Why isn't Secret Invasion as good as it should be? Spoilers
World class actors, a writer from Mr Robot being a showrunner, unlimited budget for stunts and action scenes
But I'm not enjoying it, it started out promising, abit of a slow burn but isn't going anywhere or as epic as it should be.
The main villain Gravis is a bit of a joke, he isn't scary, menacing or emphathetic. There isn't time to build chemistry between Talos and Gaiah. Fury doesn't seem to know what he's doing, just reacting to events, just same vague idea of stop the Skrulls.
There isn't any suspense to who is or isn't a Skrull, no paranoia which was basically the entirety of Mr Robot.
The Skrulls also haven't really succeeded in much, the first bombing resulted in a boring hearing where the Skrulls grilled another Skrull.
They kinda threw away a surprise Skrull reveal very early on. Where Martin Freeman, someone who never interacted with Fury is a Skrull and gets killed off and doesn't affect the plot. But Maria Hill who's been with Fury since the first movie isn't a Skrull but is killed off for some reason. It would have been super cliche, but also built on the sense of paranoia that Fury didn't know how long Hill had been a Skrull over the years. Now Fury's only ally is already a Skrull. There's no suspense at all, no Among Us, who's the imposter
So, there are a few classes of Marvel arcs in their comic books, secret invasion is the kind that doesn't really translate to other media well.
You need to care about the "people", and fury has been gone too long to care about, honestly this whole phase has been bad for that, we're still in shock from Endgame and Tony.
Fury is morally gray at the best of times, now we have 0 connection to him, we like talos, but this is a weird story and we only met him a few years ago. We don't know what happened to the real rhodey, we didn't see hill for a long time before she died, honestly killing Martin freeman early on was alienating.
We don't know or care about almost any of these people. Gravik is bad, but who here isn't? Everyone is old and painfully tired.
This is basically the Marvel version of the Indiana Jones sequels, it makes us sad inside that our heroes look like they could be stopped by stairs without solid handrails.
In comics there's much more room to make connections and show side stories that drag you in, you have other characters elsewhere, here it's just a few people who look like the real threat is their social security checks being late.
I've been pretty whelmed by it. Feels like they didn't really use the concept to its full potential. So far everything has felt like you could see it coming a mile away and none of the stakes feel real. Maybe they're playing the long con and I'll feel silly for calling it obvious if they pull some huge twist at the end, but I've been so bored with it up to this point that I don't even know if I'll watch to the end. ¯
\(ツ)/¯
It's lack of vision, and corporate control. These amazing writers and directors who signed in for this project did it for the bucks. They delivered a cookie cutter product, as the boss asked them to. They didn't approach it with passion, with innovation, with blood-pumping mystery and intrigue. It's just a well-paying job to them, and a resume line. So, it doesn't come out good.
At this point, I dislike ALL marvel TV shows on D+. Loki was the best for me, but they kind of destroyed his character, so that fell flat too.
From the Star Wars side, the first 2 seasons of Mandalorian were good, and also Andor. Neither Boba Fett nor Kenobi were good (they felt as flat as Marvel shows feel). Andor is probably the most well done show in the whole of D+. And the reason for it is simple: Tony Gilroy was left alone to realize his vision, a vision he always wanted to do, but wasn't given the opportunity before. In fact, Disney was completely hands-off. Neither Kennedy nor Disney interfered, because they believed that the show will be kind of underground (and indeed, they didn't market it much). So they kind of ignored it. The ONLY thing they asked Gilroy to change was the F-word in the last episode.
But in the Marvel side, everything goes through Kevin Feige, and everything get homogenized so it appeals to everyone. Hence that final feeling of blah.
For Marvel to survive, they need to give voice to talents to provide us with a unique vision, like we've seen with Andor, or Joker (while at the same time, keeping the timeline intact, of course).
I think they gave the project to the wrong filmmaker though. She is more of an indie filmmaker, not a blockbuster one. You know who would do a good blockbuster, even if they only have 1 feature film on their belt, and only a handful of short films? The two brothers who did this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(2019_film) They made their film for only $7k, and they made extreme efforts to feel like an Amblin-era Spielberg blockbuster. For $7k. I can't even grasp what they can do with $100 mil!
Loved Mr Robot, but I think most of the genius of that show came from Sam Esmail. One of the biggest drivers for that show was an air of mystery and intrigue which Secret Invasion doesn’t have at all. Instead of showing skrulls impersonating people from the first episode, they should’ve literally not shown a single skrull until episode 5 to make you question who is and isn’t a skrull. On top of that, having both the skrull and non-skrull versions of the characters out and about would be great for driving speculation, intrigue, buzz, etc. Trying to figure out why there’s inconsistency in how characters act and interact with each other could’ve made it a much more engaging show but Marvel really dumbed it down.