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selenakSo this year, instead of giving just one month to the Mouse, I decided to give more, because there were several ongoing shows I wanted to watch (up to and including Ashoka next month). This means I also got to see Secret Invasion, which just finished and works as a text book of how not to do a tv miniseries along with how to get the wrong creative lessons from the success of Winter Soldier and Andor, respectively.
Here's the irony: I didn't expect much of anything from the Hawkeye miniseries back when it got dropped pre Christmas and only watched it because Peter Jackson's Beatles three parter was released at the same time and that was why I went to the Mouse back then. But as it turns out, Hawkeye was great, and along with Ms Marvel probably my favourite of the Disney Marvel shows even several years later. Whereas I'm practically the target audience for what Secret Invasion (I assume) aimed to be - a spy story/underbelly take on the MCU. Plus going in to the respective shows, I was certainly more invested in Nick Fury than I was in Clint Barton.
Now, rather than going on a rant of how Secret Invasion is bad, I'd rather go for a bit of why it failed (and why Hawkeye did succeed) (for me, as always this is subjective). Because it's not that there are new characters with a narrative focus (both shows have those) and new relationships in addition to the movie established ones. Or the inherent clichés or sillness of the premise (part of the parcel).
1) To start with the blindingly obvious, strong emotional relationships helps your audience to invest. Hawkeye built up the central one between Clint and Kate; it also dealt with the fallout of Clint's and Yelena's grief for Natasha - thereby also addressing a fannish complaint about Endgame, that Natasha's sacrifice does not get much narrative space compared to Tony's - , and provided the antagonists (Maya/Echo and Kazi, Maya and Kingpin, and Eleanor vis a vis Kate, of course) with intense emotional texture as well. And then there's the new frenemies relationship between Kate and Yelena, which is just delightful.
Meanwhile, Secret Invasion killed off Maria Hill in the pilot and Talos just before the penultimate episode, i.e. the two people who have an established relationship with Nick Fury the audience cares about, but did not provide much if any narrative room for any grief from Fury. (Talos got grief from his daughter and Vara, but that's different.) There is no new central relationship build up, as there was with Clint and Kate in Hawkeye. There are several relationships teased at or focused on in several episodes - Fury and Sonya (Olivia Colman's character), Fury and Priscilla/Vara, Talos and G'ia, and on an antagonistic level Fury and Gravik as well as G'ia and Gravik - but the only one which gets something of an in depth treatment and an emotional resolution that makes it different from how it's introduced is the one one betwen Fury and Vara in the later half of the season. (She's hardly in the first half.) The lack of an consistent emotional thread (or several) through the entire season means the plot has to do the work of keeping the audience attention, and the plot isn't up to it, alas.
2) I can just see the bunch of executives who go "well, everyone loved that Winter Soldier was made in the tradition of paranoid political 1970s thrillers, and over at Star Wars, Andor was such a success, so let's make a grim political spy thriller, everyone will love it as well!" Except that the Disney Marvel shows have their strengths, but believable politics aren't among them. See also Falcon and Winter Soldier, the Flag Smashers, and yeah, no. Gravik was clearly meant to be a villain the Killmonger vein (ditto for Callie in the earlier series), i.e. someone who acts out of understandable motives and makes good points but whose methods are still beyond the pale, but the "oh yeah, and here's how I don't care about killing lots and lots of my own people in addition to other people" felt perfunctionary and not three dimensional, plus the miniseries couldn't decide whether Gravik's main antagonistic relationship should be with Fury or with G'iah. Both would have had narrative potential, but a different one. But the finale tried to have its cake and eat it in this regard, and thus there was no emotional depth to either. (With the added insult to injury that G'iah, who consistly made the good point to her father that there needs to be an alternate plan for the Skrulls than his idea that being good agents for Fury will somehow result in universal acceptance, after her defeat of Gravik ends up replicating that job with Sonya in the Fury position, and no, Sonya lamphading it in dialogue doesn't help.)
(Sidenote: I can think of one great example of how you can do a "villain has good motives and good point, is still villain as evidenced via methods" where it feels absolutely organic to the characters instead of a "here's why you shouldn't root for this person", and that's part of the big climax of the very first X-Men movie. Reminder: Magneto is about to use the MacGuffin Machine to turn a great many "normals" into mutants, thus hoping to end mutant discrimination (he thinks). To do this, he uses Rogue to power the device, which he knows will kill her. He gives her and the captured X-Men the speech of how this is necessary for mutantkind and the greater good. He undoubtedly believes every word, and also, Ian McKellen. And then Logan says two simple sentences: "You're so full of shit. If you really believed that, it would be you in that thing." Now, I love Magneto much more than Wolverine, but wow, was he ever right, and did these two simple sentences destroy all the previous rethoric.)
