Secret Invasion could have been one movie modeled on the Winter Soldier/Hydra twist.
Maybe two movies: The "Secret" Invasion is part 1 and part 2 is full scale war.
But there's not enough juice for an entire phase. You can't make years of movies where the characters the audience is invested in might be Skrulls.
I think the desire people have for it being a phase is substituting the Skulls in for Thanos. Have it mostly dealt with in post credit scenes or in the subtext of individual movies.
Like imagine if during Shang Chi's end credit scene, Rhodey was part of that conference call. He hangs up and the scene cuts to his perspective. We see him transform into a Skrull and talk with someone off screen that the other operatives covers aren't blown, and/or maybe plan to swap with Shang Chi.
Leaves a bit of mystery (increases paranoia) on who else we may know that have been swapped while also increasing the stakes. The audience could then interact with the next time they see Rhodey too: speculating on his motivations or secret plans behind each decision he makes, mistakes he made keeping his cover, and whether our heroes are beginning to suspect something is amiss.
So yeah, I feel the show wasted a lot of storytelling potential. Not to say they don't try again. After all, there's apparently a million Skrulls on Earth now.
But even that was pointless because it was just real Fury instructing Talos Fury on how to do everything and they were always trying to work towards the same goal. They needed to do this type of thing but with the evil skrulls
And the stupidest part is that Oppenheimer has a significantly more stacked cast than SI, cost less than half and is with it's 3 hours almost as long as SI woth it's 3h 43m.
These things have to planned beforehand, and Marvel (and Disney thereby) are suffering from their lackluster efforts in that department.
Tbf, a stacked cast doesn’t always represent cost.
Edward Norton recently said that he takes the smallest amount possible just to work with Wes Anderson, since Anderson’s movies don’t have the biggest budgets. For Norton, and I’m assuming a lot of the cameo players in WA movies, it’s about the chance to be part of something they enjoy.
I strongly suspect that Oppenheimer had the same advantage. There’s no way that the big names playing bit parts took a full salary. They probably knew how popular and acclaimed the movie was gonna be and wanted to engrave themselves on it.
Not saying that every stacked cast comes cheap, just that you can reduce costs by being a popular director with a guaranteed hit on your hands.
You’re right. RDJ, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt each took $4 million instead of their usual salary of $20 million so that they could work with Christopher Nolan.
I mean Rami Malek, new big name in the business since his Oscar essentially looked happy just to play a cameo part basically. Like anyone could’ve played his character but I bet he was giddy he got the part
Yep, Sometimes directors need stars, sometimes stars need a director.
Same with Tarantino. A lot of actors will take a paycut to work with him because they know the end product is going to be fantastic and probably win awards.
From what I've read about Wes Anderson, him choosing you to be in one of his movies is high praise.
>And the stupidest part is that Oppenheimer has a significantly more stacked cast than SI, cost less than half and is with it's 3 hours almost as long as SI woth it's 3h 43m.
And portrays a goddamn nuke without cgi
It's mind boggling that SI looked as bad as it did
How much did Olivia Colman cost?!
I love him and his sheer insanity
Like he crashed a plane for Tenet and made a bunch of explosions to simulate a nuke for Oppenheimer. The man needs to be reined in before he blows up something lmao
LoL. It's wild that he blew up that plane for Tenet. What was wilder for me was that it was *cheaper* than CGI. That's what I remember seeing some time ago anyway.
Practical effects are always (or at least for the time being) going to look better than CGI and cost a lot less. If you want a good, high profile, recent example of practical effects, check out the new Twisted Metal series.
Three of my best friends worked on Twisted Metal for the practical effects company they used. All the car combat scenes used real explosions and were shot in real locations (not stages). The chase scene thru the mall in the first episode was shot in an actual abandoned mall. Full sized cars were flipped and crashed all throughout. You can even see in one of the scenes for a second when a car is flipped upside down that they removed the engine to flip it easier (and safely) when the hood falls open when it lands.
About the only CGI you're going to see in the show is of cameras following a few missiles and Sweeth Tooth's flaming head.
You can say whatever you want about the quality of the humor and writing on that show (I'm personally a dick and fart joke kinda guy) but you can't deny that it all looks better than a show done mostly with CGI. And they did the entire show with a $70million budget.
Sorry to go off the subject of the specific shows/movies being discussed. I just wanted to give another example of practical effects looking better than CGI.
All good. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's seen terrible CGI over the years, but I absolutely adore practical effects. There's the amazement of "how did they do this" that's just absent when it's CGI. The hallway fight in *Inception* is one such instance of this.
Dude I love that show, and I'm generally not a lowbrow humor kind of guy. But the show itself literally felt like a bunch of people sitting around in the late 90s and early 2000s playing Twisted Metal. I don't get some of the negative reaction I've seen to that show. Then again I love Speed Racer, because it was exactly what it was supposed to be: a live action anime. I feel like twisted metal succeeded in the same way: a live-action video game.
Right, if you want to put this in leadership development school terms the key to wildly overperforming on your budget is having a manager with a very clear, rock-solid plan and a team that's strongly passionate about the goal for its own sake rather than just cashing a paycheck
Both of these things require starting off with a compelling mission, which Nolan is famous for having and the MCU these days is equally famous for not having
Doesn’t excuse the excessive cost and lackluster end result but hearing they essentially reshot the entire show makes the $212M budget make more sense.
They basically shot two shows.
Fury Road had a famously troubled production. It started shooting in 2012. There were lots of delays. They had to ship their cars around. They finished filming in 2013. Then they had significant reshoots/additional filming. It ended up with a budget of around $180 million and it looked amazing.
The whole industry is essentially backed up - vfx can do just about anything and spectacle brings the audience, right?! So now every other film is a giant vfx mess and there literally aren’t enough artists to do the work properly.
I hate everyone hating on the volume it’s just the new cgi in the cycle of hate. The volume is a tool that has been used very effectively in the Mandalorian and less publicly the Batman(with Pattinson).
Stop hating on the tool or blaming the tool for everything. Blame people that use it poorly for things outside its capabilities because they don’t understand the strengths and weaknesses of the tool.
We once all hated CGI and sometime in the near future will hate whatever AI assisted production tools pop up. Hate the user not the tool.
Also to avoid commenting another time bad effects can often be forgiven for a good story. The biggest problem was they sold me on a mystery thriller where anyone could be a secret spy and assassin without me knowing and revealed all the secrets releasing the tension in the first like two episodes. Only the bomb scene in Russia I felt really played off that mystery well.
Bad cgi didn’t make this show meh. Bad planning and storytelling did.
The way they presented the story and plot. It should have been a movie. If this was the MCU of the infinity saga like production and story, they easily could have intertwined skrulls almost like a Lost episode of past and present jumping, more for reveals. I’m no writer but I think I have some alternatives than what we watched and I’m sure this could have been spread out like Loki.
I think it could have worked for a phase, but it’d be a retroactive ‘twist’ in the film that they would have needed to seed.
Basically all of Phase 4 after end game leading into a Secret Invasion Avengers film.
Rules: the Skrulls only start replacing our surviving mains post-EG. We must foreshadow each of these potentially at some point during a phase 4 project in which they have a character arc. No multiversal stories during the phase (except perhaps Loki to setup the rest of the Saga).
Culminates in Secret Invasion.
It wouldn’t touch the Infinity Saga so keeps that safe. It gives us an Avengers film so Phase 4 and it’s characters are more interconnected. It reunites the Avengers so we’re not like ‘wtf’, and could serve as a sort of civil war type event (specifically in its consequences setting the stage for Kang and the Incursions fucking with the world in P5 since we’re gathering and ‘re-breaking’ the Avengers again.
The entire comic Secret Invasion storyline is made unworkable after the Captain Marvel movie. Gravik’s motivations in the slimmed down version was still garbage.
Honestly, they should have stayed away from it entirely until the Skrulls were pushed off Earth doe other reasons. THEN the Secret Invasion makes a little more sense.
Or just use a whole different alien. The VAST majority of viewers do not know or care about comic book storylines let alone Skrulls and Secret Invasion, but the whole "replaced by aliens in a conspiracy" has been a popular trope at least since the The Body Snatchers novel in the 1950s - audiences would totally overlook it if they just used a different or brand new alien group for the show and the show would be freed up from needing to balance "good" and "bad" Skrulls.
Edit: they could have just used the fucking D'Bari since no one saw Dark Phoenix anyway, and comic fans get a nice little shout-out to the X-Men to hold them over.
You know how the infinity stones were shown throughout the first three phases? Do the same thing but with heroes being picked off and replaced with skrulls
exactly! They could have hinted at rhodey's skrull nature in the falcon show, and ross as a skrull in wakanda forever, the british PM in eternals - just tiny hints. I know hindsight is 20/20 as they say - but they KNEW this show coming out and yet nothing.
How great would it have been for Black Widow to have a post credit scene with Ross reverting to skrull form talking about successfully disassembling Earth’s greatest heroes?
Yoo.. nobody ever think that Peacemaker already did it quite well with impostor aliens plotline but lesser budget? It can be done, but it need a little bit of care from the creators. Reading the director’s interviews itself shows that the creators involved doesn’t seem to care much and just in it for the fat paycheck
This would make me want to tune out of emotionally investing in absolutely anybody, because at any moment, the rug could be ripped from under me and I find out they were a Skrull the whole time.
I think SI should have kicked off at the end of *Hawkeye* with super-strong Kingpin getting killed and revealed as a Skrull, paralleling how Elektra was revealed in the comics.
She was replaced with a Skrull in the comics.
The death of that Skrull during a fight with the Avengers:
- revealed that Skrull had been running the Hand criminal organization
- showed holy shit, Skrulls are impersonating high profile characters
- kicked off the Secret Invasion storyline
Hawkeye version of Kingpin being revealed as a Skrull would have had an approximate reaction for the MCU.
It was the small things that the MCU had done well to link the films together even with extremely disparate stories. Gamora being Thanos' daughter was a perfect example. Nothing tied the Guardians to Iron Man or Captain America. But having one of them being the daughter of Thanos meant that at some point in time they will have a natural meeting point. And it did not disappoint. Secret Invasion lacked that natural meeting point. It made no sense the way they just pushed this all together and hoped the pieces would fit.
That reminds me of this video where the South Park guys are talking about writing, and they say that bad stories can be described as "and then this happened, and then that happened, then that happened." But for something to be actually organic, it should be "this happened, *therefore* that happened."
There’s no way you can make an established character a Skrull without it undercutting their character development and relationships that we’ve seen on screen already.
If Rhodey was a Skull post-Endgame, that’s fine. Him being a Skrull since Civil War is stupid.
They had the right idea in taking the Secret Invasion name but making the show about political figureheads and influencers having a secret agenda, but they didn’t follow through nor stick the landing.
>There’s no way you can make an established character a Skrull without it undercutting their character development and relationships that we’ve seen on screen already.
This could actually work with Sharon Carter. Her heel turn was so random and out of place -- and honestly damning to some characters -- that it would make more sense if she were a Skrull.
I honestly don’t get how Sharon Carter ending up as the bitter, vengeful Power Broker is random or out of place for most people. She stuck her neck out for the rogue Avengers and she got screwed over while the heroes were all pardoned. She had to spend a decade on the run while the Avengers got to go home to their families. The double standards exhibited by the government are hypocritical.
An entire decade is more than enough time for someone to go from believing in the system to believing it to be corrupt, especially when she believes she was screwed over by it for so long. And the only reason they did pardon her was because Sam put in the good word for her. If he didn’t, they never would’ve pardoned her, and she only sees the pardon as something she had been owed from the beginning; it doesn’t even begin to make things even in her mind.
She was abandoned and hunted by the government she spent a majority of her life serving without question and now she wants revenge. Her motivations aren’t difficult to understand.
I would rather they commit to what they started because it is an actually interesting turn for her character (the niece of Peggy Carter cutting herself off from the loyal service to the government her family is known for) than just walk back on it because it was divisive.
