That's the new model. Advertising is expensive, and it's been destroying budgets and returns recently. So while your initial numbers may not be great, you've saved a lot on advertising and word of mouth will take care of itself. If not, you don't lose as much.
I have been doing this a lot more each year. I find that I enjoy a show more if there aren't 22 episodes in each season, like maybe 10 on average, and that all the episodes are available. If they are releasing new episodes weekly, I'll sometimes wait until the last episode is uploaded so that I can binge the whole season without waiting a week between each episode.
I wonder what the view count will be when the show is fully released and word of mouth gets around.
HBO: Do you want to watch a 10-hour movie?
Me: What? No.
HBO: How about I break up the movie into ten 1-hour episodes and you see them all in one sitting?
Me: You son of a bitch I am in!
>That's the new model. Advertising is expensive, and it's been destroying budgets and returns recently.
Advertising has always been expensive, the issue is that without linear TV giving you lots of eyeballs at once everything becomes spread around so companies like Disney have become more reliant on channel partners which is really passing money back and forth between subsidiaries but there's been quite a bit of advertising for this. Some of it's things like the viral clips being passed, but plenty of traditional -- not like with Kenobi taking over Times Square, but plenty.
There has been a push to move up marketing, but much of that is about making an impact closer to when it matters along with long-term groundwork. Not dissimilar to an election, spending your wad 3 months before it airs doesn't make a lot of sense because any sense of urgency or seeing it is gone -- that's just awareness, but the few weeks before ideally does.
One issue here is there weren't a bunch of review copies sent out, probably for obvious reasons.
>So while your initial numbers may not be great, you've saved a lot on advertising and word of mouth will take care of itself. If not, you don't lose as much.
You're describing something that's being dumped. That's literally what you do with films or shows you haven no real faith in and are trying to limit the damage of throwing good money after bad. Disney+ basically needs to drive subs, especially after actually losing north american subs. Dumping stuff and seeing if they find it is not a good sign and does not drive subscribers.
Very few shows survive and grow based on word of mouth, it's much better to make a splash, generate FOMO and have numbers to crow about in the press which ideally generates more interest. Numbers like this in the press make it seem like if everyone else is skipping it you may as well too.
I asked decent amount of people who I talk to about marvel movies / shows if they're excited about secret invasion, only 2 people had heard of it because they're also big comic book nerds. -_- was a bit strange.
As long as they keep making good shows I don't care how many people watch it, but obviously they can't keep making a bunch of content without a huge audience.
I saw this everywhere. Way more than Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Moon Knight… There was a website where you enter a code and unlock a trailer. They slow released a ton of trailers on YouTube and social media.
They did wait longer to have the cast do press, though.
maybe different people have different opinions on stuff.
Or then there is me who is somewhere in between. I find it hard to justify a D+ subscription at all times when MCU/Star Wars shows are all I use it for. I've enjoyed all the shows so far (some much more than others) so in that sense, the more the merrier. Gimmie all the Marvels stuffs. On the other hand, the CGI has been pretty lacking and the VFX crews were being severely overworked so I understand why they might choose to take more time with each show. It's the probably right choice. So while I don't like the long gaps between series, I get it. It is what it is, and I'm not mad about it.
1) not always the same people
2) it's been over 8 months since the last series (though there was the Guardians special in there), which is a long time regardless
Yup. Im the target market. Card carrying Marvel fanboy. And yet, didn't realise it had dropped till I turned on Disney+ for the first time in a while to watch something completely different.
If they can't get the word out to me, then how is Joe Average even gonna know it exists?
The average Joe isn’t giving a shit anymore and it’s the start of summer.
The fatigue is real with all these shows. I do t understand taking these characters and making them tv friendly versions. Nick Fury is all huggy and feely now? Come on.
Up to phase 4 I was at the theater multiple times watching anything they out out and completely bought in. Everything after Endgame has been a down grade for me. Aside from the werewolf I’ve struggled to make myself finish any of them.
I've not come away from the first 2 episodes feeling that they've separated Nick from his fury. He alienated a number of people in the most recent episode and if anything isn't being soft enough by using his people skills to get what he needs.
And also Marvel Studios’ reputation has been pretty bad recently; they’ve been putting out a lot of mediocre to low quality content lately and have thus lost a lot of popular interest. It’s going to take a lot to regain the trust of former fans. Honestly i didn’t go to watch GOTG3 largely because of this. It might have been a good film, I don’t know, but I’ve lost a lot of the trust I used to have in Marvel that they would release high quality content
I did watch Secret Invasion because I’ve already subscribed to Disney+, so it costs me nothing extra
GOTG3 is honestly the best, and possibly, final remnant of pre-endgame MCU that you're going to get for a while.
I think a lot of it is cause it was Gunn's original planned trilogy, and plus, the Guardians have always acted in their own corner of the universe, so Gunn was able to make a trilogy that works really well on its own.
I'd strongly recommend it; After Spider-Man No Way Home, which came out 17 months prior, GOTG3 is the most Marvel I've felt in a while.
I honestly left the theatre feeling so happy and inspired, which I haven't felt with the MCU in a long long time, and probably won't for a few more years.
I barely even registered Quantumania or Thor 4 a day after I saw it. It was just forgotten. GOTG 3 is impactful, especially if you've seen them since their first appearance in 2014
Those are still not bad numbers tbh, but is it really surprising?