Back to my wrong lessons learned theory: part of the reasons why Winter Soldier the movie managed to replicate the 70s spy thriller kind of feeling so successfully isn't just the "Hydra was part of SHIELD this whole time" reveal. It's that we've seen the decidely not Hydra Nick Fury endorsing the movie's bad MacGuffins, the super surveillance-plus-murder spy drones carriers early on, and having a conversation with Steve going directly to the good old "liberty vs safety" dilemma. And because Steve at the end demands not just the end of the Hydra agents within SHIELD but of SHIELD for this very reason. In an era where constant surveillance was never so easy or so much a thing (not "just" by governments but by commercial cooperations) and where democratically elect4ed governments, not dictatorships, had been shown to regard assassinations and imprisonment without trial and torture etc. all as viable methods, the fears this movie tapped into and addressed were real and there.
Now, Secret Invasions could have tapped into something real, too. The brief montage near the end where because Ritson declared all aliens as free targets and everyone thinks everyone else is a Skrull, all the paranoia and pent up hostility of the populace and the unwillingness to hear each other out results in horrible violence - that would have been a great way to use the Skrull/Secret Invasion concept to address a current day state of affairs. But instead, most of the show went back to a standard decades old Bond movies plot (Spectre tried to frame the Russians a lot in the Connery and even the Moore era), and really, Nick Fury is not, nor should he be, James Bond). Without a Bond budget, too, because all those scenes with President Ritson in a hospital with apparantly only one or two bodyguards plus Rhodey were hysterical. You couldn't even pay for a few more extras posing as security, Disney? For someone supposed to be the POTUS?
Also: if you want to do a spy show, you need to deliver the tricks of the trade. Heists, intelligence gained via trickery or clever missions, near discoveries, finding out who's an ally and who's a backstabber, etc. Secret Invasions tried this with the Rhodey-a-Skrull reveal mid season, but look, given Don Cheadle was the only Avenger on the show, that wasn't much of a surprise. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy worked so well as it did among many other reasons because the identity of the mole isn't glaringly obvious from the get go. And the audience pretty much knew who was a Skrull and who wasn't in all other cases, who was a good guy or a villain. Shades of grey are the definition of a Le Carré like spy story which evidently this show wanted to be and just wasn't. I mean, yes, Fury using the Skrulls as his personal spies while knowing he couldn't deliver a home world was called out - but nothing changed, with as mentioned G'iah being essentially in the same position as her father was in at the end of the movie, and with Fury leaving the planet again. (The one big change for Fury and Vara was their relationship status, and them leaving together, but there's no sign Fury (when not played by G'iah) regretted what he did or learned anything from it.
(And let's not even start with what all of this says about Carol; after all, it wasn't Fury but Carol who was in a position to search and find a planet for the Skrulls in the last 30 years.)
3.) Again with the characters and emotions problem, as in, lack of same. Shock reveals, when they work in a story, work because the story allows for their impact, gives it breathing room. And lets the characters process, and/or change. The SHIELD = HYDRA reveal in Winter Soldier comes early enough we see not just Steve but also Natasha and Nick Fury to react to it emotionally and intellectually. Natasha at the start of the movie still is fine with using her particular skill set in the service of, as Loki put it in another movie, cheats and liars, because she trusts in the good intention of her bosses and trusts their moral compass over her own (due to her own backgrund). This is not true anymore for Natasha by the end of this movie. And Natasha is not the main character. Secret Invasion has far more screen time than a single movie offers while still managing to not offer any of this. Take the big Rhodey is a Skrull! reveal. Once that's out, there is no discussion among any of the characters what it means for them, or wondering when the change happened, or whether the real Rhodey is still alive. (I.e. an equivalent of the conversation between Natasha and Steve at Sam's house where we see the impact the SHIELD reveal had on Natasha as well as her and Steve's altered relationship showcased.) At the end, in the last episode, we see the real Rhodey, and there's a hint as to when he was exchanged (because he's wearing a hospital gown and has to be carried by two other people once freed - which would indicate it happened after his broken back in Civil War) - but he's not allowed to react beyond being confused, and no one, absolutely no character, gets to process what it means to them that someone they considered a trusted friend and ally was captured and imprisoned and replaced by a doppelganger and no one ever guessed.
(Also? By this miniseries' shaky timeline, this would have happened before Gravik was more than one of many Fury underlings, and if the Skrulls had any leader, it was Talos. So whose idea exactly was it to replace Rhodey?)
Again: if you don't treat your character as real people, if you don't allow them the time to deal with the emotional impact of a shock, then the shock twist doesn't land, it's just a storytelling gadget falling flat on its face.
