Secret Invasion

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

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

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

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

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

I don't understand the low ratings. But then again maybe I do. Some Marvel fans have gotten used to a certain kind of formula, but to be honest I am ready for some maturing and alternative perspectives on a Marvel UNIVERSE. This is a timely work, where people are at war, each with their own reason. But mostly to fight for a placed called home. No one group's hands are clean. This series, more than any in the MCU, felt the most human...where we see a man broken by fighting and trying his best to take responsibility for the collateral damage done. And as a side note, Ben Mendelsohn's acting is a revelation, as an alien who seems to have the best of humanity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bad:

• AI intro

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

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

• A colossal waste of Emilia Clarke

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

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

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

• Terrible pacing as always

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

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

• No character development

• There is no tension or secrecy in the story

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

• The villain ultimately becomes a copy of Flag-Smashers

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

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

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

• Very little action or espionage compared to constant nonsense dialogue

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

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

• Not many twists and turns

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

• Terribly written character motivations and presented in a worse way

• Very dull and boring storytelling

Now what I liked about it

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

• The music is decent

And yeah, that's it!

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

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

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

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

I need to start off by saying I'm a huge fan of superhero movies and shows so my review for Secret Invasion may be a little biased, especially to people like me that love these shows. I even enjoy the superhero movies/shows that aren't as liked or as highly rated as the others. Having said that, I think Secret Invasion should be enjoyable to most. It's much more than just another superhero show, it's also a solid spy thriller. While there is still plenty of fun to have it's also a lot more serious than other Marvel projects and it moves the overall MCU story forward in a lot of ways. It also has plenty of Easter eggs throughout each episode. We learn more about Nick Fury in this series than all of the other movies and shows combined. Obviously, if you're a fan of the MCU this this is a must watch. It's only six episodes so you can binge the entire season over a weekend.