Secret Invasion is set to rear its head tomorrow, looking all but ready to remind us just how diverse comic book adaptations can be. Flashy superpowers and cheeky tones are all good and fine, but we’d be remiss to forget that they can also be about one, regular man in dire straits who simply refuses to die or let the world fall to pieces.
Indeed, whenever a property is based on a comic book, there’s this expectation that we’ll find ourselves looking up to this larger-than-life, holier-than-thou problem-solver faced with the usually-straightforward task of saving the world. With Secret Invasion, we won’t be looking up so much as sideways, where genuine human emotion, the same emotions that we each carry the capacity for, becomes the greatest weapon in the fight for a brighter tomorrow.
It was exactly that nuance that drew Secret Invasion‘s director to the job; in an interview with ScreenRant, Ali Selim, who helms all six episodes, divulged how the show’s lack of superpowered saturation and resulting human element made for a unique, and perhaps overdue, approach for the MCU.
“What interested me in working on the show is that it is more grounded than most Marvel, specifically, nobody can fly. It’s not about superheroes coming out of the sky to save the moment. It’s human ingenuity, human persuasion, human honesty, human dishonesty, that drives the story forward. I think it makes it resonant in a way that superheroes coming out of the sky can’t.”
It might be true that most people don’t have realism at the top of their list when queuing up a comic book film or show, but considering that the genre is fundamentally amorphous, pouring realism into a melting pot of aliens and politics makes for an equally appealing recipe, and we can’t wait to see what the team behind Secret Invasion have cooked up in that respect.
The first episode of Secret Invasion will land on Disney Plus on June 21, with additional episodes releasing weekly until the series finale on July 26.