Secret Invasion

★★1/2

Mild Spoilers

Directed by Ali Selim
Written by Kyle Bradstreet, Beto Dantas, Jonathan Hirschbein, Matt McRee, Haleema Mirza, Jennifer Muro, Jovan Robinson, Brian Tucker, Michael Bhim, Brant Englestein, and Roxanne Paredes

S.H.I.E.L.D. (or is it S.W.O.R.D. now?) head honcho Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) returns from space to handle a sleeper Skrull agent named Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) who has gone rogue and started his own terrorist organisation. He reteams with former associate Agent Hill (Colbie Smulders) and Skrull ally Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) to stop Gravik, with some help from Talos’ daughter G’iah (Emilia Clarke) who has allied herself with Gravik’s cause. If you didn’t know, Skrulls are a shape-shifting alien race who can physically impersonate anyone, not unlike Mystique from the X-Men films.

Secret Invasion is a spy thriller (more Bourne than Bond) that looks like one, even feels like one, but isn’t in any way as clever as it wants you to think it is. There is a huge potential here to create a very gripping espionage tale where literally anyone could be a Skrull in disguise, but because of budgetary reasons and one hand-waiving excuse, a Skrull needs to remain in one identity for long durations, which is pretty baffling since some Skrull characters here are literally walking about with their most identifiable facade for any covert operatives to easily spot and pick them up or take them out. With that kind of ability, I’d be changing into multiple identities at all times and be virtually impossible to find. I know it makes Skrulls a little overpowered, but I’m sure there are clever solutions that can be concocted to level the playing field, e.g. a Skrull detector of some sort, or just Fury using his wits to sniff out imposters. Instead, what we have here is a weak spy series with a lot of logical problems that they didn’t even bother to hide with great production values, which it also didn’t have. The script was also pretty dire - some of the most cringey dialogues I’ve ever listened to. The series also felt like it had forgotten to edit its footages, with some weird reactions and movements from actors that should have been trimmed away. Like there’s one moment where the President of the United States (Dermot Mulroney) made an odd, out-of-place grunt, or when Fury was pointing his gun at someone and his other arm just briefly flailed about for no reason at all. I suspected that they were forced to artificially extend the series to six episodes and didn’t have enough coverage for it. There is also another big issue that I had with the series that I will rant about in the spoiler section below.

The only saving grace is the cast. Jackson is the reason to watch this, and Olivia Coleman stole every scene she was in as a British clandestine operative Sonya Falsworth. Ben-Adir also happens to be in the Barbie movie that is currently in theatres, and it’s interesting that we get to see an actor doing two very different roles in the same span of time. I enjoyed Mendelsohn, Clarke and Smulders, but their roles are criminally limited.

I would only recommend this for die-hard MCU followers. This one is easily the weakest of the Marvel streaming entries to date.

I HAVE ONE SPOILER-Y GRIPE

Here’s my gripe: Fridge-ing Maria Hill and also Talos. But it’s not really just the idea of it, but the execution, no pun intended. These are pretty important figures in Fury’s world for decades and you’d expect a lot more care in the way their deaths had been handled, and provide a more satisfying dramatic impetus for Fury to stem out Gravik and his operations. But there’s just no impact being felt from their deaths, with a pretty nonchalant Fury who seemed strangely ambivalent towards the abrupt departures of his most trusted allies. Just a few shots of Fury getting, er, furious or upset would have been enough, but all we got were a bit of frowning and grimacing. It’s either an odd creative choice, or (I really hate to say this but) just plain ineptitude.