Marvel Told Secret Invasion Director Not to Read the Comics Before Making the Show
Marvel’s Secret Invasion director Ali Selim was told not to read the comics before making the show.
During an interview with IGN, which you can watch in the video below, the Marvel director revealed how he was emphatically told not to learn more about the classic comic book story arc.
“When I took this job, the first thing Marvel said to me was ‘don’t read the comics, they have nothing to do with this series’,” he said. “The series was more born out of the electric relationship that was created between Nick Fury and Talos, or Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, in Captain Marvel.”
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The Secret Invasion comic books changed the superhero landscape forever. The 2008 story arc by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu revealed certain Marvel heroes were replaced by alien doppelgangers, causing readers to question everything they knew about their favorite superheroes.
Clearly, the Secret Invasion TV show is taking a different route entirely, and that’s no surprise. Captain Marvel first introduced the Skrull into the MCU, with Ben Mendelsohn as their enigmatic leader, Talos. The Skrull were last seen heading off to find a new home with the help of Carol Danvers at the end of the movie, which is a huge difference compared to their comic book origins.
Now, Marvel is refocusing Secret Invasion on the relationship between Nick Fury and Talos. “[Marvel] just wanted to cue off of that and make a story that talked more about the nuances of where terrorists come from or where psychopaths come from and less about just bad guy, good guy,” added Selim. “It’s a more nuanced story of Nick Fury as we get to not only see his badass self, but we get to see him in his personal life and his inner life, even, and I think all of those things are more complex from good guy, bad guy, the binary world of good guy, bad guy.”
Still, Selim doesn’t want to disparage the comics, and he admitted they did inspire some elements of the new series. “I think comic books are great,” he asserted. “Comic books inspired a lot that is in here, but we weren’t anchored to them.”
IGN’s review of Secret Invasion Episodes 1 and 2 gave it 7/10 and said: “Secret Invasion is a welcome return for the MCU’s lesser-used gritty espionage template. The first two episodes lack the sense of fear that a paranoid thriller really needs, and there’s already the sense that any reveal won’t match the impact of those in the story’s comic book inspiration, but its dark tale is nonetheless off to a solid start.”
Want to read more about Secret Invasion? Check out why Secret Invasion's opening credits are made by AI as well as Samuel L. Jackson standing up for co-star Brie Larson against online hate.
Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
Source: IGN
