Marvel's Secret Invasion, Season 1, Episode 2: Promises
A little bit more interesting than the previous episode, I would say, though I am also a bit slower in watching and subsequently reviewing Secret Invasion because... the plot does feel a bit more predictable. I do wonder if my opinions would change if I had the option to watch multiple episodes in bulk, like the Netflix shows?
Again, as usual, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn and (for his short role here) Don Cheadle do very great work with the script they're given. Special credit goes to the epic showdown between Nick Fury and James "War Machine" Rhodes near the end of the episode, which is a real treat to watch as Nick tries his cowboy cop of 'my way or the highway', and normally we would root for the maverick hero trying to change the world on his own when the institution is against him... while Rhodes is being perfectly reasonable in saying that Fury's claims that he alone can fix the problem is very short-sighted, particularly since Fury just indirectly caused Maria Hill's death. There's a great line delivered by Rhodes about how they can't just replace 'mediocrity that don't look like us with mediocrity that do look like us'. War Machine has been a character that always felt like he needed some spotlight, but ever since the solo Iron Man movies ended, he really never got the chance to shine. There's some interesting character to break down there, as he's basically taken the role of the faceless, nameless World Government people that he essentially flipped off in Infinity War, but the loss of Tony Stark and Maria Hill has caused Rhodes to get a bit harder.
Of course, though, Rhodes and Fury's conversation is only a small part of this episode, and... and the rest of the episode is rather... again, it's not bad, but it's pretty by-the-books. We get a flashback to Captain-Marvel-era Nick Fury befriending the young Gravik. We learn that he's born out of a more war-torn circumstance, having survived the Kree/Skrull war in their homeworld, and he's always a bit more of a hardcase even as a child. Gravik himself is significantly more interesting than Flag-Smasher, at least, when he walks into that Skrull High Council or whatever and basically shows off his badass revolutionary/villain charm, essentially installing himself as the Skrull General on Earth.
We also have the frankly rather random revelation from Talos that there are millions of Skrulls that he summoned to Earth during the time-skip of Infinity War and Endgame, which I felt really should've been one of the big revelations in the first episode. I also felt like so many world leaders being Skrulls should've been given a bit more oomph? There is the nice bit that they're all the people being interviewed in the little montage after the bombing, but otherwise... eh?
Anyway, we get the seeming confirmation that Maria Hill did die at the end of the first episode. I am still kind of suspicious about this because it really does seem to be some kind of a red herring in a show all about shapeshifting aliens, but I do still feel like it's not the best death for poor Maria Hill. Admittedly she hasn't really done much, but for such a long-time presence in the MCU I felt like she deserved more.
At least, for his part, I do think that the episode shows Nick Fury 'slipping' a lot better than the first episode, with his arguments with Talos in the train, and Talos pointing out just how utterly inaccessible and enigmatic Fury has been after his trauma with the Snap. Hearing people like Rhodes and Maria Hill's mother say to Fury that he's "different" is also a lot more poignant after a big failure, though I do realize that it's the whole point of the first episode's cliffhanger.
There's also a bit of a running theme about how humans hate each other and will wipe each other out -- a speech given by Fury to Talos about how 'humans can't stand each other, let alone another species' in the train when he's ranting; and later on Gravik rants to the council about how humanity's going to wipe itself and the planet out. Again, pretty simple and honestly rather trite stuff in superhero material, but at least there's a neat little theme that runs through this episode.
The final sequence of the episode is an action-packed one. 'Brogan', the Skrull infiltrator that allowed himself to be captured by the police in Moscow while yelling "I am American!", is being tortured by Sonya Falsworth, who uses some kind of boiling blood thing to torture him. Brogan gives out something about a lab ran by a couple, but then Gravik and his Skrull goons come in and rescue him. Realizing that he's betrayed them, they shoot him dead in the forest, though the scene is portrayed as being rather sympathetic. Prior to all of this going on, G'iah is snooping around the Skrulls' lab experiments, and I'm assuming that this is all leading to the Skrulls creating the MCU's version of the Super-Skrull(s). Gravik clearly suspects G'iah, and him killing Brogan seems to be basically a thinly-veiled warning against G'iah.
The episode ends with Fury visiting a Skrull woman in a kitchen, who transforms into her human form. Fury then puts on his wedding ring, and we get the revelation that... Nick Fury has a Skrull wife. It's really not that huge of a revelation to me, to be honest, not in the way that the episode probably thinks this is, but it's an interesting (if frankly rather random) development for the character.
Again, the promises of Super-Skrulls and Skrull councils infiltrating the global human governments are all fun and well and good, but I do feel like the show's moving a bit too slowly? Again, it's a lot more exciting compared to the previous episode, but maybe it's just my own expectations on what this show's going to be, and what it actually is.
Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:
- Nick Fury name-drops Alexander Pierce from Captain America: The Winter Soldier dismissively.
- Nick Fury previously casually name-drops that he has a wife in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, though he frames it in a way that it sounds like a cover story.
- G'iah looks at a bunch of DNA samples of other aliens, specifically Groot (who went to Earth in Avengers: Infinity War/Endgame); Cull Obsidian's hand (dismembered by Wong in Avengers: Infinity War), a Jotunheim Frost Beast (presumably the one in the post-credits of Thor: The Dark World), and, while not an alien, a sample of a human with Extremis (Iron Man 3).
No comments:
Post a Comment