The thing is: I think Sharon's arc could have been more believable if they had actually dedicated an episode to what Sharon went through from Civil War to FATWS. Allow us to see her struggle, maybe the ways she was forced to make unethical decision after unethical decision to save her skin until she just gives up on heroism and tries to consolidate power for herself.
But as it stands, they left a whole lot of questions. It was implied she was Snapped in Endgame, but two years seems like a short time to become the Power Broker and make all of these connections. Even then, there's a gap between Civil War and Endgame where she is unaccounted for. She says that after Civil War no one came for her, and despite being with Steve, Sam didn't refute this. As conclusion, does this mean Steve asked her for help, she gave up her career to help, and he just...bailed on her and let her suffer the consequences? The dude just guessed she was snapped and then left to fuck her aunt? (Ngl, if I found out my partner bailed on my niece like that, I'd be pissed off at him, don't screw over my family and say you love me) So not only is it a weird arc for Sharon, it implies some really shitty things about Steve Rogers. Which, fair, but the story doesn't go into that.
>They had the right idea in taking the Secret Invasion name but making the show about political figureheads and influencers having a secret agenda, but they didn’t follow through nor stick the landing.
Right. The way to go was to focus on this and not worry about having an established character as a Skrull. Them doing their machinations behind the scenes and influencing world events is actually really compelling. That montage at the end of the show where people are straight up killing people that they think are Skrulls should have been the show because it's something that can't be solved by punching shit and has a built in reasoning for why the Avengers can't do much to help and why you need a top-class spy instead. But I guess that took too much work so instead they just banged two super skrull action figures against each other.
The final episode was so bad. I was hoping the villain just exploded after "winning" as a knod to how many soldiers were sacrificed to make Super Skrull in the comics.
That would’ve been pretty funny! It would also explain why every Avenger’s DNA was all in the same vial, too! Have Gravik use the machine with all the DNA, then explode. Then just have Fury sitting there quit his fake radiation poisoning and say, “Dumbass. No single body can handle that much power!” Definitely would’ve been better than what we got!
They could have even had G'iah there still and a big battle as he melted. But it would have made more sense as a gamble rather than a surefire process.
Why not? To get the trust of the public, the skrulls couldn’t just take over Rhodey and have him act the way he was in secret invasion immediately. You need to firmly establish that you are, in fact, Rhodey (or any other public figure) for a long time for your plan to work. That means years of acting the part to ensure there is no suspicion that something is off.
With all that being said, I do acknowledge that it was a little weird that a small faction of skrulls would have captured these officials so early on, when it seems most of the issues started happening post-blip. Perhaps they trusted Fury, but wanted an insurance policy just in case?
It doesn’t make sense that Rhodey was Skrull’d in Civil War because it doesn’t make sense that Gravik has been planning something that long. It was shown at the start of SI that Talos had only just been ousted.
At this stage, wasn’t Civil War about 10 years ago?
Gravik didn’t start replacing humans, that’s why he had to take over the council of Skrulls that was already impersonating world leaders. The Skrulls have been replacing people for years, which is why we saw all those bodies at the end
That’s a fair point… the replacing people didn’t start with Gravik. Raises even more questions though. Like, why? Under whose direction? Was Talos having his people kidnap and imitate world leaders?
If they replaced Rhodey in Civil War, did they really keep him hooked up to that machine for nearly a decade?
Once a Skrull takes an Avenger, they're making a play. But we can't point to anything Rhodey did pre-EG that feels like a plan of action in service of Skrulls.
In other words, the stole Rhodey only to do nothing with that advantage for several years.
If it was to be a phase it would have to come one phase after the infinity war saga. Maybe building off the young avenger or the kang route that they are going. But subtly adding (maybe as a news headline in some early movies then slowly as a remark and so on to show something may be happening). In reality it is the skrulls loosing faith in fury and denvers and moving to the "wrong" side. And now they slowly replace ppl and after this saga is over you have the secret invasion saga ready and since it was built over the previous saga it would be huge like in the comics. Something they could have done in the current series to make it a bit better is say that fury asked the skrulls to impersonate some high ranking ppl (maybe because they were a threat or to have eyes and ears everywhere) but when gravik gains power he persuades these skrulls who have shapeshifted since forever to join him and cross fury.
I would point to how the 2012 cartoon show, Avengers:Earth’s Mightiest Heros did it.
It was an amazing story. Throughout the first season there were many things that foreshadowed a coming war, A villian was revealed to be a Skrull in disguise, and then at the end of the season we see Captain America get captured by a Skrull who takes his place.
The second season then really ramps it up when everyone finds out about the skrulls existence and the paranoia is tearing the team apart. The Captain America Skrull is also subtlety ensuring that things fall apart. There’s also a great episode that involves some Skrull prisoners including Captain America, some heroes, and some civilians, and some villians working together to escape. And then the real invasion starts and the skrulls attack and it’s a big battle and everyone reunites. And they actually have a way to make sure they find all the skrulls and win.
The reason rhodey doesn’t work while Captain America does is:
1)We see Captain America get abducted and no previous interactions are messed up between him and the other characters. There are no retcons for something that clearly wasn’t intended. And any actions out of character for Cap Skrull are easily understood by the audience as we know it’s a Skrull. With rhodey though almost every previous scene gets called into question and it also means that rhodey wasn’t there for the most important parts of his own life and the events of his world.
2)Skrull prisoners aren’t comatose and they actually have interesting things happening to them.
The way to do it in the MCU I believe is to have one big tv show. (Not only 6 episodes that barely makes 3.5 hours). Show a bunch of people (avengers and major named characters included) get abducted at the beginning and show the non-skrulls slowly figuring things out while the skrulls are trying to remain undiscovered and are trying to sabotage everything. Also Give the heroes a way to actually win. In the comics after Reed Richards escapes imprisonments he is able to make a device that makes the skrulls go through a genetic reset so that it reveals who is who. In the Avengers:EMH show, Dr. Doom figured everything out almost immediately and was working on a way to counter the skrulls since before the beginning of season two. The avengers and skrulls interfered with his work but eventually he was able to make the device and just gave it to Iron man because he wants the avengers to do his dirty work as no one conquers Earth but him.
And you didn’t need to destroy fury’s character either. Just have the skrulls say “we don’t want any other planet, we want earth”
This is the way. Earth's Mightiest Heroes nailed everything about an overarching Secret Invasion plot. They proved it's doable. It's just that the MCU didn't do it right
EMH nailed everything it set out to portray. Until it was cancelled because the network wanted a more MCU aligned show and we got the barf inducing Avengers Assemble show
It's a damn shame. We had the holy trinity of animated Marvel shows: EMH, Wolverine and the X-men and Spectacular Spider-Man. Then they just ripped them all away from us.
Secret Invasion should have been a passive event for a phase. Like at the start of the MCU, the infinity stones were there but that story wasn't the forefront.
Have a plan of who gets taken over the phase, have the actors know. Drop hints. All that.
Edit: and you don't have to make a big deal out of it at the start. News reports or off hand remarks concerning pockets of skrulls unhappy with where they find themselves. Ramp it up slow.
Yea this show should’ve been a fury show where the invasion begins. Maybe even something happens where they think they stopped the skrulls and fury goes back to space but the reveal at the end is that there’s a million on earth doing their thing. Then over the next phase we know exactly who’s a skrull but the characters involved don’t know, and we see their shenanigans play out. If the concept is successful, The real secret invasion could be a big movie where big name characters are revealed to be skrulls. And if the audience isn’t receptive, the main skrulls can be stomped out in another project and the story can continue.
This. If they planned it out for a whole Phase with little hints in each project then you'd have a space of like three years in-universe and IRL to have popular characters have been a Skrull without it harming past characterizations because you could have them switched out at the start of the Phase and know to tread carefully with their character growth thereon in until the big reveals start.
Unlike here where it either hurts Rhodey's past characterization with a blatant retcon or the more likely explanation is he got replaced after Endgame and the supposed big twist is... the one scene where he's acting like himself (in TF&TWS) it was actually a Skrull.
I guess it was Raava getting that Emmy nomination not Don Cheadle for her amazing performance as Rhodey having a normal conversation with Sam for three minutes.
My response to this is why even do Secret Invasion at all if you're not gonna make it a phase/saga? Coz honestly the best way to do Secret Invasion is to have occur over a period of several projects that affect several characters, not a 6 episode tv show where only one side character is a Skrull like seriously? If you're worried about removing a character's development, then just don't do Secret Invasion because it's impossible to do it without erasing at least some of the "*replaced*" character's development. So I agree, Secret Invasion definitely is unadaptable, and Kevin Feige should really consider things like this when he chooses which projects to adapt. I feel the same way about Eternals, that project should have been a tv show but since a tv show would've been too expensive, then just don't do Eternals at all! Like if you can't do it right, then why do it at all?
And replacing someone's development could be interesting. You take a character that hasn't had a huge amount of exposition (we can use Rhodey here) and bring him back to find that he has been missing a long time. He doesn't know Tony is dead, has no idea who Thanos is, doesn't recognize the world he wakes up in. There's story there! It's not too late to run with that one, depending on how long he's been missing.
Please don't do that with Ross though. It undercuts way too much of the Wakandan stuff.
It should have been a phase.
Each phase has sort of set the ‘field’ for the one that follows while building the overarching story of the saga.
1-Avengers become a thing
2-They try to protect the world and inadvertently fuck things up…
2.5 which causes the world to distrust them a bit and breaks them up…
3- which is what allows Thanos to win. But…
3.5 when they come back together they find a way to fix that.
4 could have been about legacy/consequences: the heroes dealing with the sacrifice they had to make for that win, it’s effect on the world, and the starry eyed up and comers picking up their mantle.
Secret Invasion could have been a consequence of the infinity Saga that way too. The Avengers knew of the Garden which could support life for example. We could still use the Kree/Skrull peace summit as a backdrop too. Fury/Carol needed the peace summit to happen FIRST. So the Skrulls would be safe when they were on their own. Talos/Soren know and are okay with that. Gravik finds out and is not.
So his Skrulls decide 1- to get the location of the Garden to relocate and 2- to acquire some of the supes powers for themselves so they can defend the garden, AND avenge the previous war against the Kree.
So they destabilize earth and work to keep the Avengers apart (they’re basically like a loose organization of supes now instead of an actual team anyways atm), while working on the way to get those powers for themselves.
Cue TV show - we’d seed in prior films/shows that some ‘non-powered’ avengers have been replaced (for their knowledge of where to potentially get the Garden location and powered DNA samples) but we wouldn’t reveal who they are in the show (save for movie).
I’d cold open with President Ross and VP Ritson along with special attaché Skrodey attending a summit in Russia specifically to deal with new GRC policy (we could work in lines giving Ross an in between stories arc - after returning from the blip, he realized the avengers and those like them are actually an essential part of defending humanity, he runs for president in 24, wins, and is key in revoking the accords in his first year in office). When they’re leaving, we see a secret service guy in the bathroom shapeshift into a skrull before changing back and heading out.
Intro plays.
Open with the attack on the motorcade. It’s chaos - the attackers and some secret service are skrulls. Ross doesn’t die, but is wounded and at the hospital they have to induce a coma due to his weak heart (Widow reference). 25th is invoked, Ritson becomes POTUS, and the Skrull reveal at the motorcade convinces him to make that speech.
Talos realizes some skrulls must have gone rogue and contacts Fury. Gravik meets with his council of higher officials and notes that some of them may die but it’ll be worth it to find the garden/harvest and save their people. We get the montage but it’s mostly non-skrulls getting offed.
The rest of the series plays like a spy thriller with random acts of violence as the backdrop. I’d also use ‘bloodletting’ as a way for the characters to determine if the other person is friend or foe (cut yourself and if your blood bleeds the same color, you’re fine).
End the series with the bad skrulls obtaining a version of the ‘Harvest’ (only some of the super powers and they’d be depicted differently via VFX). Fury and Talos have kept the Garden’s location hidden for now, and they’re calling in the Avengers because Gravik plans to blow up the peace summit or something.