To circle back to Hawkeye again, it's a fluffy Christmas show, but it still treats traumatic events that happened to its main characters as traumatic - Natasha's death for both Yelena and Clint, the death of Maya's father to Maya, Clint's time as Ronin, and Kate finding out at the end of the penultimate episode that her mother is working for the bad guys, the impact of which on her we see throughout the next episode. Hawkeye has no world saving stakes, the stakes are simply overtly "Will Clint get back to his family in time for Christmas?", "Will Kate find out the truth behind the murder of Armand?" and subtextually "Will Kate become the next Hawkeye? Will Clint face his deeds as Ronin and Natasha's death?". And all of this does get addressed, and them some. Thus, it's a satisfying narrative, and the characters feel emotionally real. Secret Invasion gives Fury the task of saving the world from WWIII and prevent a humanity/Skrulls slaughter, and he barely manages the former, then buggers off to the next movie just when staying and dealing with the mess would be instrumental. And no one ever feels emotionally real.
Here's the irony: I didn't expect much of anything from the Hawkeye miniseries back when it got dropped pre Christmas and only watched it because Peter Jackson's Beatles three parter was released at the same time and that was why I went to the Mouse back then. But as it turns out, Hawkeye was great, and along with Ms Marvel probably my favourite of the Disney Marvel shows even several years later. Whereas I'm practically the target audience for what Secret Invasion (I assume) aimed to be - a spy story/underbelly take on the MCU. Plus going in to the respective shows, I was certainly more invested in Nick Fury than I was in Clint Barton.
Now, rather than going on a rant of how Secret Invasion is bad, I'd rather go for a bit of why it failed (and why Hawkeye did succeed) (for me, as always this is subjective). Because it's not that there are new characters with a narrative focus (both shows have those) and new relationships in addition to the movie established ones. Or the inherent clichés or sillness of the premise (part of the parcel).
1) To start with the blindingly obvious, strong emotional relationships helps your audience to invest. Hawkeye built up the central one between Clint and Kate; it also dealt with the fallout of Clint's and Yelena's grief for Natasha - thereby also addressing a fannish complaint about Endgame, that Natasha's sacrifice does not get much narrative space compared to Tony's - , and provided the antagonists (Maya/Echo and Kazi, Maya and Kingpin, and Eleanor vis a vis Kate, of course) with intense emotional texture as well. And then there's the new frenemies relationship between Kate and Yelena, which is just delightful.
Meanwhile, Secret Invasion killed off Maria Hill in the pilot and Talos just before the penultimate episode, i.e. the two people who have an established relationship with Nick Fury the audience cares about, but did not provide much if any narrative room for any grief from Fury. (Talos got grief from his daughter and Vara, but that's different.) There is no new central relationship build up, as there was with Clint and Kate in Hawkeye. There are several relationships teased at or focused on in several episodes - Fury and Sonya (Olivia Colman's character), Fury and Priscilla/Vara, Talos and G'ia, and on an antagonistic level Fury and Gravik as well as G'ia and Gravik - but the only one which gets something of an in depth treatment and an emotional resolution that makes it different from how it's introduced is the one one betwen Fury and Vara in the later half of the season. (She's hardly in the first half.) The lack of an consistent emotional thread (or several) through the entire season means the plot has to do the work of keeping the audience attention, and the plot isn't up to it, alas.
2) I can just see the bunch of executives who go "well, everyone loved that Winter Soldier was made in the tradition of paranoid political 1970s thrillers, and over at Star Wars, Andor was such a success, so let's make a grim political spy thriller, everyone will love it as well!" Except that the Disney Marvel shows have their strengths, but believable politics aren't among them. See also Falcon and Winter Soldier, the Flag Smashers, and yeah, no. Gravik was clearly meant to be a villain the Killmonger vein (ditto for Callie in the earlier series), i.e. someone who acts out of understandable motives and makes good points but whose methods are still beyond the pale, but the "oh yeah, and here's how I don't care about killing lots and lots of my own people in addition to other people" felt perfunctionary and not three dimensional, plus the miniseries couldn't decide whether Gravik's main antagonistic relationship should be with Fury or with G'iah. Both would have had narrative potential, but a different one. But the finale tried to have its cake and eat it in this regard, and thus there was no emotional depth to either. (With the added insult to injury that G'iah, who consistly made the good point to her father that there needs to be an alternate plan for the Skrulls than his idea that being good agents for Fury will somehow result in universal acceptance, after her defeat of Gravik ends up replicating that job with Sonya in the Fury position, and no, Sonya lamphading it in dialogue doesn't help.)
