing to acknowledge the moral complexities of the Cold War, but at the same time he didn’t put loads of POV scenes from the Russians explaining how they were actually the oppressed minority who were just fighting for their rights and how you should actually feel really really sorry for them even though they were completely subverting the British Secret Service into Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. We didn’t get loads of scenes where we were totally supposed to sympathise with Karla and see his point of view on the situation; he was a shadowy nemesis with his own agenda that was fundamentally at odds with Smiley’s. The Skrulls needed to be more straightforward antagonists IMO.
forbes article says this show cost around $200 million to make. You wouldn’t have known that.
“will the MCU ever acknowledge that the United States effectively just declared war on a quiet fishing village full of refugees from Asgard?”The rest of the world call that Wednesday.
it’s wild how badly written this was by Kyle Bradstreet and Brian Tucker. It tells you alot about the quality control at Marvel.
The writing, the editing, the directing. Hell, even a LOT of the acting (when is anyone going to realize E. Clarke is not THAT great an actor?) was straight trash. If this is the best paid union members can do then F it. I’ll be a scab writer. I had a more interesting shit this morning than what we saw in this series.
“I think the symbol of that letter grade up there still says something.”No, you had it right when you said, “I know this is a meaningless symbolic gesture”
Two good things came out of Secret Invasion: Fury’s love story with his Skrull wife, and Olivia Colman’s spycraft (including whatever she’s planning for the remaining Super Skrull).I’m not happy with how Agent Hill and Talos got offed.
Oh my God that was terrible.The Super-Skrull fight was awful, with of course absolute nonsense of being able to just get Captain Marvel’s powers without an Infinity stone, and moreover being able to just use any power you gain with no training.
So the fact that you think the point of the show was for the MCU to declare war on (all) aliens, tells me you must be somewhat dumb. That, or you are an energy vampire – maybe both?
I’m no expert on DNA or anything, but I really wanted some kind of explanation as to how it worked with all of them in one vial like that? Surely they’d at least have to take it out and separate them all again? Unless Fury’s plan was to just keep it all together in case the technology was suddenly figured out how to and then he needed to make some sort of giant DNA power-monster from scratch? Again, not an expert, but even with my limited knowledge that seems highly unlikely.It’s hardly the biggest mess in this giant mess of a thing, but it would have made way more sense to be in a cool briefcase with dozens of little, labeled vials in it. Surely the Skrull scientists would want to make a one power version first to be sure it was possible, and then start mixing them or whatever….
Agreed. I’m willing to brush off some storylines by saying, “It’s just magic!” (and I do love shows about witches, warlocks, ghosts, etc.), but this one was just too expansive and too perfect to make sense even as sci-fi.Also, the characters spent zero time actually training. Even if they had the DNA foundation, they wouldn’t be experts at transforming, aiming, etc. — all the physical and athletic aspects of it. It was all just a little too easy and too convenient. There were only six episodes, and most of them were around 35 minutes long. That’s not enough time to convince me.
Fake Fury nearly died due to the radiation exposure during his jaunt into New Skrullos and that was with him popping what I guess were iodine pills. How do they plan to get all the Skrull captives out safely?
But Skrulls were immune to the Chernobyl radiation, right? And this was G’aih all the time, so she didn’t need those pills at all and was just faking being weak from the radiation. I guess she was acting the whole time, assuming Gravik was watching her?
Without a doubt, all 6 episodes were written by AI.
I really liked the “Fury”/Gravik conversation and felt it finally got to some of Fury’s actual feelings about the Skrulls and using them. But then all of that undercut by the reveal that it was G’aih pretending to be Fury.At first I thought Fury was going to stand up and show that he was just faking feeling ill from the radiation and reveal that he had taken some super-medicine that made him immune from it, just to get the jump on Gravik. So when the G’aih reveal happened at first I was excited because I hadn’t expected it, but then I realized that meant that all of “Fury”s speech about the Skrulls was just made up by G’aih – it wasn’t what the real Fury thought at all. What a waste.
Didn’t G’aih already have some of the Super-Skrull powers that Gravik has? Why give him the Harvest to make him (and her) even stronger? Why not kill him while pretending to be a sick Fury when he’s monologuing and his back is turned? Why give him the real Harvest? Why not kill him with her new powers while his back is turned, or give him a fake Harvest and then kill him while he’s walking towards the machine to test it? Why give him what he needs to make himself even stronger?I understand why the show needs this to happen – they want both of them to have *all* the powers and have a big CGI fight. But why does G’aih do this?