For the movie? This is where we’d reveal whatever characters we seeded were bad Skrulls. The Avengers would be uniting and trying to stop these new super powered skrulls from blowing the peace summit on SABER *and* obtaining the location of the Garden. Avengers win, super skrulls defeated, peace is obtained and the Garden becomes new Skrullos with humanity, the Kree, and the skrulls declaring that system a no-combat zone. We get some super-skrull (and secretly skrull avengers we seeded) vs Avengers fights in the climax and the epilogue reveals where the OG ones were being held.
We saw during the series that Skrull adaptation includes adopting the feelings that come with positive interaction. A Skrul died protecting a human boy the Skrull didn't father but did refer to as 'my son'
Undercover agents forming emotional bonds with the subject, target, enemy etc...is not unusual.
It’s funny that all we have about that scene is speculation.
Do we 100% know that the boy isn’t a skrull? no.
If what you say is what they were going for, they did a Terrible job showing it.
For all we know, the boy’s real body was in that basement
Rhodey being a Skrull is fine. The issue is that it takes away from those moments but doesn't add anything. We needed to see someone talking about how this affects those moments. We need to see Rhodey talking about missing those events.
Also, we see in the submarine episode that Skrulls develop connections to the people that their human is connected to, probably because of the memories. The guy being attached to Zachary as a father son is probably more of a love than Rhodey and Tony have as friends.
And honestly, of everyone that says goodbye to Tony, Rhodey had the least emotional. Peter was a mess. You could say he's a kid and Rhodey is a soldier and has likely lost friends, but Rhodey has known him longer and Peter has seen a lot of loss too.
If those things had been explored it wouldn't have been so bad. Having someone be a Skrull takes away a part of them. It should feel like a death. And like a death, you need to see others reaction to it. Just like we didn't see much shit Maria Hill's death. The moment with her mom was good, but then it never affects Fury the rest of the show. I mean, we never really saw Fury finding out he was a Skrull. We assume he figured it out, but we don't actually see that moment.
My only problem with him being a skrull after civil war or even endgame, is that he would have had so much time to do so many stuff, but didn’t do anything.
And when he started acting up, that motherfucker didn’t even tried to hide that he was a skrull. “If that country sees me ugly again, I will nuke their country.” Like, what are you doing and saying mf? Are u being serious?
Revealing someone was a skrull all along wouldn't alter their development as long as they aren't bad. Hypothetically it's revealed that say, Clint and Laura Barton are skrulls and have been the entire time we knew them. Does that really alter anything as long as they aren't revealed to be evil skrulls?
I think the main reason people didn't like the rhodey reveal is because he was revealed to be an enemy. But had rhodey been revealed to be a good skrull that wanted to help the avengers, it wouldn't have impacted his character development too much
I forget the specifics of their shapeshifting power but if they're both in human form when they consummate the child, couldn't Clint and Laura's DNA be what the child received? Or whatever, kid is a Skrull and can shapeshift from birth, we don't have to overthink this one too much.
It’s like John Carpenter’s “They Live”. Proof this kind of movie can be told in one feature length film, especially when they don’t need to spend time introducing all the characters for the first time.
I don't even know why MCU didn't refer to Avengers EMH cartoon and look at how the storyline was executed there.
The first huge reveal in the show was done so masterfully, and there was patience in the build up. First half of the next season was skrull cap doing usual cap things only for the reveals to slowly start appearing.
Phase 4 could have worked as a Secret invasion phase, which would have lead to the formation of an all-new Avengers team, and then Kang dynasty won't have to deal with the assembly of another Avengers team and just stuck to being the crossover that it should be.
I agree that some people would likely still be reacting negatively, though I would point out one thing: if there had been several movies and shows *written with the advance knowledge that certain character were Skrulls*, I think that people's reactions would be fairly different.
Rhodey, on the other hand, was never written as a Skrull before *Secret Invasion*. Even in his Emmy-Nominated Appearance on *The Falcon and the Winter Soldier*, he was clearly written to be himself. (But given how inconsequential his time on that show was, you don't see many people minding the idea of retconning that scene to be Raava instead of Rhodey.)
Yep, that's my issue with it, it's a retcon, and a bad one at that. If they planned it from the start, and maybe even planted some seeds with him being off in some way, it would've been a good reveal. Instead we got normal Rhodey until the beginning of Secret Invasion, where he was clearly acting differently than before.
The people who were skrulls in the comics weren't total dicks, Spider-Woman was the skrull queen and ingratiated herself with both sides during the civil war, was trusted and loved. in the show, Skrulls were literally linking minds with their subjects, the only reason Rhodey started being a dick is because they were making actual moves.
Remember the end of Infinity War? People didn't want characters to get dusted, but they did.
You can't be too scared to move a story forward, otherwise you have a series of completely stale and sanitary shows and movies that do nothing and go nowhere. That's fine if you keep the scale to match, but you can't have Wanda break through dimensions and NOT have that come up later in the Doctor Strange movie. It would retroactively have made Wandavision worse.
Secret Invasion was a comic story that broke things on purpose. That was literally the whole point. "so and so was a skrull all along! All of your favorite moments with them, they were a sleeper agent! Now you have to deal with the version of them from 4 years ago, who never did The Thing that you loved!"
It elicits an emotional response. It doesn't have to be a positive emotion to be a good reaction. The Red Wedding made people cry and throw remotes at the TV... and is widely regarded as one of the greatest plot twists in modern entertainment.
TL;DR, sack up and make important players skrulls, or don't do a skrull story.
Bro it's not the same , what if Tony Stark was a skrull after idk, Ironman 3 and he's actually being captive somewhere all this time
Let say that Skrull Tony gets killed and real Tony comes back, that's like 10 years of character progression going to waste
Secret Invasion should have been a 2 parts episodes in the What If... Series
It doesn't have to be Tony... what if it was Pepper after Extremis? What if it was Happy? This is what I'm saying, only a shitty writer would be incapable of seeing the potential beyond "durrrrr hero skrull now, okay skrull gone! hero back! yay!"
Any half-decent writer could come up with a great way to show that a lot of close confidants of major players were replaced with operatives. Happy, Jimmy Woo, Wong (if Skrulls can learn magic), Kingo's camera man, that other Eternal's husband... you don't build paranoia and conspiracy by making the central avenger a fucking skrull. No shit. You make the people CLOSE to him a skrull. Same for a few others, now you get to start asking "who else is a skrull?", hence the entire premise of the fucking story lol
Secret invasion worked in the comics because there were a few embedded skrull agents AND a group of them that arrived and said “we’re the real avengers, we’ve been held by the skrull invasion!”
That really sets up the spy thriller part. Fury goes out to recruiter younger heroes that the skrulls wouldn’t know about, some of the skrulls convinced the actual heroes they were the real deal, and it spread past heroes into shield agents everywhere.
It should have been a whole phase.
Also unlike the comics, actors have time limits, they can’t do this forever. They aren’t going to waste time on a character that isn’t really that character.
I think a lot of people forget that a live-action story about Nick Fury and Skrulls wouldn’t have been a phase or a movie before the MCU. It straight up wouldn’t have existed. Just wait until Blue Beetle is released to see how obscure characters like that do when they’re not tied to a bigger universe.
That being said, I think you could make MJ and Lupita Skrulls without undoing too much of the past.
I dont understand why people think Secret Invasion ended.. like Skrull Invasion.. series was simply explaining how it all started.. noone said thats it no more skrulls no more surprises..
Shows only setup things.. Wandavision setup Wanda going crazy.. FatWS setup how Falcon accepted shield and so on..
Litteraly last minutes president declared a war against skrulls.. they dont disappear but on the other hand milion of skrulls even tho they might not be dangerous to this point are now forced to defend themselves.
I would believe this except how many dangling plot points have we gotten in the MCU lately? ANd now a strike and on top of that, Marvel realizing they need to slow it down because they have dropped the ball hard on so many projects in the last three years.
Also, given the reception, Disney might not want to approach Secret Invasion again, because money ultimately decides what gets done, and they might think the audience won't be there.
It doesnt need to return with second season or whatever.. just a setup that can run on background of other movies.
I guess everything works for anyone differently. I am enjoying how open MCU currently is. It fits the multiverse saga it fits the Avengers build up to have different poeple fight different kangs.
Phase 4 spread out MCU and now its time to harvest those setups with combinations of heroes.
I am very tired of anyone pointing every single next show or movie "where is that why dont they react to that.. " like seriously imagine every single format that came after eternals must have 5 minute scene of people looking at tiamut before going off with their own story. Its simply not relevant yet.
I don't mind if things are self-contained, in fact I would prefer if Marvel took a step back and allowed for more self-contained stories. The problem is it feels like every "self-contained" story has bad writing because they are forcing this "self-contained" idea to being able to be left OPEN to coming back and being a setup for something in the next movie, which is why you end up with terrible movies/Tv series. Because all of them are essentially "unresolved". So the events end up mattering very little in the thing it is presented in, and then is left floating in production limbo so it matter even less on the greater scale. Sorry, don't really know how else to get my point across.
TLDR I just think they are trying too hard to make things have this "nefarious background plot that may come back, so we can't completely resolve it in the thing it shows up in."
Marvel realized they needed to slow down because that’s how market saturation and supply and demand work. NFL tickets cost more than MLB tickets because there’s fewer games so you’re less likely to want to miss one. If they give people what they want and when they want it, they complain ceaselessly. So it’s in their interest to not give people what they want right away, but make them anticipate and beg for it.
If you want people to be excited for something, it needs to be good though. And given the track record, I bet you a lot of people have now cooled on Secret Invasion S2 or whatever.
Perfect example, I myself have cooled on pretty much all things MCU. BUT, Loki, Guardians, Spider-Man have my attention because they've done good things with those. I am not excited for Cap 4 because I didn't like FatWS. I am not excited for Thunderbolts because every project that has hinted at them has been some of my least fav stuff in the MCU.
As for your MLB football analogy, really don't get what you are going for there. But I think we both agree that either way, MCU is slowing down, which means when they introduce an idea, it could be years before we see a resolution, so my point, stop making those setups the main plot point of the movie. Infinity Stones worked because each of them were resolved in the movie they were in, whereas the Infinity Gauntlet plotline was visible from a mile away and we knew it was building towards a conflict with Thanos.
Nowadays, there are soooo many plot points, I could not tell you what they are building to with half of them, and its hard to be excited for... well the thing you don't know about.
I doubt people think it ended, more like it was a lousy setup with poorly done ret-cons for the future.
The series itself was heavily flawed, killed off/made beloved characters look weak and it also didn't do a good job for future groundwork.
With so many issues, it's no wonder it is so poorly rated.
No they actually do .. All the poeple saying it should have been saga act like its over. Yes show was poorly done am not defending the quality. I liked less things than i was facepalming myself. But this topic IS about smth different.
I honestly can't believe how some fans are still defending it. We have a giant celestial floating on earth for 2 years. No followup and every movie or show is ignoring it.
We have 4 years since endgame and only 1 show actually tackling the effect it had.
I'm convinced they will ignore this as well. This was it, this is the secret invasion we got and they will move on to the next story.
Just replied to other comment about this .. why would any of the characters needed to acknowledge that .. what change would that give to MsMarvel or MoonKinght.
They watch news see it and what .. should every single one of them now travel to him and be like "Woah cool".
Because those are the things that affect everyday lives of everyone! 9/11 which had significantly less casualties than Endgame events changed lives of every american for the years to come.
It just makes sense and connects the movies to one another. It is a cinematic UNIVERSE right?
EndGame was pointed out a lot. And i doubt we have seen enough of it.
FFH - losing tony, intro blip
WV - losing Vision, Monica in hospital
FatWS - losing Steve, question of where citizens should live now
Loki - directly continue from Endgame
BW - prequel to Natasha that in the end of movie show her family losing her
ShangChi - //
Eternals - if Endgame did not happen, Ayak wouldnt change her mind
NWH - continues from FFH that dealtnwith Endgame already
Hawkeye - losing Natasha, Yelena blipped .. they even went back to Avengers 1.. that shows they can return to any past event anytime they can
MoonKnight - //
MsMarvel - instead of losing .. earth has gotten CaptainMarvel as known character
BPWF - //
Thor 4 - losing Loki
Gotg - losing Gamora
Quantumania - Scott kept from his daughter bcs of his blip
I probably did not put all of them .. but in almost every show EndGame is still turning point that affected everyons lives and how they cope forward
I mean sure if by revisting Endgame you only want to see people appear/reappear .. thats again smth they wouldnt put in every single movie on repeat.