(Sidenote: I can think of one great example of how you can do a "villain has good motives and good point, is still villain as evidenced via methods" where it feels absolutely organic to the characters instead of a "here's why you shouldn't root for this person", and that's part of the big climax of the very first X-Men movie. Reminder: Magneto is about to use the MacGuffin Machine to turn a great many "normals" into mutants, thus hoping to end mutant discrimination (he thinks). To do this, he uses Rogue to power the device, which he knows will kill her. He gives her and the captured X-Men the speech of how this is necessary for mutantkind and the greater good. He undoubtedly believes every word, and also, Ian McKellen. And then Logan says two simple sentences: "You're so full of shit. If you really believed that, it would be you in that thing." Now, I love Magneto much more than Wolverine, but wow, was he ever right, and did these two simple sentences destroy all the previous rethoric.)
Back to my wrong lessons learned theory: part of the reasons why Winter Soldier the movie managed to replicate the 70s spy thriller kind of feeling so successfully isn't just the "Hydra was part of SHIELD this whole time" reveal. It's that we've seen the decidely not Hydra Nick Fury endorsing the movie's bad MacGuffins, the super surveillance-plus-murder spy drones carriers early on, and having a conversation with Steve going directly to the good old "liberty vs safety" dilemma. And because Steve at the end demands not just the end of the Hydra agents within SHIELD but of SHIELD for this very reason. In an era where constant surveillance was never so easy or so much a thing (not "just" by governments but by commercial cooperations) and where democratically elect4ed governments, not dictatorships, had been shown to regard assassinations and imprisonment without trial and torture etc. all as viable methods, the fears this movie tapped into and addressed were real and there.
Now, Secret Invasions could have tapped into something real, too. The brief montage near the end where because Ritson declared all aliens as free targets and everyone thinks everyone else is a Skrull, all the paranoia and pent up hostility of the populace and the unwillingness to hear each other out results in horrible violence - that would have been a great way to use the Skrull/Secret Invasion concept to address a current day state of affairs. But instead, most of the show went back to a standard decades old Bond movies plot (Spectre tried to frame the Russians a lot in the Connery and even the Moore era), and really, Nick Fury is not, nor should he be, James Bond). Without a Bond budget, too, because all those scenes with President Ritson in a hospital with apparantly only one or two bodyguards plus Rhodey were hysterical. You couldn't even pay for a few more extras posing as security, Disney? For someone supposed to be the POTUS?
Also: if you want to do a spy show, you need to deliver the tricks of the trade. Heists, intelligence gained via trickery or clever missions, near discoveries, finding out who's an ally and who's a backstabber, etc. Secret Invasions tried this with the Rhodey-a-Skrull reveal mid season, but look, given Don Cheadle was the only Avenger on the show, that wasn't much of a surprise. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy worked so well as it did among many other reasons because the identity of the mole isn't glaringly obvious from the get go. And the audience pretty much knew who was a Skrull and who wasn't in all other cases, who was a good guy or a villain. Shades of grey are the definition of a Le Carré like spy story which evidently this show wanted to be and just wasn't. I mean, yes, Fury using the Skrulls as his personal spies while knowing he couldn't deliver a home world was called out - but nothing changed, with as mentioned G'iah being essentially in the same position as her father was in at the end of the movie, and with Fury leaving the planet again. (The one big change for Fury and Vara was their relationship status, and them leaving together, but there's no sign Fury (when not played by G'iah) regretted what he did or learned anything from it.
(And let's not even start with what all of this says about Carol; after all, it wasn't Fury but Carol who was in a position to search and find a planet for the Skrulls in the last 30 years.)
3.) Again with the characters and emotions problem, as in, lack of same. Shock reveals, when they work in a story, work because the story allows for their impact, gives it breathing room. And lets the characters process, and/or change. The SHIELD = HYDRA reveal in Winter Soldier comes early enough we see not just Steve but also Natasha and Nick Fury to react to it emotionally and intellectually. Natasha at the start of the movie still is fine with using her particular skill set in the service of, as Loki put it in another movie, cheats and liars, because she trusts in the good intention of her bosses and trusts their moral compass over her own (due to her own backgrund). This is not true anymore for Natasha by the end of this movie. And Natasha is not the main character. Secret Invasion has far more screen time than a single movie offers while still managing to not offer any of this. Take the big Rhodey is a Skrull! reveal. Once that's out, there is no discussion among any of the characters what it means for them, or wondering when the change happened, or whether the real Rhodey is still alive. (I.e. an equivalent of the conversation between Natasha and Steve at Sam's house where we see the impact the SHIELD reveal had on Natasha as well as her and Steve's altered relationship showcased.) At the end, in the last episode, we see the real Rhodey, and there's a hint as to when he was exchanged (because he's wearing a hospital gown and has to be carried by two other people once freed - which would indicate it happened after his broken back in Civil War) - but he's not allowed to react beyond being confused, and no one, absolutely no character, gets to process what it means to them that someone they considered a trusted friend and ally was captured and imprisoned and replaced by a doppelganger and no one ever guessed.
