I could start this review with what I usually say: There’s good in everything, the actors are doing amazingly, the costume teams and behind-the-scenes teams are predominantly doing a great job. I would give a list of all the good things in the last two episodes of Marvel’s Secret Invasion (3 and 4)… but I would just be retreading all of what I’ve already said. The positives from both of my previous reviews are exactly the same in this review. There’s no other things that have been added that I can add to my ‘positive’ pile… and even if there is, they’re wiped away by my lack of enjoyment during watching.
I hate being a harsh person. I always try to see things from all sides. I always try to give credit for all the hard work people have done in something (and, again, I’m still giving credit to all the people I’ve listed in my positives of other episodes)… but I can’t pretend that I’m enjoying watching Secret Invasion. If other people are—if they’re fans of this genre, love the action scenes or are big fans of the actors etc.—that’s fine. I respect that you like it. But I also have to respect myself in knowing that I don’t.
I am a very ‘writing’ focused person when watching something. I have been ‘trained’, so to say, by years of learning to be a writer and studying texts, to pay attention to the writing of any product I’m watching/reading/listening to. I’m also an incredibly ‘character-focused’ writer. When writing my own pieces I get to know my characters first and then allow them to drive what I write. When I’m looking at somebody else’s work I’m paying closer attention to the characters than any other thing (although I also look at plot, dialogue and all other features of a text). I’m not focused on the genre it’s in or following the set-structure of that genre. I’m not interested in multiple explosions or fight scenes if they don’t apply to the characters or are necessary to their development (or the development of the plot).
Unfortunately, that’s all I see when I watch Secret Invasion. I see a writer who can write scripts—who clearly can write scripts as the actor’s wouldn’t be nearly as good as they are otherwise—but, also a writer who didn’t plan properly; who is trying so hard to fit into the genre that they’re writing in (spy dramas/action) that they’re losing audience interest and sense in the process. I see a pantser (a writer who doesn’t plan before writing) who isn’t confident enough to be a pantser. Sometimes being a pantser works. Sometimes, with something that’s less known by others and is more connected to you—or is something you’ve spent a lot of time with in your head (essentially partly planned but not written down)—you can get away with pantsing. But this writer, at least for this series, isn’t succeeding without a plan… and everything is coming across wrong. Sometimes even in a way that I can’t even describe why it feels wrong.
The introduction of Fury’s wife should be something exciting. We’re seeing another side to a character that’s been somewhat of an enigma throughout the films. We’re seeing how he is with more complex relationships, beyond the kind he had with Hill and Natasha. And yet, everytime he and his ‘wife’ have a conversation it’s like listening to two people who’ve just met—people who were forced to work on a school project together. I don’t feel chemistry between the two phenomenal actors. They speak very robotically to one another with forced dialogue that feels very like it was ‘written by a writer’. The last thing dialogue should do is make me think, ‘oh I can see the writer looking through his bookshelf now’. It should make me say, ‘Oh, so this is how this character is. This is why I should care about them. This is their relationship with the other people around them’. Usually words people speak come with emotion behind them, a reason to say them and that in turn gives you hints as to everything behind those words. Fury and his wife have either no emotion or forced emotion.
By forced emotion I mean words that are put into the scene purely for the purpose of continuing the plot. Fury shows up one night, no words are said between them (at least of what we’re shown), then the next morning they’re suddenly having an argument about Fury being gone for 5 years against his will, which leads to her admitting she’s working for Gravick? This drives forward the plot, creates drama between the couple, but it doesn’t further our knowledge of what their relationship was already like. And, quite frankly, it makes the wife look insane in the process. The wife, presumably a person we should be caring for and trusting (as she has a personal relationship with our lead protagonist, who is already a protagonist from existing material) yells that she’s angry at him for something he had no control over. Then tells him after he came back she wanted things to go back to normal (when she’d already admitted previous normal for them was Fury leaving). And then practically admits that she’s joined a Skrull army intent on destroying the human race. And why? It makes her appear volatile and dangerous. It makes her seem mentally ill and untrustworthy… and makes you question whether this relationship was ever a good one to begin with. We’ve not been given any clear indication, even still, that shows that it was a happy marriage. Even if you wanted to have her be irrationally angry at Fury for the blip (I’m sure some people, being people, would’ve reacted the same way even if it wasn’t there loved ones fault) but there are better, more realistic ways to write it so that she can still come off a sane, rational and lovable person/Skrull.