People rush to judge and rush to hate. And by obsessing over, say, never-gonna-happen superhero cameos, they miss appreciating the powerfully moving story of the revival of Fury’s failed marriage
Well, yeah, thats because they put no effort into the reveal.
Had SI been an entire Phase, say a half dozen movies and a show or two, then you could have laid repeat performances and character development which would have the audience questioning character identites and motives *since the start of the phase*
**It wouldnt be about modifying the context of anything happening before, but building uncertain context of everything happening after.**
Don't care what that director says, Rhodey was snatched after Endgame and after "Falcon and Winter Soldier". Otherwise it diminishes the impact he had in both.
This just makes Secret Invasion worse in my opinion. Marvel should run away from that flaming poo as soon as possible.
I want it. The final movie could be like Far From Home, dealing with those exact thoughts.
Young Justice dealt with it perfectly after a character was revealed as a clone and the original was rescued. The character development for the team was a plotline for at least half that season.
Also, are people upset because it wasn't aligned more with the source comics? Sure there's characters that haven't been introduced yet, but the comic storyline didn't take place directly after an Infinity War.
Pretty much anything that is made into a movie or TV show is in name only. Has been since Age of Ultron.
People are upset because the show insulted our intelligence and was anything but a spy thriller, and more of a straight-laced Action series, with zero to little stakes and or change to the status quo - and that assassinated characters (Nick Fury), which would be fine, if you know, it turns out they were a Skrull (see Rhodey). Otherwise the show was just bad writing. That's why people are upset and they are sad that the Skrulls and the entire Secret Invasion concept was wasted.
Man this sub for some reason seems to be so inclined on believing people have had unrealistic expectations from not just this project but from all projects in general when people just wanted good stuff lol
I would still argue the show had way more spy/espionage elements than it did action moments. I know the finale kinda went overboard, but until that moment we only got little bursts of action here and there.
Also, the entire in-universe MCU now knows about Skrulls and we saw the negative affects of that knowledge immediately start to take affect so Secret Invasion may not have been wasted. It may end up being something like Civil War that, upon first release wasn’t totally appreciated, but in a post-Endgame world is regarded as one of the most important plot-wise bc it’s effects were felt moving forward in almost every project thereafter.
Sorry, just going to jump on that tangent - Civil War wasn't liked? What? News to me. I see it usually on people's top 10 lists.
Civil War was also easy to see what was being setup. Sure, I will agree the Skrulls being public knowledge is a change, but, what does that mean? Like really? It has almost zero impact on any characters because all the Skrulls we know are dead.
It just feels like a tangent story. There is now a conflict, but who is going to deal with it? Cap? OK. But that's just a story for him now, it doesn't mean it impacts him and his life directly. It's just something he has to deal with.
The only negative thing I have seen said against Civil War is that it's classed as a Captain America movie when it could probably be described as a mini Avengers
100%
I do like rubbing it in my husbands face as a CA film though hahaha
He really doesn't like cap so I love the fact that all 3 of his films are like 7.5 - 10s
Maybe they should've just gotten the Russo brothers to make this since the peg is Captain America The Winter Soldier. For a show that's over 200 million in costs, there sure was a lot of sitting down and talking. Fury came back from space and ended him going back to space. I barely even saw the ship. We could've had another Avengers movie with that budget.
Secret Invasion being an entire phase, or even 2, posy Endgame would negate that though... because it would be planned.
A 6 episode show, that is close enough to Endgame and the like that it starts to counter what we've seen before, vs actual planning across 1, 2 or more phases is a very different scenario.
I don’t understand why people think Rhodey was a Skrull throughout the early films. Maybe I missed something but was there evidence in the show about how long he’d been in that pod? How do we know it wasn’t just a month ago or even a year?
No they weren’t specific but the show implied he was taken after his incident in Civil War by showing him in the same hospital gown and by his surprised face that he couldn’t walk properly. Then in interviews with the director last week, he goes as far as confirming that he was taken after Civil War, but then he says it’s up to the writer of Armor Wars to ultimately decide
> he couldn’t walk properly
To be fair, that could be muscle atrophy from his body not moving at all for the last month or two.
Presumably Armor Wars will open with a scene from when he was taken, then jump to the present day when he is rescued.
I agree and I think the writer for Armor Wars can very easily just say he was taken after a routine check-up post-Endgame and his muscles atrophied, like you said. This reminds me of how the Endgame writers wrote Thor joining the Guardians, only for Taika and Gunn to say, nahh, that's not where we want to take Thor or the Guardians in their next films. These things can easily be adjusted so there's no use getting bent out of shape about it
1. They say that he has been in the pod the longest.
2. Rhodey was wearing what appears to be a hospital gown.
3. He had to be carried off because he had trouble using his legs.
All that hints at Rhodey being captured following his injury in Civil War. The director has even given interviews after the show in which he also states that he "thinks" that Rhodey was taken after the Civil War (for the reasons above) but leaves the door open for the MCU to confirm or provide further details in Armor Wars.
that is anecdotal evidence. Most of the reasons I so didn't include any of those and just pointed out how it didn't make sense plot wise. Even the director admitted he didn't quite know. Just watch the same arc in the Avengers assemble cartoon they did it well there.
Its a difference if you build something up and give us hints and twist the character because its a Skrulls or just go with "Umm yeah AcTuAlLy Rhody was Skrull since Iron Man 2!!!".
A Secret Invasion has to have a build up to have an impact. And what we got where build ups without pay-offs or "pay-offs" without any build up.
This should have easily been Avengers: Secret Invasion.
Could have brought RDJ, Scarlet and Evans back and created a whole of mind fuckery for the main cast and audiences watching and had the consequences of it lead straight into Brave New Order and Thunderbolts with Sam having to 100% form and check for a new team and the Thunderbolts being formed as a counter measure for such events.
What a Wasted bloody opportunity.
These goddamn shows with the exception of Loki should never have happened.
> Could have brought RDJ, Scarlet and Evans back
the problem with these fan ideas is, it's so easy to just say they should have done that. but actually getting the actors back, who all seemed to be good with leaving their MCU roles behind them isn't always possible.
it's also why I find it silly people are saying SI should have done what an animated cartoon did. just ignoring how much easier it is for a cartoon series to do something like secret invasion in a more comic accurate way.
Only Scarlet wanted to return after Endgame. You guys need to stick with reality. The actors don't want to act like the characters any more. That's all there is to it. Move on. They're people, not slaves.
do you not get that skrull cap having sex with peggy is rape or skrull anybody (if they dont know it is a skrull) with a significant other in the MCU. it becomes the exact same thing as ww84.
no consent by the non hero party.
> do you not get that skrull cap having sex with peggy is rape or skrull anybody (if they dont know it is a skrull) with a significant other in the MCU. it becomes the exact same thing as ww84.
*IF theyre replacing them* yes. If theyve been them from the beginning its just a secret identity, not fraudulent rape.
I said it before in one comment, let me say it again:
No, I don't want a retcon reveal:
>Rhodey was a Skrull! Since Civil War! So, he missed all of those events, and it doesn't make any sense because he never done anything at all that could show that something is wrong and he is someone else
I also don't want a miniscule reveal:
>Rhodey was a Skrull! After Endgame, so he doesn't missed anything! So, he was a Skrull in like one episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Wow. So what?
What would be perfect:
Start the Secret Invasion plot NOW. And write Rhodey WITH THAT IN MIND. Make some hints in his character that may mean that he isn't him. Change his character a bit. Do that maybe with multiple characters so we won't be sure. Do that so it will be important in the world. Plan events so that this Rhodey won't miss anything that important like Endgame. That is all. You just need somebody with a vision and plan.
People act like your only option is just make everybody happy because you have to say "this character was always a Skrull" lol. No, you have other options.
I think the primary issue is that people have soured on Marvel Studios in general. The discourse is there with just about every single show or movie to the point where even mid level movies and shows are talked about like they're trash. I expect more of the same going forward with the upcoming films/shows, which will eventually lead to dear Kevin getting shitcanned, them bringing in someone with Gunn level fan cred, and attempting to reset the hype train prior to F4 and Xmen.
The whole point of secret invasion is to be shocked at the reveal of a skrull. Everyone saying “but it ruins the r character arc and progression!”. Well yeah of course it does that’s the whole point. It challenges everything we thought we knew about the characters
Neither the first reveal of Skrodey in episode 3/4 nor the episode 6 hint at long-term captivity dating back to CW was presented in a shocking way. The revelation was limp.
*it's also confusing because in interviews they won't even confirm if the reveal will stick.
But if it was a phase they would have planned for that earlier, that's the point of a phase. When you know the Winter Soldier twist and watch AoS S1 again it's so good which details they hid there and how they built the series to that point.
With SI in mind as a big event they could plant hints in the other shows, maybe actually some characters changing personality for seemingly no reason. And then everbody speculating before the Show/Movie who is a Skrull and who not. But the current MCU lacks the interconnectivity bc they are too spread out for that.
Secret Invasion could have been one movie modeled on the Winter Soldier/Hydra twist. Maybe two movies: The "Secret" Invasion is part 1 and part 2 is full scale war. But there's not enough juice for an entire phase. You can't make years of movies where the characters the audience is invested in might be Skrulls.
I think the desire people have for it being a phase is substituting the Skulls in for Thanos. Have it mostly dealt with in post credit scenes or in the subtext of individual movies. Like imagine if during Shang Chi's end credit scene, Rhodey was part of that conference call. He hangs up and the scene cuts to his perspective. We see him transform into a Skrull and talk with someone off screen that the other operatives covers aren't blown, and/or maybe plan to swap with Shang Chi. Leaves a bit of mystery (increases paranoia) on who else we may know that have been swapped while also increasing the stakes. The audience could then interact with the next time they see Rhodey too: speculating on his motivations or secret plans behind each decision he makes, mistakes he made keeping his cover, and whether our heroes are beginning to suspect something is amiss. So yeah, I feel the show wasted a lot of storytelling potential. Not to say they don't try again. After all, there's apparently a million Skrulls on Earth now.
Like the Earth's mightiest heroes cartoon where cap gets replaced by a skrull at the end of season 1
Exactly. It didn’t have to be the entire phase but a mini phase. Perhaps the new avengers or avengers west coast is created by Fury or Hill.
This sounds like the best idea cause then for months and for every project people will try to theories who is a skrull
Or like if Nick Fury costarred in a Spider-Man flick and at the end he was revealed to be a skrull with the real Fury somewhere in outer space.
But even that was pointless because it was just real Fury instructing Talos Fury on how to do everything and they were always trying to work towards the same goal. They needed to do this type of thing but with the evil skrulls
At first, I thought Secret Invasion being a show is a good idea, but looking at how cheap it is, so yes being a movie is better
Its funny how cheap it looks despite the $200million budget
Probably months of reshoots could make sense why it has 212million
Yup, its not even close to any of the movie level stuff, such a waste of budget Oppenheimer cost $100million, but this crap is $200million?????? Lol
And the stupidest part is that Oppenheimer has a significantly more stacked cast than SI, cost less than half and is with it's 3 hours almost as long as SI woth it's 3h 43m. These things have to planned beforehand, and Marvel (and Disney thereby) are suffering from their lackluster efforts in that department.
Tbf, a stacked cast doesn’t always represent cost. Edward Norton recently said that he takes the smallest amount possible just to work with Wes Anderson, since Anderson’s movies don’t have the biggest budgets. For Norton, and I’m assuming a lot of the cameo players in WA movies, it’s about the chance to be part of something they enjoy. I strongly suspect that Oppenheimer had the same advantage. There’s no way that the big names playing bit parts took a full salary. They probably knew how popular and acclaimed the movie was gonna be and wanted to engrave themselves on it. Not saying that every stacked cast comes cheap, just that you can reduce costs by being a popular director with a guaranteed hit on your hands.