(Also? By this miniseries' shaky timeline, this would have happened before Gravik was more than one of many Fury underlings, and if the Skrulls had any leader, it was Talos. So whose idea exactly was it to replace Rhodey?)
Again: if you don't treat your character as real people, if you don't allow them the time to deal with the emotional impact of a shock, then the shock twist doesn't land, it's just a storytelling gadget falling flat on its face.
To circle back to Hawkeye again, it's a fluffy Christmas show, but it still treats traumatic events that happened to its main characters as traumatic - Natasha's death for both Yelena and Clint, the death of Maya's father to Maya, Clint's time as Ronin, and Kate finding out at the end of the penultimate episode that her mother is working for the bad guys, the impact of which on her we see throughout the next episode. Hawkeye has no world saving stakes, the stakes are simply overtly "Will Clint get back to his family in time for Christmas?", "Will Kate find out the truth behind the murder of Armand?" and subtextually "Will Kate become the next Hawkeye? Will Clint face his deeds as Ronin and Natasha's death?". And all of this does get addressed, and them some. Thus, it's a satisfying narrative, and the characters feel emotionally real. Secret Invasion gives Fury the task of saving the world from WWIII and prevent a humanity/Skrulls slaughter, and he barely manages the former, then buggers off to the next movie just when staying and dealing with the mess would be instrumental. And no one ever feels emotionally real.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 11:42 am (UTC)I think chiefly they had nothing to say about Fury. Everyone keeps hammering him about how old and useless he is and how he's betrayed them and he just... has no real response and doesn't try to. The only time he does in the last episode when it's actually not him.
They seem to have kept Fury's characterisation he had as big good in the early films without adjusting it to the fact he's now the protagonist.
And on top of that it was just dull. The only character who was entertaining was Olivia Coleman who was fun but also one note.
Apparently they had to do a lot of reshoots in this because of Ukraine and I wonder if that messed it up or if it was always this bad.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 01:02 pm (UTC)Quite. Again with the wrong learned lessons, I think; George Smiley, of course, is chronically underestimated and described as useless, past his prime etc. in his most famous novels, and LeCarré deliberately made him as un-Bondian as possible as a middle-aged, overweight, spectacled teacher type with marriage problems, but if that was the influence on the scriptwriters, they seem to overlook that Smiley goes on to prove his enemies in the service wrong. G’iah as Fury tricking Gravik by playing into his conception of Fury and ensuring he ends up superpowering her was great, but as you say - it’s the one point where “Fury” does get the upper hand via outhinking the opposition, and it’s not him.
Reshoots as the cause: no, I think the problem is too inherent. No one among the writers seems to have had a good grasp on how to tell a good noir spy story, and no one seems to have considered any of the twists for their emotional impact beyond “Shock! Twist!”, which I don’t think has to do with reshots.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 06:15 pm (UTC)It certainly had the emotional impact of pissing off everyone I know!
I mean, I haven't seen it, but it's really hard to sell me on the idea that a character played by SLJ is either frumpy or incompetent. I could get "beaten down by life," but not just bad at his job.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 08:08 pm (UTC)Yes! In TTSS we see Smiley at first in exile, having lunch with that terrible person, and then slowly, very slowly, see him at work and his mind analyzing everything, so by the time he's in that awful little B&B room going through the files it's almost all mindwork and highly suspenseful. Granted, that is a lot easier to do in a book than a film, but Alec Guinness really pulled it off in the miniseries. We really needed that with Fury -- some kind of win, or a reminder of how ruthless and far-thinking he can be -- but we didn't really get that at all. If anyone got to be the cool spy, it was Olivia Colman, and I love her, but it felt like Fury got really shortchanged....in his own show.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 12:03 pm (UTC)Would you mind linking this at
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 01:05 pm (UTC)I watched it completely not least because I needed to know what happened to the real Rhodey (and hoped he would show up before the end) - he’s one of my favourite supporting characters in the MCU and has been from the start, after all. Also I cared about Talos. But alas…
no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 06:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 08:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 12:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-27 08:57 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, Secret Invasion killed off Maria Hill in the pilot and Talos just before the penultimate episode, i.e. the two people who have an established relationship with Nick Fury the audience cares about, but did not provide much if any narrative room for any grief from Fury.