As it is, it’s one of my main problems with the series. The Skrull are being made to look like evil entities, instead of complex and confusing ‘people’ like all people really are. The entire show is splitting things into ‘black’ and ‘white’. You’re either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. People and Skrulls aren’t acting the way people actually do. In reality all humans and humanoid-type species (like the Skrulls are being portrayed) are complex. No one person is exactly the same, we don’t all fall for the same things, we don’t all have the same beliefs. Yes, people who think like Gravick do exist (I’ll come onto Gravick a bit more soon)—people who think in black and white. But the likelihood of so many Skrulls following him without question? It wouldn’t be nothing but it would not be to the extent that it’s shown. Even when somebody is questioning him (like his Irish Action Man friend) his mind is changed almost instantly with only a few words from Gravick. Is the power he gained mind control? Because there’s no way he’s persuading everyone as easily as he is, with no effort on his part. As an example, paraphrasing of course as I don’t know the exact lines that were said, this was the conversation that was had between Irish-AM and Gravick at the plane in Episode 4:
I-AM: Something’s wrong with this plan, Gravick. I mean, Gh’iah’s not here.
GRAV: Gh’iah was the mole.
I-AM: (nonchalantly) Okay.
Irish-AM has (fairly reasonable) doubt. Gravick says one line that really means nothing much in the context. Irish-Am is instantly okay with it. And why, would you say, would they bother putting in the one line about doubt if they were going to go nowhere with it after a few words? Because, and it’s fairly clear, they’re telephoning that Irish-AM is going to turn on Gravick at some point. But when he does, it’s not going to be ‘expected’ because he’s usually so easily quelled by Gravick saying a few words (sarcasm). Again, the relationship between Gravick and Irish-AM isn’t developed. Irish-AM is essentially a robot following Gravick around, reading lines he’s been given and then switching back to his original programming.
The issue with this subservient attitude all the Skrulls have to Gravick, and the weird ‘evil switch’ they all seem to have, is all of a sudden you start to think back on previous projects with Skrull and it makes you think—huh, maybe the Kree weren’t so bad. Why am I thinking that? The Kree were the secret bad guys in Captain Marvel, whereas the Skrull where the good guys we just thought were the bad guys—but maybe not? Because apparently the Skrulls will jump to murdering an entire planet of innocent people who’ve done nothing to them and don’t know of their existence, over—you know– talking about their problems with Captain Marvel, Fury or anybody else who may understand… Or even just leaving to find another planet themselves (again—we know of some free to move to, as does Captain Marvel, as do the Guardians, and at least one Skrull around the galaxy must’ve found a place they wanted to stay in that wasn’t Earth—we even have plenty of planets freely available right next to Earth).
The Skrulls are showing themselves as irrational, dangerous and easily led—not something you want to root for… and the thing is, in this type of concept, you want to be able to root for them. You want to be able to wish the best for the Skrulls, despite how crappy ‘some’ Skrulls happen to be. In no war, real or imagined, has it been entirely one-sided. For every person who wants the war, there’s one that detests it and even more who don’t understand or know what’s going on. The Skrulls however are apparently all on board at attacking people who’ve not done anything to them beyond not knowing of their existence (including Fury’s wife who has assumed the identity of one and looks after the parents’ of that person—again, that entire conversation on the subject she showed no empathy for that woman and the ‘I want to be you for love’ thing seemed… creepy and stalkerish almost).
It wouldn’t matter if the Skrulls didn’t all want to destroy humanity anyway as Gravick is a terrible planner. Instead of doing the obvious and having all of his Skrulls placed in separate nuclear facilities and setting them off at the same time, causing the almost instant decimation of humanity—he wants to do it the long way that involves many Skrull fatalities. No… Instead, lets just start a war between the two biggest countries on the planet. Let’s blow up one square in what looks like a terrorist attack and have an ‘American’ be blamed for it because he/they just happened to be there? Or lets get a Skrull to scream ‘I’m an American’ over and over to make it clear just who you want them to blame.
And then lets make sure that a Skrull disguised as a random Colonel gets sent to a meeting with random nations around ‘Europe-but-not-really’ and piss them off in a way that’s almost uncharacteristic of said Colonel… and pray that he doesn’t get reported and fired immediately for his attitude or that the President himself doesn’t decide to come in the first place—or any of his other officials that would actually deal with such a high-pressure situation.
