Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 may have temporarily steadied the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s rocky course, but it hardly fixed its larger issues: a dearth of compelling A-list characters and, just as vitally, a lack of real stakes. Post-Avengers: Endgame’s population-halving The Blip, most of what’s taken place in the MCU has felt underwhelmingly second-rate, akin to a meager dessert following a full-course meal.
With a scattered focus, no unifying destination or Big Bad (save for Kang, whose fate is now in question thanks to Jonathan Majors’ legal troubles), and the loss of its marquee headliners Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, the superhero behemoth seems unsure of where it wants to go, and how it wants to get there.
Enter Secret Invasion, a new six-part Disney+ series (premiering today) that’s based on a popular comic-book storyline of the same name, and which aims to provide the sort of far-reaching global-calamity drama that’s been missing from recent franchise chapters.
A thriller with a timely allegorical hook, it’s been designed to continue the serialized saga by melding old beloved standbys with new out-of-this-world heroes and villains, led by Samuel L. Jackson as an even more grizzled version of his eye patch-adorned secret agent Nick Fury. Also boasting contributions from Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Martin Freeman, Dermot Mulroney, and Don Cheadle, it appears, on the surface, to have all the pieces in place for a geopolitical espionage affair à la Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
On the basis of its initial installment, however, any hope for a return to blockbuster MCU form should be severely tempered.
Created by Kyle Bradstreet and directed by Ali Selim, Secret Invasion is, at outset, a thoroughly clunky operation that adheres to formula in the most basic and mundane manner possible. It’s depressingly fitting that the show’s credit sequence was created by AI, as the live-action material that follows is creakily mechanical. Marked by lethargic performances, flat combat and great gobs of exposition, it comes across as an exercise in genre regurgitation—and far from the spark that will recharge Marvel’s battery.
Secret Invasion sets up early shop in Moscow, where former CIA agent Everett K. Ross (Freeman) attends a clandestine meeting with a colleague named Prescod (Richard Dormer) who informs him of the vast conspiracy he’s uncovered: the Skrulls, the race of shape-shifting aliens who first arrived on Earth in the 1990s (as depicted in Captain Marvel) are responsible for orchestrating a series of six global terror attacks in an effort to bring about planetary chaos.
Posing as humans in order to destabilize civilization, the Skrulls are now entering into their own apparent endgame, using a group known as Americans Against Russia to start a U.S.-Russia war that’ll be “the one that sets the world on fire!” A twist soon follows, although calling it that is to overstate its unexpectedness; like its blunt dialogue, the show’s plotting is habitually banal and predictable.
Opening narration asks the pressing question, “What if the ones closest to us, the ones we’ve trusted our whole lives, were someone else entirely?” Statements of theme don’t come clunkier than that, and this one refers not only to the Skrulls’ deceptive nature and methods, but to the relationship between good-guy Skrull Tanos (Mendelsohn) and his daughter G’iah (Clarke), who’s working with head-honcho Skrull terrorist Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir).
Their plan is to acquire and detonate a collection of dirty bombs in a Moscow square as part of their effort to take back Earth—a mission motivated by their bitterness over not having a home planet of their own, which was promised to them by Fury. For now, they’re hiding out in a faux-Chernobyl because they’re immune to radiation, offering sanctuary to their kind and abducting humans so they can better impersonate them.
Into this mess arrives Fury, who’s been hanging out on space station S.A.B.E.R. and who now has a limp and wears a ratty beanie and matching overcoat. Jackson portrays Fury as the weariest badass known to man, and Secret Invasion repeatedly has people—be it Talos, his partner Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders), or antagonistic MI6 bigwig Sonya Falsworth (Colman)—tell him that The Blip changed him, that he’s past his prime, and that “you’re not ready for this.”
Even a random Russian bar patron goes out of his way to inform Fury that “You’ll never be the man you once were,” thereby turning the proceedings into a broken record. Faced with such critical blather, it’s no wonder Fury is so grouchy, and his mood doesn’t improve when his introductory showdown with Gravik goes awry, resulting in the kind of mass death and destruction that either breaks a former hero’s spirit or rekindles his inner fire.
Despite having seen only the maiden installment of Secret Invasion, there’s little question about what effect Fury’s premiere-episode failure will have on him, nor is there much doubt that Bradstreet’s series will keep telling as much as it shows. Unfortunately, even when it stops talking and starts having its characters punch and kick each other, the material merely goes through the motions; a skirmish intended to demonstrate Talos’ formidable might, for example, is so lackluster that it barely seems to have been worth the effort to stage.
Talos and G’iah’s strained relationship, meanwhile, feels like an enervating cliché—her bitterness at her dad (and Fury) may be motivating her to take up arms with Earth’s adversaries, yet the chances that she remains on the wrong side of this war seem, let’s say, slim to none.
At least Jackson finally receives an opportunity to assume the spotlight with Secret Invasion, this after years of being consigned to Avengers ringleader status. Though slouching and shuffling his way through this gung-ho adventure, Jackson’s playful cockiness and imposing sternness are as formidable as ever.
Moreover, his grumpiness amusingly resonates as a manifestation of both Fury’s age—and fear that he’s getting too old for this you-know-what—and of his exasperation at being stuck in a vehicle this stolid and safe. There may be villains among us in Secret Invasion, but the real enemy is the MCU’s lingering inability to do something fresh, inspired and exciting.
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