Let’s not beat around the bush; Secret Invasion is boring.
As harsh as it sounds given the levels of hype surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s murky descent into infiltration and international espionage brought to life by a ridiculously talented cast all delivering solid performances, the narrative has been less than engaging to put it nicely.
Only in the current lackadaisical era of MCU storytelling could a Samuel L. Jackson showcase based on a hugely popular comic book run prove to be so unrelentingly dull, with the uninspired plot twists, repeated fake-out deaths, and general malaise culminating in a Rotten Tomatoes score of 59 percent, while even the typically-forgiving fandom has only deemed it worthy of a 68 percent user average.
Disappointing spy thrillers and half-baked TV shows are everywhere you look these days, but not many of them cost $212 million, which makes Secret Invasion more expensive than every single Bourne blockbuster, every Mission: Impossible bar Dead Reckoning, and the entire James Bond saga with the exception of Spectre and No Time to Die. Of course, money doesn’t equal quality, but it’s a damning indictment nonetheless.
The list of small screen espionage adventures vastly superior to Secret Invasion is even longer, as is the roster of superior MCU shows, so how did it come to this? Individually, all of the components are there for excellence, but it’s been dropping on Disney Plus weekly like cold gruel that doesn’t get the pulse racing, capture the imagination, or even generate conversation the way the genre’s best examples do.
There are definitely worse spy thrillers than Secret Invasion, but almost all of them cost substantially less. The only comparable titles really are Netflix’s The Gray Man and Prime Video’s Citadel, which set the respective streamers back at least $200 million apiece and proved to be insurmountably uninteresting despite a cavalcade of A-listers and a mountain of hype.
When you consider the level of investment compared to the amount of exhilaration, Secret Invasion has got to be deemed as one of the weakest to come around in a long time, which shouldn’t have been the case.