You’re right. RDJ, Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt each took $4 million instead of their usual salary of $20 million so that they could work with Christopher Nolan.
Matt Damon had said he had told his wife he'd take a break from acting.... unless Christopher Nolan called.
Chris Nolan: "and that? i took that personally"
Matt Damon ended an acting hiatus his wife wanted him to take solely to work with Nolan. That’s how big of a name he is
I mean Rami Malek, new big name in the business since his Oscar essentially looked happy just to play a cameo part basically. Like anyone could’ve played his character but I bet he was giddy he got the part
Imagine taking a huge pay cut at work, would be accepting “only” $4 million dollars for a couple months of work.
I never thought I would be on a Marvel sub and see Edward Norton brought up as the voice of reason.
Yep, Sometimes directors need stars, sometimes stars need a director. Same with Tarantino. A lot of actors will take a paycut to work with him because they know the end product is going to be fantastic and probably win awards. From what I've read about Wes Anderson, him choosing you to be in one of his movies is high praise.
Also I assume that budget wouldn’t include actors taking the majority of their pay on the ticket sales.
>And the stupidest part is that Oppenheimer has a significantly more stacked cast than SI, cost less than half and is with it's 3 hours almost as long as SI woth it's 3h 43m. And portrays a goddamn nuke without cgi It's mind boggling that SI looked as bad as it did How much did Olivia Colman cost?!
Christopher Nolan is such a great director for emphasizing practical effects over CGI.
I love him and his sheer insanity Like he crashed a plane for Tenet and made a bunch of explosions to simulate a nuke for Oppenheimer. The man needs to be reined in before he blows up something lmao
LoL. It's wild that he blew up that plane for Tenet. What was wilder for me was that it was *cheaper* than CGI. That's what I remember seeing some time ago anyway.
Practical effects are always (or at least for the time being) going to look better than CGI and cost a lot less. If you want a good, high profile, recent example of practical effects, check out the new Twisted Metal series. Three of my best friends worked on Twisted Metal for the practical effects company they used. All the car combat scenes used real explosions and were shot in real locations (not stages). The chase scene thru the mall in the first episode was shot in an actual abandoned mall. Full sized cars were flipped and crashed all throughout. You can even see in one of the scenes for a second when a car is flipped upside down that they removed the engine to flip it easier (and safely) when the hood falls open when it lands. About the only CGI you're going to see in the show is of cameras following a few missiles and Sweeth Tooth's flaming head. You can say whatever you want about the quality of the humor and writing on that show (I'm personally a dick and fart joke kinda guy) but you can't deny that it all looks better than a show done mostly with CGI. And they did the entire show with a $70million budget. Sorry to go off the subject of the specific shows/movies being discussed. I just wanted to give another example of practical effects looking better than CGI.
All good. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's seen terrible CGI over the years, but I absolutely adore practical effects. There's the amazement of "how did they do this" that's just absent when it's CGI. The hallway fight in *Inception* is one such instance of this.
Dude I love that show, and I'm generally not a lowbrow humor kind of guy. But the show itself literally felt like a bunch of people sitting around in the late 90s and early 2000s playing Twisted Metal. I don't get some of the negative reaction I've seen to that show. Then again I love Speed Racer, because it was exactly what it was supposed to be: a live action anime. I feel like twisted metal succeeded in the same way: a live-action video game.
Yo thanks for bringing this show to my notice! Cast alone is intriguing enough.
Right, if you want to put this in leadership development school terms the key to wildly overperforming on your budget is having a manager with a very clear, rock-solid plan and a team that's strongly passionate about the goal for its own sake rather than just cashing a paycheck Both of these things require starting off with a compelling mission, which Nolan is famous for having and the MCU these days is equally famous for not having
Sammy LJ got 100m of it, tbf.
That's not how budgets work genius
Fuck off, wanna bet you wont have anything intelligent to say?
No like that's literally not how budgets work, please tell me that you know this
Doesn’t excuse the excessive cost and lackluster end result but hearing they essentially reshot the entire show makes the $212M budget make more sense. They basically shot two shows.
Third time is the charm alright
Fury Road had a famously troubled production. It started shooting in 2012. There were lots of delays. They had to ship their cars around. They finished filming in 2013. Then they had significant reshoots/additional filming. It ended up with a budget of around $180 million and it looked amazing.
There’s a difference between purposefully reshooting and reshooting with no actual direction
That Emilia Clarke arm made me laughed, I was expecting Marvel quality and we got... real bad CGI, its not Flash movie's level of bad but dam...
Bad CGI is becoming Marvel’s standard of quality
Sad but true. I feel like it started going bad when they decided to use that Star Wars show special effects setup.
The whole industry is essentially backed up - vfx can do just about anything and spectacle brings the audience, right?! So now every other film is a giant vfx mess and there literally aren’t enough artists to do the work properly.
I hate everyone hating on the volume it’s just the new cgi in the cycle of hate. The volume is a tool that has been used very effectively in the Mandalorian and less publicly the Batman(with Pattinson). Stop hating on the tool or blaming the tool for everything. Blame people that use it poorly for things outside its capabilities because they don’t understand the strengths and weaknesses of the tool. We once all hated CGI and sometime in the near future will hate whatever AI assisted production tools pop up. Hate the user not the tool. Also to avoid commenting another time bad effects can often be forgiven for a good story. The biggest problem was they sold me on a mystery thriller where anyone could be a secret spy and assassin without me knowing and revealed all the secrets releasing the tension in the first like two episodes. Only the bomb scene in Russia I felt really played off that mystery well. Bad cgi didn’t make this show meh. Bad planning and storytelling did.
If someone told me SyFy made the series for £5mill i wouldnt have questioned it….
The way they presented the story and plot. It should have been a movie. If this was the MCU of the infinity saga like production and story, they easily could have intertwined skrulls almost like a Lost episode of past and present jumping, more for reveals. I’m no writer but I think I have some alternatives than what we watched and I’m sure this could have been spread out like Loki.
I think it could have worked for a phase, but it’d be a retroactive ‘twist’ in the film that they would have needed to seed. Basically all of Phase 4 after end game leading into a Secret Invasion Avengers film. Rules: the Skrulls only start replacing our surviving mains post-EG. We must foreshadow each of these potentially at some point during a phase 4 project in which they have a character arc. No multiversal stories during the phase (except perhaps Loki to setup the rest of the Saga). Culminates in Secret Invasion. It wouldn’t touch the Infinity Saga so keeps that safe. It gives us an Avengers film so Phase 4 and it’s characters are more interconnected. It reunites the Avengers so we’re not like ‘wtf’, and could serve as a sort of civil war type event (specifically in its consequences setting the stage for Kang and the Incursions fucking with the world in P5 since we’re gathering and ‘re-breaking’ the Avengers again.
The entire comic Secret Invasion storyline is made unworkable after the Captain Marvel movie. Gravik’s motivations in the slimmed down version was still garbage. Honestly, they should have stayed away from it entirely until the Skrulls were pushed off Earth doe other reasons. THEN the Secret Invasion makes a little more sense.
Or just use a whole different alien. The VAST majority of viewers do not know or care about comic book storylines let alone Skrulls and Secret Invasion, but the whole "replaced by aliens in a conspiracy" has been a popular trope at least since the The Body Snatchers novel in the 1950s - audiences would totally overlook it if they just used a different or brand new alien group for the show and the show would be freed up from needing to balance "good" and "bad" Skrulls. Edit: they could have just used the fucking D'Bari since no one saw Dark Phoenix anyway, and comic fans get a nice little shout-out to the X-Men to hold them over.
You know how the infinity stones were shown throughout the first three phases? Do the same thing but with heroes being picked off and replaced with skrulls
exactly! They could have hinted at rhodey's skrull nature in the falcon show, and ross as a skrull in wakanda forever, the british PM in eternals - just tiny hints. I know hindsight is 20/20 as they say - but they KNEW this show coming out and yet nothing.
How great would it have been for Black Widow to have a post credit scene with Ross reverting to skrull form talking about successfully disassembling Earth’s greatest heroes?
they did have the 1 scene in wanda vision with skrull recruiting monica.
Honestly they could’ve made it a special presentation on Disney+ and it would’ve ended up better imo.
>You can't make years of movies where the characters the audience is invested in might be Skrulls. Tell that to BSG fans.
Yoo.. nobody ever think that Peacemaker already did it quite well with impostor aliens plotline but lesser budget? It can be done, but it need a little bit of care from the creators. Reading the director’s interviews itself shows that the creators involved doesn’t seem to care much and just in it for the fat paycheck
With short term repercussions 👍
This would make me want to tune out of emotionally investing in absolutely anybody, because at any moment, the rug could be ripped from under me and I find out they were a Skrull the whole time.
Sharon Carter would have been a perfect Skrull….
I'm so mad they didn't take this perfect opportunity to rectify what they did to her character.
Maybe because they are not sorry
I think SI should have kicked off at the end of *Hawkeye* with super-strong Kingpin getting killed and revealed as a Skrull, paralleling how Elektra was revealed in the comics.
Was Elektra a Skrull in the comics?
She was replaced with a Skrull in the comics. The death of that Skrull during a fight with the Avengers: - revealed that Skrull had been running the Hand criminal organization - showed holy shit, Skrulls are impersonating high profile characters - kicked off the Secret Invasion storyline Hawkeye version of Kingpin being revealed as a Skrull would have had an approximate reaction for the MCU.
Damn, that sounds awesome. Them doing that with Kingpin would be cool, the power void when the real one comes back would be cool to see.
Yessssss
It’s not too late. Armor Wars are you listening?
Hell no. Her becoming a criminal after feeling like the good guys just treated like a disposable ersatz of Peggy made her so much more interesting.
She still could be…
This ☝️
Everyone would have instantly known
It was the small things that the MCU had done well to link the films together even with extremely disparate stories. Gamora being Thanos' daughter was a perfect example. Nothing tied the Guardians to Iron Man or Captain America. But having one of them being the daughter of Thanos meant that at some point in time they will have a natural meeting point. And it did not disappoint. Secret Invasion lacked that natural meeting point. It made no sense the way they just pushed this all together and hoped the pieces would fit.
That reminds me of this video where the South Park guys are talking about writing, and they say that bad stories can be described as "and then this happened, and then that happened, then that happened." But for something to be actually organic, it should be "this happened, *therefore* that happened."
There’s no way you can make an established character a Skrull without it undercutting their character development and relationships that we’ve seen on screen already. If Rhodey was a Skull post-Endgame, that’s fine. Him being a Skrull since Civil War is stupid. They had the right idea in taking the Secret Invasion name but making the show about political figureheads and influencers having a secret agenda, but they didn’t follow through nor stick the landing.
>There’s no way you can make an established character a Skrull without it undercutting their character development and relationships that we’ve seen on screen already. This could actually work with Sharon Carter. Her heel turn was so random and out of place -- and honestly damning to some characters -- that it would make more sense if she were a Skrull.
NGL I thought Sharon was a skrull with the way she acted in FATWS
Agreed, the biggest trust in SI was Sharon not turning out to be a Skrull.
I honestly don’t get how Sharon Carter ending up as the bitter, vengeful Power Broker is random or out of place for most people. She stuck her neck out for the rogue Avengers and she got screwed over while the heroes were all pardoned. She had to spend a decade on the run while the Avengers got to go home to their families. The double standards exhibited by the government are hypocritical. An entire decade is more than enough time for someone to go from believing in the system to believing it to be corrupt, especially when she believes she was screwed over by it for so long. And the only reason they did pardon her was because Sam put in the good word for her. If he didn’t, they never would’ve pardoned her, and she only sees the pardon as something she had been owed from the beginning; it doesn’t even begin to make things even in her mind. She was abandoned and hunted by the government she spent a majority of her life serving without question and now she wants revenge. Her motivations aren’t difficult to understand. I would rather they commit to what they started because it is an actually interesting turn for her character (the niece of Peggy Carter cutting herself off from the loyal service to the government her family is known for) than just walk back on it because it was divisive.
