Hello, I’m back again after another long blogging hiatus. I’ve been very busy and still am but I’m going to try to get out short reviews of this series. I may or may not wind up finishing them all, however, so don’t get too attached. On to the review, which features SOME SPOILERS although nothing too major.
Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has always had trust issues, as he himself admitted in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. While this has sometimes been a character flaw that leads him to make poor decisions, his suspicious nature is justified in Secret Invasion, his new mini-series on Disney +. In it he and his allies battle a hostile infiltration of Earth by the shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls, creating a situation in which no one can be trusted that forces the fan-favorite spy master to confront his own limitations and emotional issues.
The series’ premiere episode “Resurrection” starts with a bang, when a Skrull impersonating a recurring MCU character (I won’t spoil who) is discovered. Realizing that this signals a larger Skrull conspiracy, Nick’s right-hand woman Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and his Skrull friend Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) signal him to return to Earth from SABER, the space station where he’s spent the last few years. They explain that a radical named Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) is gaining influence among the Skrulls and may be planning a massive terrorist strike meant to create chaos on Earth so the Skrull resistance can come closer to taking over the planet as the new home Nick and Captain Marvel promised them decades ago but so far have not delivered. The trio’s efforts to stop the attack reunite Talos with his estranged daughter G’iah (Emilia Clarke), a conflicted member of the resistance, and cause Maria to become concerned that Nick is no longer the super-spy he used to be.
The episode’s opening does a strong job of establishing this as a slightly more grounded, edgy kind of Marvel series. It loses a few points with the one-two punch of a confusingly edited chase scene and a poorly conceived opening title sequence that was designed by AI (this has already caused a lot of backlash against the series online) but it quickly recovers thanks to titillating but easy to follow plotting and exceptional performances from one of Marvel’s most stacked casts. Samuel L. Jackson has always been a highlight of the Marvel projects he appears in and it’s a delight to finally see him given a lead role. The writing does a good job of giving Jackson/Fury chances to be the supreme badasses they are (there’s an interrogation scene that recalls Jackson’s work in Pulp Fiction in the best way) while also making the character more vulnerable and human than he’s been portrayed as in the past. The episode certainly convinces the viewer that Maria’s doubts about her mentor’s current capabilities may have some merit. Fury shows his age more than ever, walking with a limp, and failing to spot when British intelligence agents are tailing him (he claims that he did this to get a meeting with an MI6 chief, unconvincingly). He’s also haunted by memories of Thanos’ Snap. Between all this, a hinted-at personal history with Gravik, and a devastating final plot twist the premiere certainly sets up enough interesting material for Jackson to sink his teeth into and I look forward to seeing his later performances.
But if there’s a stand-out performer among the uniformly strong cast in this first episode it’s Mendelsohn. Although the marketing has focused more on Nick, Secret Invasion was initially announced as a Fury/Talos team-up series, building on their strong dynamic from Captain Marvel, and Talos is certainly treated as at least an equal protagonist here, arguably receiving a bit more in the way of character development right off the bat. The character is turned into a capable action hero, with both an amusing sense of humor and a slickly choreographed fight scene, but he is also fleshed out as a not quite human being, as he is forced to deal with a family tragedy on top of trying to prevent the escalation of hostilities between humans and Skrulls. Mendelsohn brings a great mix of weariness and resilience to the role and effectively captures the turmoil the character feels in his confrontations with G’iah.
Like Jackson, Smulders gets to bring a bit more nuance to her character than in past MCU appearances, although she’s still limited to a supporting role. The bond between Fury and Hill is shown as more of a personal friendship than the working partnership it’s usually portrayed as and the actors share a great warm chemistry, the result of working together for more than a decade. Among the new cast members Clarke gets the most to do here and handles all of her material well. Whether or not G’iah will wind up a true villain is set up as one of the main questions of the series and Clarke makes her both likable enough to sell a potential redemption story and hardened enough that she’d make a credible threat. Ben-Adir makes Gravik a quietly intense presence that is genuinely intimidating and I’m intrigued to learn more about his motivations and his connection to Fury. Olivia Colman plays the aforementioned MI6 chief, Sonya Falsworth, with an entertaining mixture of false peppy sweetness and direct, assertive power but of the new characters she’s the least intriguing, though that’s partially because we haven’t seen that much of her yet. Still, her whole schtick feels like a somewhat standard, though less extreme version of the Dolores Umbridge archetype so I hope the rest of the series can do more to make her stand out.
That aforementioned final twist, which I’ll delve into in more depth in next episode’s review encapsulates the general feeling conveyed by the premiere. This is a darker, less predictable flavor of Marvel and this strong start both conveys that anything can happen over the next five weeks while also giving the viewer a nice sense of confidence that whatever does happen will be executed well. I think this is going to be a very fun ride.
Notes:
- He’s only in one, very brief scene here but Don Cheadle also returns as James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine, who is now working for the MCU’s new U.S. president. As a big fan of the Iron Man trilogy, I look forward to seeing more of him, especially to see how a full-on superhero can be integrated into this spy story.
- Who’s Secretly A Skrull?: I’ll obviously have more guesses for this feature in the coming weeks but an early theory I’m seeing a lot online is that Nick Fury himself is a Skrull. I personally hope that isn’t the case but after this episode I could definitely see him having a Skrull family (Gravik being either a biological or surrogate son of Nick’s certainly seems like a possibility, although a somewhat obvious one.)
Greg Goes to the Movies 