And then, when the President of America finally shows up for a meeting with Russia (in the UK of all places, for some reason) we’ll just blow him up and shoot at it, screaming in Russian so they really get the idea. Except, no, we’re also going to let all of our Skrulls get shot. We’re going to leave their bodies on the floor even though, when their bodies are examined by the other soldiers, it’s quite clear that they’re Skrulls. And, instead of shooting the President during the incident distracting his men disguised as an American guard—lets just grab Talos and stab him just to annoy Fury. Because, you know, we can’t forget who this story is really about. Gravick is a terrible leader, a terrible planner, is terrible at being subtle or staying under cover and isn’t charismatic enough to hold the attention and the trust of all of the other Skrulls who only came to Earth to find peace. This is not how you write a villain, nor how you write a plot. It screams ‘not thought through’.
The above only brushes the surface of all the things that don’t make sense in Gravick’s plan as, there’s no ensuring, even if a war between Russia and America were to start that they would behave the way he wants them to. For somebody who’s supposedly well-versed in human history (or claims to be) Gravick sure has missed how unpredictable and predictable human in-fighting can be. He comes at it, as the writing does, with a cynical viewpoint rather than an intelligent viewpoint. Of course, it’s not unrealistic he would think this way, but it is unrealistic that so many Skrulls would follow him unquestioningly (especially high-ranking officials).
Now, this next point is a confusing one for me—in Episode 4, I like the scene where Gh’iah wakes up and they show clips of how she used Gravick’s machine to make herself invincible. I like the way it was framed, how it was shot and how it directly corresponded to and reacted to the cliffhanger from the previous episode. It’s scenes like this one that show the creators do know what they’re doing. However, my confusion is that as much as I think this scene was well done, it’s tied to one of my least favourite (and I think stupidest) plot-points that have been brought up in this show… and that is, the concept of ‘Super Skrulls’.
We learn early on that the Skrull army are working on a machine that is going to help them beat the humans. I assumed that it was something to do with setting off all the nuclear weapons/stations as they specifically said that was Gravick’s main goal. But no. Instead the machine is designed to give the Skrulls an advantage over… humanity? No, that can’t be right. They already have many advantages over humanity—they can survive a nuclear winter, they can disguise themselves as any one of us, they can read our minds, they have super-strength. There’s nothing they need extra. They’ve got us beat. They have superpowers to rival all of the Avengers. So, is it to get an advantage over the Kree who were the ones who forced them to flee in the first place and they have some trauma over? Well, no, realistically based on what we’ve seen of the Kree, the only advantage the Kree had over the Skrulls is that the Skrulls didn’t want to fight and the Kree had pew-pew guns.
And if they can survive a Nuclear winter, then they don’t need to be invulnerable to anything else. The humans will be gone. They’ll have free-rein. The Kree are apparently not bothered about the Skrulls who are currently on Earth anymore or they would already be there. So, how does becoming a Super Skrull advance anything exactly? All it does is give Gravick another ability he can use against the protagonists and limits their ability to finish the/his story quickly (and gives a Get Out Of Jail Free Card for any character they don’t want to die). Honestly, maybe if this plot-point hadn’t seemed pointless, nonsensical and if it hadn’t come out of nowhere maybe I could get behind it—if it was written better. If we saw some trauma for the Skrulls to do with the Kree attacks, if we got to live that experience with them or see the limitations of their established powers (besides guns), maybe I could accept it begrudgingly. But, not only is it all the things above but it’s also a direct repeat of plots that Marvel has already used in different films and series (including all ‘Captain America’ based films and ‘Falcon and the Winter Soldier’). As a plot the ‘Super Skrull’ idea is just unnecessary and adds to an already convoluted story.
Okay, okay, I know—I need to stop rattling on… and I will stop soon, I promise. Just let me do a quick round-up of anything I’ve got left running around my brain:
- The magic phone belonging to Fury’s wife that goes from folded to flat as she puts it to her ear. Yes, I know that it’s just a blooper, but it made me laugh far longer than it should do.
- The password for a high-ranking (I think) British Naval Officer was… his son’s name. Now, I don’t know about you, but even my Google account wouldn’t let me have that insecure of a password. I got denied on my University Platform’s computer for putting a number that even looked close to my birthday (only the day too).
- And speaking of the most stupid Naval Officer ever, was that a real human boy or was that the Skrull’s child? Based on how the Skrull acted when the son was threatened I would say it was his real son? But then, there’s a son in the memory of the real Officer as well… so where is the real son in that case? Is he down in the basement too? Why didn’t Skrull-guy change the password of the previous Officer? I’m very confused about this plot-point, as you can tell.