I was just AMAZED they squandered both the Maria-Fury relationship, which I think is the longest one in the MCU by now??, and Talos-Fury, which was so vivid in Captain Marvel. It also would have been a great time to develop Rhodey-Fury, because Rhodey's been there all along and is very different and we haven't seen them interact that much. But the main actors wound up being Gravik, G'aih and Sonya, none of whom we knew from before and who weren't really fleshed out either. We didn't even get to see Ross interact with any of these people he's at least known about! And that's really insightful about how we see the effects of the HYDRA reveal not just on Steve, but Nat and Fury and Maria too, because that fills them out as characters and underlines the big theme of loyalty, and who deserves it. There's that great moment in the underground hideout where Steve really takes command and says "It all goes," and when Nat, Sam and Maria agree, they're not just blindly following Steve, they're rejecting the realpolitik Pierce rewards Fury for after Fury disobeys his direct orders and heads an unauthorized military operation in a foreign country! And Pierce "credits" Fury for showing him diplomacy was useless -- "And you know where I learned that -- Bogota." People love the fun B.A.M.F. side of Fury/SLJ (and I do too!) but he's maybe the most morally grey person in the MCU....which the show really didn't lean into at all. There was SUCH good potential for conflict with Maria -- he's been gone so long, is she still absolutely loyal to him and his methods? -- and they just wasted it by killing her off for shock. And the same thing happened with Talos.
Also: if you want to do a spy show, you need to deliver the tricks of the trade. Heists, intelligence gained via trickery or clever missions, near discoveries, finding out who's an ally and who's a backstabber, etc. Secret Invasions tried this with the Rhodey-a-Skrull reveal mid season, but look, given Don Cheadle was the only Avenger on the show, that wasn't much of a surprise. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy worked so well as it did among many other reasons because the identity of the mole isn't glaringly obvious from the get go. And the audience pretty much knew who was a Skrull and who wasn't in all other cases
T and I kept wondering that they could make a show about Nick Fury and have it turn out dull, but yeah, that was really it. They blew Ross as a Skrull in the opening of the first scene and it never really came up again; they showed Gravik killing Maria; and the Rhodey-Skrull reveal came at the end of an episode with him offscreen, answering a phone call! There was just no real suspense. It was obvious that G'aih was going to be the one to kill Gravik, not Fury, because both of them were ridiculously overpowered (G'iah seemed to be obviously standing in for Carol from the original movie version of this story). Skrull Rhodey was going to have to die so we could get Rhodey back (in just the last five minutes). G'iah's cover was blown almost instantly. And so on. The very first time we see Fury's wife, she's a Skrull! There was still some tension possible about whether or not he knew, but of course that was almost immediately revealed too. I mean, I'm terrible at plotting! If I can point out big plot holes, it's really dire.
no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 05:43 am (UTC)And Varra, but I take your point. Again, it's not that the successful Marvel tv shows haven't added new characters and new relationships as well, but a) in conjunction with the established ones, and b) in a way that made the audience care about the new characters in addition to the old ones.
It really does feel like a a robot algorithm came up with a mix of what a computer thought people liked about previous MCU installments under the label "spy related property" and came up with a result that had no understanding of how stories actually work.
Now, what I'd have loved to see as a Nick Fury miniseries is a "Life and Times" kind of story, where we see how he became the man he was, formed the relationships he did, especially with long term players like Maria. They could have Fury and Maria reevaluating everything after the Blip and wondering whether or not to continue as a framing naration, absolutely. And add new characters in the flashbacks whose survival isn't guaranteed because we haven't met them before but whom we come to care about...
no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 06:19 am (UTC)Oh yeah, you mentioned Yelena and Echo and Kate herself in Hawkeye, and they were all introduced so well. Ms Marvel did a fantastic job with Kamala and her friends and family. I loved seeing Monica in WandaVision, and we actually loved Sylvie in Loki, unlike tons of fandom, lolsob. Those characters all felt like actual people, with backstories and psychologies. The characters in SI mostly seemed like pieces being moved around for the plot.
Now, what I'd have loved to see as a Nick Fury miniseries is a "Life and Times" kind of story, where we see how he became the man he was, formed the relationships he did, especially with long term players like Maria. They could have Fury and Maria reevaluating everything after the Blip and wondering whether or not to continue as a framing naration
Yes!! That would've been great. And I don't think we see much of either of them after TWS, when Fury goes underground after the organization he's devoted his life to has turned out rotten. But the MCU has never really gone into the fall of SHIELD and instead it sort of lingers on, mixed in with the CIA (Ross, Countess Val) and vague US political structures (Rhodey is "an envoy and advisor" to the President? How on earth does he have the authority to
fire"discharge" Fury and WHAT is MI6 doing in the mix? -- which all doesn't really matter too much, except I think the lack of clarity about who is doing what is maybe meant to convey moral greyness but just winds up being so much confusing murk. Any hoo. It would've been great to see Fury forced into a re-evaluation of his spy career and relationships, like Natasha in Civil War and Black Widow. I honestly don't know why they made him such a sad sack, unless it's like he was supposed to be a poster child for how shaken people were after the Blip.no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 01:32 pm (UTC)As said elsewhere, I do suspect this particular characterisation hails from a misunderstanding of what made John Le Carré's George Smiley such a great character. Seeing Fury mortal, exhausted, self questioning, underestimated and playing into this etc. would have worked if at the same time we'd have seen doing something clever and being several steps ahead in many ways, and other than planting two bugs (one with Sonya Falsworth and one with Skrull!Rhodey), we just didn't see him do anything effective.