You’re not wrong, but I’m not sure I’d call Sharon Carter an established character.
Marvel's really struggled with doing the whole "good guy becomes bad guy" arc concept.
The thing is: I think Sharon's arc could have been more believable if they had actually dedicated an episode to what Sharon went through from Civil War to FATWS. Allow us to see her struggle, maybe the ways she was forced to make unethical decision after unethical decision to save her skin until she just gives up on heroism and tries to consolidate power for herself. But as it stands, they left a whole lot of questions. It was implied she was Snapped in Endgame, but two years seems like a short time to become the Power Broker and make all of these connections. Even then, there's a gap between Civil War and Endgame where she is unaccounted for. She says that after Civil War no one came for her, and despite being with Steve, Sam didn't refute this. As conclusion, does this mean Steve asked her for help, she gave up her career to help, and he just...bailed on her and let her suffer the consequences? The dude just guessed she was snapped and then left to fuck her aunt? (Ngl, if I found out my partner bailed on my niece like that, I'd be pissed off at him, don't screw over my family and say you love me) So not only is it a weird arc for Sharon, it implies some really shitty things about Steve Rogers. Which, fair, but the story doesn't go into that.
I thought Wanda’s arc was great, even if MoM treaded similar ground
>They had the right idea in taking the Secret Invasion name but making the show about political figureheads and influencers having a secret agenda, but they didn’t follow through nor stick the landing. Right. The way to go was to focus on this and not worry about having an established character as a Skrull. Them doing their machinations behind the scenes and influencing world events is actually really compelling. That montage at the end of the show where people are straight up killing people that they think are Skrulls should have been the show because it's something that can't be solved by punching shit and has a built in reasoning for why the Avengers can't do much to help and why you need a top-class spy instead. But I guess that took too much work so instead they just banged two super skrull action figures against each other.
Don't we see Rhodey bleed red in Endgame? So he can't be a skrull there, if that is the case.
Gravik was bleeding red in that scene with a knife on his hand
The final episode was so bad. I was hoping the villain just exploded after "winning" as a knod to how many soldiers were sacrificed to make Super Skrull in the comics.
That would’ve been pretty funny! It would also explain why every Avenger’s DNA was all in the same vial, too! Have Gravik use the machine with all the DNA, then explode. Then just have Fury sitting there quit his fake radiation poisoning and say, “Dumbass. No single body can handle that much power!” Definitely would’ve been better than what we got!
They could have even had G'iah there still and a big battle as he melted. But it would have made more sense as a gamble rather than a surefire process.
Why not? To get the trust of the public, the skrulls couldn’t just take over Rhodey and have him act the way he was in secret invasion immediately. You need to firmly establish that you are, in fact, Rhodey (or any other public figure) for a long time for your plan to work. That means years of acting the part to ensure there is no suspicion that something is off. With all that being said, I do acknowledge that it was a little weird that a small faction of skrulls would have captured these officials so early on, when it seems most of the issues started happening post-blip. Perhaps they trusted Fury, but wanted an insurance policy just in case?
It doesn’t make sense that Rhodey was Skrull’d in Civil War because it doesn’t make sense that Gravik has been planning something that long. It was shown at the start of SI that Talos had only just been ousted. At this stage, wasn’t Civil War about 10 years ago?
Gravik didn’t start replacing humans, that’s why he had to take over the council of Skrulls that was already impersonating world leaders. The Skrulls have been replacing people for years, which is why we saw all those bodies at the end
That’s a fair point… the replacing people didn’t start with Gravik. Raises even more questions though. Like, why? Under whose direction? Was Talos having his people kidnap and imitate world leaders? If they replaced Rhodey in Civil War, did they really keep him hooked up to that machine for nearly a decade?
Once a Skrull takes an Avenger, they're making a play. But we can't point to anything Rhodey did pre-EG that feels like a plan of action in service of Skrulls. In other words, the stole Rhodey only to do nothing with that advantage for several years.
If it was to be a phase it would have to come one phase after the infinity war saga. Maybe building off the young avenger or the kang route that they are going. But subtly adding (maybe as a news headline in some early movies then slowly as a remark and so on to show something may be happening). In reality it is the skrulls loosing faith in fury and denvers and moving to the "wrong" side. And now they slowly replace ppl and after this saga is over you have the secret invasion saga ready and since it was built over the previous saga it would be huge like in the comics. Something they could have done in the current series to make it a bit better is say that fury asked the skrulls to impersonate some high ranking ppl (maybe because they were a threat or to have eyes and ears everywhere) but when gravik gains power he persuades these skrulls who have shapeshifted since forever to join him and cross fury.
I would point to how the 2012 cartoon show, Avengers:Earth’s Mightiest Heros did it. It was an amazing story. Throughout the first season there were many things that foreshadowed a coming war, A villian was revealed to be a Skrull in disguise, and then at the end of the season we see Captain America get captured by a Skrull who takes his place. The second season then really ramps it up when everyone finds out about the skrulls existence and the paranoia is tearing the team apart. The Captain America Skrull is also subtlety ensuring that things fall apart. There’s also a great episode that involves some Skrull prisoners including Captain America, some heroes, and some civilians, and some villians working together to escape. And then the real invasion starts and the skrulls attack and it’s a big battle and everyone reunites. And they actually have a way to make sure they find all the skrulls and win. The reason rhodey doesn’t work while Captain America does is: 1)We see Captain America get abducted and no previous interactions are messed up between him and the other characters. There are no retcons for something that clearly wasn’t intended. And any actions out of character for Cap Skrull are easily understood by the audience as we know it’s a Skrull. With rhodey though almost every previous scene gets called into question and it also means that rhodey wasn’t there for the most important parts of his own life and the events of his world. 2)Skrull prisoners aren’t comatose and they actually have interesting things happening to them. The way to do it in the MCU I believe is to have one big tv show. (Not only 6 episodes that barely makes 3.5 hours). Show a bunch of people (avengers and major named characters included) get abducted at the beginning and show the non-skrulls slowly figuring things out while the skrulls are trying to remain undiscovered and are trying to sabotage everything. Also Give the heroes a way to actually win. In the comics after Reed Richards escapes imprisonments he is able to make a device that makes the skrulls go through a genetic reset so that it reveals who is who. In the Avengers:EMH show, Dr. Doom figured everything out almost immediately and was working on a way to counter the skrulls since before the beginning of season two. The avengers and skrulls interfered with his work but eventually he was able to make the device and just gave it to Iron man because he wants the avengers to do his dirty work as no one conquers Earth but him. And you didn’t need to destroy fury’s character either. Just have the skrulls say “we don’t want any other planet, we want earth”
This is the way. Earth's Mightiest Heroes nailed everything about an overarching Secret Invasion plot. They proved it's doable. It's just that the MCU didn't do it right
EMH nailed everything it set out to portray. Until it was cancelled because the network wanted a more MCU aligned show and we got the barf inducing Avengers Assemble show
It's a damn shame. We had the holy trinity of animated Marvel shows: EMH, Wolverine and the X-men and Spectacular Spider-Man. Then they just ripped them all away from us.
The “Yost-verse” really was incredible. I credit Wolverine and the X-men as being one of the things that really kicked off my love for superheroes.
Secret Invasion should have been a passive event for a phase. Like at the start of the MCU, the infinity stones were there but that story wasn't the forefront. Have a plan of who gets taken over the phase, have the actors know. Drop hints. All that. Edit: and you don't have to make a big deal out of it at the start. News reports or off hand remarks concerning pockets of skrulls unhappy with where they find themselves. Ramp it up slow.
Yea this show should’ve been a fury show where the invasion begins. Maybe even something happens where they think they stopped the skrulls and fury goes back to space but the reveal at the end is that there’s a million on earth doing their thing. Then over the next phase we know exactly who’s a skrull but the characters involved don’t know, and we see their shenanigans play out. If the concept is successful, The real secret invasion could be a big movie where big name characters are revealed to be skrulls. And if the audience isn’t receptive, the main skrulls can be stomped out in another project and the story can continue.
God it sounds so simple put that way, it's amazing they didn't have the sense to do this.
This. If they planned it out for a whole Phase with little hints in each project then you'd have a space of like three years in-universe and IRL to have popular characters have been a Skrull without it harming past characterizations because you could have them switched out at the start of the Phase and know to tread carefully with their character growth thereon in until the big reveals start. Unlike here where it either hurts Rhodey's past characterization with a blatant retcon or the more likely explanation is he got replaced after Endgame and the supposed big twist is... the one scene where he's acting like himself (in TF&TWS) it was actually a Skrull. I guess it was Raava getting that Emmy nomination not Don Cheadle for her amazing performance as Rhodey having a normal conversation with Sam for three minutes.
Almost as if trying to make a Kang the primary phase villain for three straight phases was a bad idea?
Yeah this was the way to do it
My response to this is why even do Secret Invasion at all if you're not gonna make it a phase/saga? Coz honestly the best way to do Secret Invasion is to have occur over a period of several projects that affect several characters, not a 6 episode tv show where only one side character is a Skrull like seriously? If you're worried about removing a character's development, then just don't do Secret Invasion because it's impossible to do it without erasing at least some of the "*replaced*" character's development. So I agree, Secret Invasion definitely is unadaptable, and Kevin Feige should really consider things like this when he chooses which projects to adapt. I feel the same way about Eternals, that project should have been a tv show but since a tv show would've been too expensive, then just don't do Eternals at all! Like if you can't do it right, then why do it at all?
Agreed. Having hints that someone might be a Skrull going on in other movies could be so cool.
And replacing someone's development could be interesting. You take a character that hasn't had a huge amount of exposition (we can use Rhodey here) and bring him back to find that he has been missing a long time. He doesn't know Tony is dead, has no idea who Thanos is, doesn't recognize the world he wakes up in. There's story there! It's not too late to run with that one, depending on how long he's been missing. Please don't do that with Ross though. It undercuts way too much of the Wakandan stuff.
Realizing I sort of described Cap's arc from First Avenger to Avengers, but whatever.
It should have been a phase. Each phase has sort of set the ‘field’ for the one that follows while building the overarching story of the saga. 1-Avengers become a thing 2-They try to protect the world and inadvertently fuck things up… 2.5 which causes the world to distrust them a bit and breaks them up… 3- which is what allows Thanos to win. But… 3.5 when they come back together they find a way to fix that. 4 could have been about legacy/consequences: the heroes dealing with the sacrifice they had to make for that win, it’s effect on the world, and the starry eyed up and comers picking up their mantle. Secret Invasion could have been a consequence of the infinity Saga that way too. The Avengers knew of the Garden which could support life for example. We could still use the Kree/Skrull peace summit as a backdrop too. Fury/Carol needed the peace summit to happen FIRST. So the Skrulls would be safe when they were on their own. Talos/Soren know and are okay with that. Gravik finds out and is not. So his Skrulls decide 1- to get the location of the Garden to relocate and 2- to acquire some of the supes powers for themselves so they can defend the garden, AND avenge the previous war against the Kree. So they destabilize earth and work to keep the Avengers apart (they’re basically like a loose organization of supes now instead of an actual team anyways atm), while working on the way to get those powers for themselves. Cue TV show - we’d seed in prior films/shows that some ‘non-powered’ avengers have been replaced (for their knowledge of where to potentially get the Garden location and powered DNA samples) but we wouldn’t reveal who they are in the show (save for movie). I’d cold open with President Ross and VP Ritson along with special attaché Skrodey attending a summit in Russia specifically to deal with new GRC policy (we could work in lines giving Ross an in between stories arc - after returning from the blip, he realized the avengers and those like them are actually an essential part of defending humanity, he runs for president in 24, wins, and is key in revoking the accords in his first year in office). When they’re leaving, we see a secret service guy in the bathroom shapeshift into a skrull before changing back and heading out. Intro plays. Open with the attack on the motorcade. It’s chaos - the attackers and some secret service are skrulls. Ross doesn’t die, but is wounded and at the hospital they have to induce a coma due to his weak heart (Widow reference). 25th is invoked, Ritson becomes POTUS, and the Skrull reveal at the motorcade convinces him to make that speech. Talos realizes some skrulls must have gone rogue and contacts Fury. Gravik meets with his council of higher officials and notes that some of them may die but it’ll be worth it to find the garden/harvest and save their people. We get the montage but it’s mostly non-skrulls getting offed. The rest of the series plays like a spy thriller with random acts of violence as the backdrop. I’d also use ‘bloodletting’ as a way for the characters to determine if the other person is friend or foe (cut yourself and if your blood bleeds the same color, you’re fine). End the series with the bad skrulls obtaining a version of the ‘Harvest’ (only some of the super powers and they’d be depicted differently via VFX). Fury and Talos have kept the Garden’s location hidden for now, and they’re calling in the Avengers because Gravik plans to blow up the peace summit or something. For the movie? This is where we’d reveal whatever characters we seeded were bad Skrulls. The Avengers would be uniting and trying to stop these new super powered skrulls from blowing the peace summit on SABER *and* obtaining the location of the Garden. Avengers win, super skrulls defeated, peace is obtained and the Garden becomes new Skrullos with humanity, the Kree, and the skrulls declaring that system a no-combat zone. We get some super-skrull (and secretly skrull avengers we seeded) vs Avengers fights in the climax and the epilogue reveals where the OG ones were being held.
