If there weren’t already more than enough problems and petitions in the world, a popular initiative against “de-aging” in Hollywood would have to be launched. Maybe one day the technology will get even better. But so far, aging Hollywood stars artificially rejuvenated by software look oddly ghostly. So does Samuel L. Jackson in the new Marvel series Secret Invasion at Disney+.
The 74-year-old has been a regular actor in the cinema comic book adaptations for years (where he has also been artificially rejuvenated and looked bizarre in “Captain Marvel”). Now he’s getting his own six-part series. He reprises his role as Nick Fury, who was the director of the fictional secret service SHIELD in the Marvel world and has so far been more of a second-tier hero. If you want to google his role again in detail, you’ll quickly end up with nerd clickbait texts like this: “You must see these 10 Marvel films before the Disney+ series!”.
What was the “blip” again? Things are getting complicated in the Marvel Universe
Unfortunately, the request is not entirely wrong. Without prior knowledge Secret Invasion a little confusing. Quite apart from the fact that you probably don’t get various inside jokes and allusions. The fact that you can start from scratch works a little better in the Disney universe with the “Star Wars” series than with the Marvel series. Then you always have to have the Marvel Fan Wiki open to be able to check at any time which event, for example, was the “blip” from which in Secret Invasion is often spoken.
In any case, the plot of the series is short, concise and summarized without prior knowledge of “Blip”: Samuel L. Jackson aka Nick Fury has to save the world from an invasion of the Skrulls. These are extraterrestrial reptilian humanoids that are theoretically very easy to spot because they have green heads and pointed ears; practically, however, the Skrulls can assume any human face, which is why they can mostly live undetected among humans and work on their Earth takeover strategy. The Skrulls have been around for a long time, and Nick Fury has also been involved with them for decades, like us from the real freaky artificially rejuvenated Samuel L. Jackson experienced in some flashbacks. Fury is aided in his rescue mission by the philanthropic Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelson).
As in the movies, many stars also play in this series. Olivia Colman out The Crown as an MI6 agent and Emilia Clarke game of Thrones as a Skrull daughter on her way to power, for example. Compared to the cinema films, however, there is significantly less action and significantly longer verbal banter in closed rooms. This is of course due to the lower budget of a television series, but it also has advantages: if one showdown doesn’t chase the other and one skyline doesn’t explode after the other, the tension could sometimes develop from the story.
The first two episodes, which were shown in advance, also try to take the superhero genre into a slightly John le Carré-espionage territory with political intrigue and all the trimmings. Still, one can’t help but feel that this story is too much a prisoner of the grand and increasingly complicated Marvel overall storyline to easily stand on its own.
Secret Invasion, six episodes, out June 21 on Disney+.
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