Secret Invasion is an action-packed thriller, adventurous, and superhero fiction created by Kyle Bradstreet where Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, and Talos, played by Ben Mendelsohn, try to stop the Skrulls who have infiltrated the highest spheres of the Marvel Universe.
After “She-Hulk” ended its season 1 run on Disney Plus last October, Marvel is bringing us another spy thriller with a marvelous cinematography by Remi Adefarasin and Sylvaine Duufaux, and this time; it is quite a star studded, too, with Emilia Clarke playing G’iah, Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, Kingsley Ben Adir as Gravik, Olivia Colman as Sonya Falsworth and Martin Freeman as Everett K. Ross.
In episode 1, Nick Fury learns of a secret invasion of Earth by a faction of shapeshifting Skrulls. The world of Secret Invasion is decidedly sketchy. With thousands of shapeshifting Skrulls on Earth, you can’t trust what you think you’re seeing. One second, you’re looking at Nick Fury or an esteemed world leader; the next, you see their face morph entirely into something (or someone) else.
Secret Invasion is a very loose adaptation of the famous comic book crossover storyline written by Brian Michael Bendis and released in 2008. While Marvel Studios might be saving some surprises for later in the season, this iteration of Secret Invasion is keeping the superheroes aside and instead focusing on the ground-level organizations that are trying to hold the world together after the Blip. That includes Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, who has been spending too much time away from Earth.
What is buzzing on social media is that the concept of shapeshifting is also seen in the series’s very different approach to its opening credits, which look like a watercolor rendering of the key players and themes of Secret Invasion. As we see a jittery and ominous sequence of the Skrull green taking over more and more of the world, it looks a lot like if an AI was prompted with the concept of “Skrull cubism” — which isn’t that far off of what it is. As director and executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon, the intro sequence was designed by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, something he thinks plays with the same themes of the show.
Watching the first episode of Secret Invasion, we felt explorative, inevitable, exciting, and different, and we know that the viewers would feel the same way too. So grab your favorite snacks and dive into the world of the Marvel Universe.