(Again I must make a comparison to the intended-as-fluffy-escapism show, because Hawkeye worked in nicely that Clint doesn't have superpowers - he has lost part of his hearing due to all the explosions, when he gets cuts and bruises, these are still there in the next episode etc, and that's also true for the much younger Kate who hasn't got super-healing, either - , yet still at no point failed to show that Clint is still very good at his profession when he needs to be.)
The fall of SHIELD and the way it's partially retconned or reversed: I think when Agents of SHIELD had (good) SHIELD continuing underground post WS (i.e. precisely the option Steve had rejected) I gave up on the MCU really sticking to this as a fundamental change.
Rhodey is "an envoy and advisor" to the President? How on earth does he have the authority to fire "discharge" Fury
That's part of the general and not unique to this show problem of equating "American" with "world wide". I mean, on the one hand, SHIELD was supposed to be an organization reporting to the UN, not run by the US, otoh it had its headquarters in Washington, DC, for God's sake, and whle we did see the occasional non-American employe most of its staff seemed to consist of Americans. If Fury as the Direcot of SHIELD reported as shown in The Avengers to a "world council", then an US President (never mind his advisors) would not have been able to dismiss him. But post SHIELD, it never was spelled out who he does report to - I mean, is SABER American or global? We still don't know. Rhodey at least was consistently shown as a member of the US army (or navy, as a pilot, I guess), so he's definitely in a command structure reporting to the US President, and I guess it would make sense for him to be appointed as an advisor for superheroic matters, but that still doesn't provide him with authority.
But look: the MCU is a place where somehow, in the second World War, paranoid, murderous megalomaniac Hitler is cool with Hydra being run semi-autonomously antil 1944 and then still won't do anything about it once what's his name the Red Skull declares independence. And where Hydra has SOMEHOW lots and lots of petrol and money and enough material to equip and support their own armies at a point in 1944 - 1945 when most cities and assorted factories were bombed and who got petrol for what was a cause of constant in fichting and - okay, end of my usual "Hydra never made any sense" rant. My point is that illogic like this was baked into to the MCU from the start. It's just that when the character stories are good enough, you handwave it. But if the characters and relationships aren't there, you see the rest threadbare.
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Date: 2023-07-28 04:45 pm (UTC)But look: the MCU is a place where somehow, in the second World War, paranoid, murderous megalomaniac Hitler is cool with Hydra being run semi-autonomously antil 1944 and then still won't do anything about it once what's his name the Red Skull declares independence. And where Hydra has SOMEHOW lots and lots of petrol and money and enough material to equip and support their own armies at a point in 1944 - 1945 when most cities and assorted factories were bombed and who got petrol for what was a cause of constant in fichting and - okay, end of my usual "Hydra never made any sense" rant.
HAAAAAH oh dear yes indeed. It's basically historical fantasy at that point!
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Date: 2023-07-27 09:22 pm (UTC)I noped out conceptually on the global conspiracy of shape-shifting alien lizard people, but then nothing else I heard about the show sounded worth gritting my teeth against the premise, either. I appreciate that Ben Mendelsohn had a job.
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Date: 2023-07-28 05:29 am (UTC)I noped out conceptually on the global conspiracy of shape-shifting alien lizard people
There's that, too, of course, and after Captain Marvel had the great twist of having the Skrulls as good guys, I thought they abandoned the idea of doing a version of the comics Secret Invasion altogether. Now to be fair, the Skrulls are decades and decades old as an idea, but still, Marvel has been known before not to use outdated concepts or twist them in a good way. (For example: the Mandarin in Iron Man 3 turning out not to be a real cliché vaguely "Eastern" menace but in-universe an artificial creation by a US magnate and played by a British actor to evoke the traditional response, with that reveal coming mid-story, not at the end.)
Anyway, basically a Nick Fury miniseries centred around spying had absolutely no need to use the Secret Invasion story at all.