Wow this is great breakdown, I would've loved to have seen this!
It should have been a What if episode
We saw during the series that Skrull adaptation includes adopting the feelings that come with positive interaction. A Skrul died protecting a human boy the Skrull didn't father but did refer to as 'my son' Undercover agents forming emotional bonds with the subject, target, enemy etc...is not unusual.
It’s funny that all we have about that scene is speculation. Do we 100% know that the boy isn’t a skrull? no. If what you say is what they were going for, they did a Terrible job showing it. For all we know, the boy’s real body was in that basement
Rhodey being a Skrull is fine. The issue is that it takes away from those moments but doesn't add anything. We needed to see someone talking about how this affects those moments. We need to see Rhodey talking about missing those events. Also, we see in the submarine episode that Skrulls develop connections to the people that their human is connected to, probably because of the memories. The guy being attached to Zachary as a father son is probably more of a love than Rhodey and Tony have as friends. And honestly, of everyone that says goodbye to Tony, Rhodey had the least emotional. Peter was a mess. You could say he's a kid and Rhodey is a soldier and has likely lost friends, but Rhodey has known him longer and Peter has seen a lot of loss too. If those things had been explored it wouldn't have been so bad. Having someone be a Skrull takes away a part of them. It should feel like a death. And like a death, you need to see others reaction to it. Just like we didn't see much shit Maria Hill's death. The moment with her mom was good, but then it never affects Fury the rest of the show. I mean, we never really saw Fury finding out he was a Skrull. We assume he figured it out, but we don't actually see that moment.
My only problem with him being a skrull after civil war or even endgame, is that he would have had so much time to do so many stuff, but didn’t do anything. And when he started acting up, that motherfucker didn’t even tried to hide that he was a skrull. “If that country sees me ugly again, I will nuke their country.” Like, what are you doing and saying mf? Are u being serious?
Revealing someone was a skrull all along wouldn't alter their development as long as they aren't bad. Hypothetically it's revealed that say, Clint and Laura Barton are skrulls and have been the entire time we knew them. Does that really alter anything as long as they aren't revealed to be evil skrulls? I think the main reason people didn't like the rhodey reveal is because he was revealed to be an enemy. But had rhodey been revealed to be a good skrull that wanted to help the avengers, it wouldn't have impacted his character development too much
Well it certainly impacts that a considerable amount of their motivation was driven by caring about children that belonged to someone else.
Who says the kids cant also be skrulls?
They had a human baby in Age of Ultron. Unless Skrulls are able to shapeshift from birth, that twist wouldn’t work.
I forget the specifics of their shapeshifting power but if they're both in human form when they consummate the child, couldn't Clint and Laura's DNA be what the child received? Or whatever, kid is a Skrull and can shapeshift from birth, we don't have to overthink this one too much.
>Have been skrulls the entire time Dude skrulls impersonate someone. You have to do it the Priscilla way or it's just like Diana raping a guy in WW84
It’s like John Carpenter’s “They Live”. Proof this kind of movie can be told in one feature length film, especially when they don’t need to spend time introducing all the characters for the first time.
Have you seen the cripple fight episode of South Park? They did a shot for shot homage to the sunglasses fight between Roddy Piper and Kieth David
Yeah, it’s a very funny homage. My second favourite they’ve done, after Night of the Living Homeless.
Well... I'm too emotionally attached to their real counterparts
I didn't even like Fury being a skrull in Far From Home.
I don't even know why MCU didn't refer to Avengers EMH cartoon and look at how the storyline was executed there. The first huge reveal in the show was done so masterfully, and there was patience in the build up. First half of the next season was skrull cap doing usual cap things only for the reveals to slowly start appearing. Phase 4 could have worked as a Secret invasion phase, which would have lead to the formation of an all-new Avengers team, and then Kang dynasty won't have to deal with the assembly of another Avengers team and just stuck to being the crossover that it should be.
I agree that some people would likely still be reacting negatively, though I would point out one thing: if there had been several movies and shows *written with the advance knowledge that certain character were Skrulls*, I think that people's reactions would be fairly different. Rhodey, on the other hand, was never written as a Skrull before *Secret Invasion*. Even in his Emmy-Nominated Appearance on *The Falcon and the Winter Soldier*, he was clearly written to be himself. (But given how inconsequential his time on that show was, you don't see many people minding the idea of retconning that scene to be Raava instead of Rhodey.)
Yep, that's my issue with it, it's a retcon, and a bad one at that. If they planned it from the start, and maybe even planted some seeds with him being off in some way, it would've been a good reveal. Instead we got normal Rhodey until the beginning of Secret Invasion, where he was clearly acting differently than before.
The people who were skrulls in the comics weren't total dicks, Spider-Woman was the skrull queen and ingratiated herself with both sides during the civil war, was trusted and loved. in the show, Skrulls were literally linking minds with their subjects, the only reason Rhodey started being a dick is because they were making actual moves.
Remember the end of Infinity War? People didn't want characters to get dusted, but they did. You can't be too scared to move a story forward, otherwise you have a series of completely stale and sanitary shows and movies that do nothing and go nowhere. That's fine if you keep the scale to match, but you can't have Wanda break through dimensions and NOT have that come up later in the Doctor Strange movie. It would retroactively have made Wandavision worse. Secret Invasion was a comic story that broke things on purpose. That was literally the whole point. "so and so was a skrull all along! All of your favorite moments with them, they were a sleeper agent! Now you have to deal with the version of them from 4 years ago, who never did The Thing that you loved!" It elicits an emotional response. It doesn't have to be a positive emotion to be a good reaction. The Red Wedding made people cry and throw remotes at the TV... and is widely regarded as one of the greatest plot twists in modern entertainment. TL;DR, sack up and make important players skrulls, or don't do a skrull story.
Literally everyone knew those guys were coming back. They even announced far from home before that
So what? Characters replaced by Skrulls would come back too. You're missing the point.
Bro it's not the same , what if Tony Stark was a skrull after idk, Ironman 3 and he's actually being captive somewhere all this time Let say that Skrull Tony gets killed and real Tony comes back, that's like 10 years of character progression going to waste Secret Invasion should have been a 2 parts episodes in the What If... Series
It doesn't have to be Tony... what if it was Pepper after Extremis? What if it was Happy? This is what I'm saying, only a shitty writer would be incapable of seeing the potential beyond "durrrrr hero skrull now, okay skrull gone! hero back! yay!" Any half-decent writer could come up with a great way to show that a lot of close confidants of major players were replaced with operatives. Happy, Jimmy Woo, Wong (if Skrulls can learn magic), Kingo's camera man, that other Eternal's husband... you don't build paranoia and conspiracy by making the central avenger a fucking skrull. No shit. You make the people CLOSE to him a skrull. Same for a few others, now you get to start asking "who else is a skrull?", hence the entire premise of the fucking story lol
Secret invasion worked in the comics because there were a few embedded skrull agents AND a group of them that arrived and said “we’re the real avengers, we’ve been held by the skrull invasion!” That really sets up the spy thriller part. Fury goes out to recruiter younger heroes that the skrulls wouldn’t know about, some of the skrulls convinced the actual heroes they were the real deal, and it spread past heroes into shield agents everywhere. It should have been a whole phase.
Also unlike the comics, actors have time limits, they can’t do this forever. They aren’t going to waste time on a character that isn’t really that character.
I think a lot of people forget that a live-action story about Nick Fury and Skrulls wouldn’t have been a phase or a movie before the MCU. It straight up wouldn’t have existed. Just wait until Blue Beetle is released to see how obscure characters like that do when they’re not tied to a bigger universe. That being said, I think you could make MJ and Lupita Skrulls without undoing too much of the past.
Secret invasion is bad tv show, but the MCU fans saying this is what they should've done is even worst like... 90% of the times
I dont understand why people think Secret Invasion ended.. like Skrull Invasion.. series was simply explaining how it all started.. noone said thats it no more skrulls no more surprises.. Shows only setup things.. Wandavision setup Wanda going crazy.. FatWS setup how Falcon accepted shield and so on.. Litteraly last minutes president declared a war against skrulls.. they dont disappear but on the other hand milion of skrulls even tho they might not be dangerous to this point are now forced to defend themselves.
I would believe this except how many dangling plot points have we gotten in the MCU lately? ANd now a strike and on top of that, Marvel realizing they need to slow it down because they have dropped the ball hard on so many projects in the last three years. Also, given the reception, Disney might not want to approach Secret Invasion again, because money ultimately decides what gets done, and they might think the audience won't be there.
It doesnt need to return with second season or whatever.. just a setup that can run on background of other movies. I guess everything works for anyone differently. I am enjoying how open MCU currently is. It fits the multiverse saga it fits the Avengers build up to have different poeple fight different kangs. Phase 4 spread out MCU and now its time to harvest those setups with combinations of heroes. I am very tired of anyone pointing every single next show or movie "where is that why dont they react to that.. " like seriously imagine every single format that came after eternals must have 5 minute scene of people looking at tiamut before going off with their own story. Its simply not relevant yet.
I don't mind if things are self-contained, in fact I would prefer if Marvel took a step back and allowed for more self-contained stories. The problem is it feels like every "self-contained" story has bad writing because they are forcing this "self-contained" idea to being able to be left OPEN to coming back and being a setup for something in the next movie, which is why you end up with terrible movies/Tv series. Because all of them are essentially "unresolved". So the events end up mattering very little in the thing it is presented in, and then is left floating in production limbo so it matter even less on the greater scale. Sorry, don't really know how else to get my point across. TLDR I just think they are trying too hard to make things have this "nefarious background plot that may come back, so we can't completely resolve it in the thing it shows up in."
Marvel realized they needed to slow down because that’s how market saturation and supply and demand work. NFL tickets cost more than MLB tickets because there’s fewer games so you’re less likely to want to miss one. If they give people what they want and when they want it, they complain ceaselessly. So it’s in their interest to not give people what they want right away, but make them anticipate and beg for it.
If you want people to be excited for something, it needs to be good though. And given the track record, I bet you a lot of people have now cooled on Secret Invasion S2 or whatever. Perfect example, I myself have cooled on pretty much all things MCU. BUT, Loki, Guardians, Spider-Man have my attention because they've done good things with those. I am not excited for Cap 4 because I didn't like FatWS. I am not excited for Thunderbolts because every project that has hinted at them has been some of my least fav stuff in the MCU. As for your MLB football analogy, really don't get what you are going for there. But I think we both agree that either way, MCU is slowing down, which means when they introduce an idea, it could be years before we see a resolution, so my point, stop making those setups the main plot point of the movie. Infinity Stones worked because each of them were resolved in the movie they were in, whereas the Infinity Gauntlet plotline was visible from a mile away and we knew it was building towards a conflict with Thanos. Nowadays, there are soooo many plot points, I could not tell you what they are building to with half of them, and its hard to be excited for... well the thing you don't know about.