- How did the Skrulls keep getting people from other countries to this random ex-Nuclear facility near a Russian City? Are they brought on a commercial flight? Are they brought on a private jet? Where’d they get the private jet before they started working with the Skrull council? Who’s paying for all this stuff? How do they get gas? Who learned to fly a plane? Are the people already unconscious when they’re put on the plane or are they forced on conscious? How do the people that love them or people they work with not notice they’re missing for a set period when they’re being taken to Russia and changed into a Skrull? Are Skrulls pretending to be them before the Skrull that actually takes over them even get there? How many Skrulls actually are out there working for this cause… and how are they so well planned when Gravick is so incompetent at his job?
- Did the UK Prime Minister and all the members of the Skrull Council already have the people they took over in their basements before they moved them to Gravick’s? Did the Skrull PM take over the real PM when she was PM or did she take over her earlier and then rise to PM herself? (ditto for all the other members). How was Talos ever okay with this, if that’s the case? He must’ve known as they’re public figures both in the Skrull world and in the human world (which… you know, how are they moving around freely without people taking notice of where they’re going or who they’re going with?).
- Skrull Rhodey is a terrible actor (not real Rhodey, Don Cheadle is very good at acting). He acts nothing like the real Rhodey, is not convincing at all and would’ve been fired multiple times over in reality. He certainly wouldn’t have any sway with the President (which, you know, I still don’t understand why he does anyway). The fact that his reveal was meant to be a ‘ha, gotcha’ moment was… just bad. If you want it to be a surprise at least make it seem like it’s actually Rhodey and not an evil twin.
- Can we stop mentioning the blip as if it only affected Fury? Skrulls must’ve been blipped too. Their lives must’ve been affected by the Blip just as much as the previous Kree war.
- Not only are all the secret agents/spies in this series, terrible at being spies… but the double agents are terrible double agents. If you’re a double agent don’t make phone calls in cars that may have been bugged by the person you’re going against… or make yourself look so suspicious (especially if your Dad is on the opposite side). Also, although I can accept Gh’iah worked out what the machine did, how did she know it actually worked? We never saw any conversation with her and Gravick (or anyone else) about any of this.
- This is more a point from my Mum, though I do agree with it—but how does time work in this show? They’ve flown back and forth from multiple countries now, which takes up a lot of time. But after an incident like the terrorist attack in Russia people and governments would be moving a lot faster than that. Every character, I think, at this point has moved between at least two countries once. And what are they doing during the Border checks etc.? Do the Skrulls even have passports and how do they explain where they’ve been?—especially as they’d just flown back from an area in Russia that just had a terrorist attack. And, after UK Prime Minister etc. start helping them, I assume they’re using her/their private jet for travel? But… the media notices when those things go out. Somebody would talk about it (unless everything’s manned by Skrulls? But there’s only so many times I can say… maybe they’re a Skrull… before my head explodes. Do you know what would be a fun twist? If, at the end, we went with the sheer convolutedness of it all and found out every person on Earth was actually a Skrull and we were in a different place in the multiverse—so it’d all been pointless all along).
The base idea of Secret Invasion is sound: Survivors of a war come to Earth for refuge. They don’t feel like they can themselves and, with their shapeshifting powers, constantly disguise themselves as other humans. They feel sad they have to do this and are still traumatised from the war. A rogue member feels resentment at being forced to hide and strikes back (at everybody, including Skrulls, mind you) with a cult-like clique behind him. He’s taken down… or not, if you want to get dark. The end.
This is all an idea that, at it’s very base, could be made into a very interesting and tense bit of drama… with a lot of planning. But the way it is now, with all that’s been put on top of it and added to it and constantly switched around—I don’t know, it feels like it lost itself before it even started. And that’s a shame as it could’ve been great.
Thank you for reading and if you’re enjoying the show, you do you. I hope you continue to enjoy it and it brings you happiness every week when it comes on. But I also have to admit, it doesn’t do that for me. I’ll be watching until the end because I want to try and find some more positives and continue to write these reviews… but, well, now I just try to not to take it too seriously. It makes great watching when you just allow yourself to laugh.
P.S. Top tier comedy moment for me was the ‘British’ solider in Episode 4 yelling something to the affect of ‘Blimey, look, he’s an alien’ in the most Dick Van-Dyke voice possible. I genuinely don’t even know if he actually said ‘blimey’ or if my brain added it because of the voice but… top tier, best laugh-out-loud moment.
Also, I know I’m missing things from this review as I definitely spotted a lot more issues—but honestly, I’m writing this late at night and my head is spinning a little bit. If I need to explain any more points more, I will—and if there’s anything on here about how to write or how to fix certain writing mistakes made in the program, write them in the comments below and I’ll see if I can at some point write a blog post explaining what I mean. Thank you again and I hope you’re having a great day.
The Literary Onion 