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Date: 2023-07-28 06:26 am (UTC)I guessss Feige wants to bring Secret Wars in as an Avengers movie? He said in an interview that the storylines in Phases 5 and 6 will lead into Secret Wars in May 2027, although god knows when that may come out now.
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Date: 2023-07-27 11:29 pm (UTC)all the paranoia and pent up hostility of the populace and the unwillingness to hear each other out results in horrible violence - that would have been a great way to use the Skrull/Secret Invasion concept to address a current day state of affairs.
I thought that's where we were going with the opening scene in the series, and I was thinking "Wow, so topical" except...
Your final sentence is the crux of the issue alright. We can forgive a lot for some real scenes between characters.
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Date: 2023-07-28 05:21 am (UTC)Absolutely. One of my favourite spy tv shows is Alias, which has some incredibly silly and convoluted mythology (just one word: Rambaldi), but for the most part, the relationships between the cast of characters are convoluted and layered and fascinating and intense, and that kept me watching through the seasons. I mean, I love it when a story delivers on the plot logic as well, but characters and their interactions come first.
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Date: 2023-07-28 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 04:15 am (UTC)Mostly I'm happy to read an analysis that doesn't think all Marvel shows with women main characters are the Worst or where one needs to start all Marvel analysis with a Staten about being a Marvel fan is bad and wrong, etc. I need better places to read.
This is unrelated but I recently re watched the Star Trek Lower Decks pilot and it is a more brittle/mean version than it went on to be. I think by the third or fourth episode of season 1, the love for Trek comes through much better. There's a great episode in the first season that cover the lower decks of a Vulcan ship and a Klingon ship that is pretty fun, too.
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Date: 2023-07-28 05:16 am (UTC)Definitely not! I'm fond of most of the Marvel shows, both pre-Disney and Disney. Obviously in varying degrees, and when a show gets more than one season, it also depends on the season in question. But for the most part, I think a lot of creative talent and love went into the shows, and much of the results are worth watching (without being perfect, but what is?). But this one really feels as if some KI were fed with algorithms about what people liked with earlier Marvel efforts and then put something together without a human understanding of what actually makes a story work.
Tho I really don't think they are saying Rhodey was a Skrull since Civil War, as you point out - it doesn't work with the timeline they present. I am possibly being too generous.
I would much prefer if Rhodey were exchanged post Endgame! But the thing is, everyone else of the freed by G'iah "originals", like Ross or the scientist, is wearing day-to-day clothing, evidently meant to be the wardrobe they were wearing when they were snatched. Rhodey is the only one in a hospital gown. And the one time we saw him wear a hospital gown was near the end of "Civil War".
This said, it's the easiest thing of the world to retcon for the next scriptwriter in charge of the character. They simply can let Rhodey state he went to a medical check up at some point post Endgame when suddenly, etc.
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Date: 2023-07-28 05:05 pm (UTC)"A lot of people have asked about, 'Definitively, when did Rhodey...?'" Secret Invasion director Ali Selim said in an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com. "I think his legs not working in the end of episode six and him being in the hospital gown points to [Captain America: Civil War]. And, from there, does it have to be definitive, or is it more fun for the audience to go back and revisit every moment, every Rhodey moment and look at it with a different lens now that they think, 'Oh, he might've been a Skrull there.' And make the decision for themselves, or it'll be answered in Armor Wars."
This means Rhodey was a Skrull through his appearances in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, as well as The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
//throws up hands
This feels like the MCU going for "one of those NEATO twists like Cap going back to his own past!" which is based on an emotional hook, but makes no logical sense and in fact undercuts the actual emotion in the audience.
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Date: 2023-07-28 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-28 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-30 05:40 pm (UTC)Thank you for assuring me I don't need to bother watching this. What is it with the MCU killing off my favorite characters?!?
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Date: 2023-07-31 09:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-02 04:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-07-31 01:32 pm (UTC)I love most of the Marvel shows, but this one was a painful slog. So many problems, and one of them was the lack of a consistent thesis. The Skrulls were bad guys in the comics, then good guys in Captain Marvel, then they were terrorists on this show, and oh wait they're refugees again, and then Fury's like, "Get off my planet, find somewhere else," which is not where I thought this story was going, and then after Fury has exposed them, and the US President is ordering their slaughter, Fury is like, "Actually this is bad, you should stop."
It's all just such a mess.
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Date: 2023-08-10 12:28 am (UTC)For all my complaints about the MCU, casting is the one area where they've only rarely fallen down.
Agree about Hawkeye, too. I didn't know what to expect going into it, and I've never been that invested in Clint as a character, but it was terrific - for all the reasons you cited above. And Ms. Marvel was amazing!
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Date: 2023-08-10 09:39 am (UTC)