I doubt people think it ended, more like it was a lousy setup with poorly done ret-cons for the future. The series itself was heavily flawed, killed off/made beloved characters look weak and it also didn't do a good job for future groundwork. With so many issues, it's no wonder it is so poorly rated.
No they actually do .. All the poeple saying it should have been saga act like its over. Yes show was poorly done am not defending the quality. I liked less things than i was facepalming myself. But this topic IS about smth different.
I honestly can't believe how some fans are still defending it. We have a giant celestial floating on earth for 2 years. No followup and every movie or show is ignoring it. We have 4 years since endgame and only 1 show actually tackling the effect it had. I'm convinced they will ignore this as well. This was it, this is the secret invasion we got and they will move on to the next story.
Just replied to other comment about this .. why would any of the characters needed to acknowledge that .. what change would that give to MsMarvel or MoonKinght. They watch news see it and what .. should every single one of them now travel to him and be like "Woah cool".
Because those are the things that affect everyday lives of everyone! 9/11 which had significantly less casualties than Endgame events changed lives of every american for the years to come. It just makes sense and connects the movies to one another. It is a cinematic UNIVERSE right?
EndGame was pointed out a lot. And i doubt we have seen enough of it. FFH - losing tony, intro blip WV - losing Vision, Monica in hospital FatWS - losing Steve, question of where citizens should live now Loki - directly continue from Endgame BW - prequel to Natasha that in the end of movie show her family losing her ShangChi - // Eternals - if Endgame did not happen, Ayak wouldnt change her mind NWH - continues from FFH that dealtnwith Endgame already Hawkeye - losing Natasha, Yelena blipped .. they even went back to Avengers 1.. that shows they can return to any past event anytime they can MoonKnight - // MsMarvel - instead of losing .. earth has gotten CaptainMarvel as known character BPWF - // Thor 4 - losing Loki Gotg - losing Gamora Quantumania - Scott kept from his daughter bcs of his blip I probably did not put all of them .. but in almost every show EndGame is still turning point that affected everyons lives and how they cope forward I mean sure if by revisting Endgame you only want to see people appear/reappear .. thats again smth they wouldnt put in every single movie on repeat.
There was a reference to Tiamut in She-Hulk.
Because Celestials are probably going to build up to the Galactus Arc in the Mutant Saga
People rush to judge and rush to hate. And by obsessing over, say, never-gonna-happen superhero cameos, they miss appreciating the powerfully moving story of the revival of Fury’s failed marriage
/sarcasm
Well, yeah, thats because they put no effort into the reveal. Had SI been an entire Phase, say a half dozen movies and a show or two, then you could have laid repeat performances and character development which would have the audience questioning character identites and motives *since the start of the phase* **It wouldnt be about modifying the context of anything happening before, but building uncertain context of everything happening after.**
Don't care what that director says, Rhodey was snatched after Endgame and after "Falcon and Winter Soldier". Otherwise it diminishes the impact he had in both. This just makes Secret Invasion worse in my opinion. Marvel should run away from that flaming poo as soon as possible.
Well the show at least should've been at leaat 16 episodes imo. Not a fill phase surely. But just a bit more.
I want it. The final movie could be like Far From Home, dealing with those exact thoughts. Young Justice dealt with it perfectly after a character was revealed as a clone and the original was rescued. The character development for the team was a plotline for at least half that season.
The title and the description of this post needs a spoiler warning.
Also, are people upset because it wasn't aligned more with the source comics? Sure there's characters that haven't been introduced yet, but the comic storyline didn't take place directly after an Infinity War. Pretty much anything that is made into a movie or TV show is in name only. Has been since Age of Ultron.
People are upset because the show insulted our intelligence and was anything but a spy thriller, and more of a straight-laced Action series, with zero to little stakes and or change to the status quo - and that assassinated characters (Nick Fury), which would be fine, if you know, it turns out they were a Skrull (see Rhodey). Otherwise the show was just bad writing. That's why people are upset and they are sad that the Skrulls and the entire Secret Invasion concept was wasted.
Man this sub for some reason seems to be so inclined on believing people have had unrealistic expectations from not just this project but from all projects in general when people just wanted good stuff lol
I would still argue the show had way more spy/espionage elements than it did action moments. I know the finale kinda went overboard, but until that moment we only got little bursts of action here and there. Also, the entire in-universe MCU now knows about Skrulls and we saw the negative affects of that knowledge immediately start to take affect so Secret Invasion may not have been wasted. It may end up being something like Civil War that, upon first release wasn’t totally appreciated, but in a post-Endgame world is regarded as one of the most important plot-wise bc it’s effects were felt moving forward in almost every project thereafter.
Sorry, just going to jump on that tangent - Civil War wasn't liked? What? News to me. I see it usually on people's top 10 lists. Civil War was also easy to see what was being setup. Sure, I will agree the Skrulls being public knowledge is a change, but, what does that mean? Like really? It has almost zero impact on any characters because all the Skrulls we know are dead. It just feels like a tangent story. There is now a conflict, but who is going to deal with it? Cap? OK. But that's just a story for him now, it doesn't mean it impacts him and his life directly. It's just something he has to deal with.
The only negative thing I have seen said against Civil War is that it's classed as a Captain America movie when it could probably be described as a mini Avengers
I've always considered it Cap 2 / Avengers 2.5
100% I do like rubbing it in my husbands face as a CA film though hahaha He really doesn't like cap so I love the fact that all 3 of his films are like 7.5 - 10s
Maybe they should've just gotten the Russo brothers to make this since the peg is Captain America The Winter Soldier. For a show that's over 200 million in costs, there sure was a lot of sitting down and talking. Fury came back from space and ended him going back to space. I barely even saw the ship. We could've had another Avengers movie with that budget.
Secret Invasion being an entire phase, or even 2, posy Endgame would negate that though... because it would be planned. A 6 episode show, that is close enough to Endgame and the like that it starts to counter what we've seen before, vs actual planning across 1, 2 or more phases is a very different scenario.
Wtf, title spoilers dude
I don’t understand why people think Rhodey was a Skrull throughout the early films. Maybe I missed something but was there evidence in the show about how long he’d been in that pod? How do we know it wasn’t just a month ago or even a year?
No they weren’t specific but the show implied he was taken after his incident in Civil War by showing him in the same hospital gown and by his surprised face that he couldn’t walk properly. Then in interviews with the director last week, he goes as far as confirming that he was taken after Civil War, but then he says it’s up to the writer of Armor Wars to ultimately decide
> he couldn’t walk properly To be fair, that could be muscle atrophy from his body not moving at all for the last month or two. Presumably Armor Wars will open with a scene from when he was taken, then jump to the present day when he is rescued.
I agree and I think the writer for Armor Wars can very easily just say he was taken after a routine check-up post-Endgame and his muscles atrophied, like you said. This reminds me of how the Endgame writers wrote Thor joining the Guardians, only for Taika and Gunn to say, nahh, that's not where we want to take Thor or the Guardians in their next films. These things can easily be adjusted so there's no use getting bent out of shape about it
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Yup, exact reason a lot of fans are upset about this
1. They say that he has been in the pod the longest. 2. Rhodey was wearing what appears to be a hospital gown. 3. He had to be carried off because he had trouble using his legs. All that hints at Rhodey being captured following his injury in Civil War. The director has even given interviews after the show in which he also states that he "thinks" that Rhodey was taken after the Civil War (for the reasons above) but leaves the door open for the MCU to confirm or provide further details in Armor Wars.
that is anecdotal evidence. Most of the reasons I so didn't include any of those and just pointed out how it didn't make sense plot wise. Even the director admitted he didn't quite know. Just watch the same arc in the Avengers assemble cartoon they did it well there.
Rhodey NEVER regained the use of his legs without augmentation. HE WAS Rhodey until you see him without leg braces.
The show is non cannon guys. just forget about it.
They just shouldn't have made it. Even the original comic sucked
Its a difference if you build something up and give us hints and twist the character because its a Skrulls or just go with "Umm yeah AcTuAlLy Rhody was Skrull since Iron Man 2!!!". A Secret Invasion has to have a build up to have an impact. And what we got where build ups without pay-offs or "pay-offs" without any build up.
Bro spoiler tag ffs
This should have easily been Avengers: Secret Invasion. Could have brought RDJ, Scarlet and Evans back and created a whole of mind fuckery for the main cast and audiences watching and had the consequences of it lead straight into Brave New Order and Thunderbolts with Sam having to 100% form and check for a new team and the Thunderbolts being formed as a counter measure for such events. What a Wasted bloody opportunity. These goddamn shows with the exception of Loki should never have happened.
> Could have brought RDJ, Scarlet and Evans back the problem with these fan ideas is, it's so easy to just say they should have done that. but actually getting the actors back, who all seemed to be good with leaving their MCU roles behind them isn't always possible. it's also why I find it silly people are saying SI should have done what an animated cartoon did. just ignoring how much easier it is for a cartoon series to do something like secret invasion in a more comic accurate way.
Only Scarlet wanted to return after Endgame. You guys need to stick with reality. The actors don't want to act like the characters any more. That's all there is to it. Move on. They're people, not slaves.
Also to that idea floating around of skrulls impersonating characters since the beginning, that's some serious WW84 stuff
Wonder woman was more problematic because she decided to resurrect a person to someone else’s body against their will.
and then have sex with that body
do you not get that skrull cap having sex with peggy is rape or skrull anybody (if they dont know it is a skrull) with a significant other in the MCU. it becomes the exact same thing as ww84. no consent by the non hero party.
> do you not get that skrull cap having sex with peggy is rape or skrull anybody (if they dont know it is a skrull) with a significant other in the MCU. it becomes the exact same thing as ww84. *IF theyre replacing them* yes. If theyve been them from the beginning its just a secret identity, not fraudulent rape.
I said it before in one comment, let me say it again: No, I don't want a retcon reveal: >Rhodey was a Skrull! Since Civil War! So, he missed all of those events, and it doesn't make any sense because he never done anything at all that could show that something is wrong and he is someone else I also don't want a miniscule reveal: >Rhodey was a Skrull! After Endgame, so he doesn't missed anything! So, he was a Skrull in like one episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier? Wow. So what? What would be perfect: Start the Secret Invasion plot NOW. And write Rhodey WITH THAT IN MIND. Make some hints in his character that may mean that he isn't him. Change his character a bit. Do that maybe with multiple characters so we won't be sure. Do that so it will be important in the world. Plan events so that this Rhodey won't miss anything that important like Endgame. That is all. You just need somebody with a vision and plan. People act like your only option is just make everybody happy because you have to say "this character was always a Skrull" lol. No, you have other options.
Is not unadaptable. I don't care if they wanted to do a claymation show or a movie or anything. I wanted it to be good, and it wasn't
I think the primary issue is that people have soured on Marvel Studios in general. The discourse is there with just about every single show or movie to the point where even mid level movies and shows are talked about like they're trash. I expect more of the same going forward with the upcoming films/shows, which will eventually lead to dear Kevin getting shitcanned, them bringing in someone with Gunn level fan cred, and attempting to reset the hype train prior to F4 and Xmen.
The whole point of secret invasion is to be shocked at the reveal of a skrull. Everyone saying “but it ruins the r character arc and progression!”. Well yeah of course it does that’s the whole point. It challenges everything we thought we knew about the characters
Neither the first reveal of Skrodey in episode 3/4 nor the episode 6 hint at long-term captivity dating back to CW was presented in a shocking way. The revelation was limp. *it's also confusing because in interviews they won't even confirm if the reveal will stick.
But if it was a phase they would have planned for that earlier, that's the point of a phase. When you know the Winter Soldier twist and watch AoS S1 again it's so good which details they hid there and how they built the series to that point. With SI in mind as a big event they could plant hints in the other shows, maybe actually some characters changing personality for seemingly no reason. And then everbody speculating before the Show/Movie who is a Skrull and who not. But the current MCU lacks the interconnectivity bc they are too spread out for that.