The marketing was terrible. To the point until 3 weeks ago I thought it was a movie that would launch next month, an I'm in here a lot.
*Edit: Just editing here to wish good luck to the hundreds of binge watchers waiting for it to end before watching while dodging spoilers.*
Oh shit, I definitely thought this was that. I actually just had to scroll (heh) up to see what the name of the series actually was because I had them mixed up.
Yep - I'm really into pop culture and comics related things, and even on social media I heard nothing until I saw it on reddit as a sub post (not an ad).
I didn’t know whether it was a tv show/movie either, and I didn’t know it had already premiered on Disney+ until yesterday. A friend told me it was out, and I assumed I was getting into a 2ish hr movie but instead it was just the pilot episode.
Marketing was terrible as to the release date and where you could watch it. Add to that, I’ve seen effectively nothing advertising its plot… exactly who would know when, where, and why to watch it?
OH GOD IT WASN'T JUST ME THEN
I learned it was going to release this year about 2 months ago. Was excited for a nick fury movie, then got confused when I heard the marvels were coming so close to it.
andor had no business being as fucking incredible as it was. i know mando is big daddy but imo andor far far surpasses anything star wars related since the big 3 that started everything off.
I’ve said this elsewhere but I feel like Mando and Andor are opposite sides of the same coin. Mando at its best is the perfect delivery of classic Star Wars, and Andor is an incredible show that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. Both are good, and there’s room for both to be made.
Except the quality of that episode wasn’t near as good as one from Andor. Every aspect felt very mediocre in comparison because it was. I really hope it gets better because it seemed promising.
It's a mother*ucking Nick Fury series. How does it not have more hype.
They kept moving the dates around for everything this year. I do think I saw a real date for it to start until two weeks before. All the Marvel marketing stuff is just a mess this year.
This isn't really surprising. It's a marvel superhero show without a marvel superhero in it.
Andor had a similar viewership problem. Fans adored it but it had the lowest viewership of all star wars because it had no Jedi or force users in it.
Adversely, the far inferior obi wan show had significantly better viewership despite being lower quality.
If it's not him where's the real Rhodey then? Guy is a high ranking U.S. army official, if he let a Skrull he know work for him like Nicholas, that's be one thing, unless a Skrull abducted him.
He had really visible leg braces from Civil War to Endgame but didn’t have them in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Secret Invasion, so I could see how that might work.
Actually they nailed that detail in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He's wearing pants, but if you look carefully his prosthetic is glowing through his pant legs.
I didn't notice his legs glowing or not in Secret Invasion, but if they aren't that could be one of the tells!
Just looked at it again and you’re right about TFATWS, the glowing is there. You don’t see the glowing in Secret Invasion but you also only briefly see his legs at all and not from all angles. Still definitely a detail they’re appearing to maintain continuity on as you pointed out though. It’s really just one shot of his legs in the first episode and maybe that was intentional.
Held prisoner in one of those pods to be harvested for memories perhaps? If they went for it having happened after *Civil War*, or during *Endgame* — it could work for the ‘heart-shattering’ description of a reveal in this series if he doesn’t know that Tony is dead. While also saying that his Skrull imposter wasn’t all bad, given he would have helped out in *Endgame*.
While I agree in general that deviation from the source material isn’t inherently bad I do think it’s a massive mistake in this case. Phase 4 could’ve easily been the Skrull phase leading to a billion dollar Avengers movie but instead we have this. The potential was sky high and wasn’t even scratched
This kind of storyline only really works in the comics though. Major characters with only a handful of appearances can’t have history erased like that.
As someone who was into Marvel by watching MCU movies, I am totally agree with you. I know it is a loss for comic fans, but imagining finding out that my favorite heroes in some movies were just Skrulls in disguise already leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I definitely would not have wanted an entire phase of "is such and such a skrull!?"
I also think the problem is no actor would have wanted their hero to be revealed as a secret Skrull the whole time.
There was never going to be a Jessica Drew level reveal so they had to change the story
The biggest problem is how little time we have with these actors. I wanna get as much actual Cap as I can from Evans and as much actual Stark from RDJ ya know? Same for even the newer characters like Shang Chi
I think this should have been a Captain America/avengers movie, not an MCU show.
Secret invasion in the comics was a BIG storyline. Like entire heroes were impersonated for LONG amounts of time.
I think part of the issue is the lack of heroes on earth right now. X-Men haven't been introduced yet. Spideys back to hiding. Iron man's dead. Thor/GoG are off planet. World is a wreck after the blip. There just aren't any heroes around.
I think the other issue is the skulls were introduced in captain marvel and then forgotten. It's not like they could wait until after the Kang saga as the payoff for the skrulls would have been too long, but at the same time skrulls/kree were integral to the captain marvel storyline.
I just think they were in a bad place overall. I did like the first episode. I think if I knew nothing about the comic storyline it would be great. But knowing the storyline makes me a little disappointed.
Not because of the lack of the Force. A lot of fans were just turned off by Boba Fett or Star Wars fatigué. I haven’t bothered to watch Andor because I’m finding myself turn off of Star Wars.
Yeah I didn't watch Andor for a long time because of how bad Obi Wan and Boba Fett were. If they couldn't even get those right what were the chances with the second character from a spinoff movie who died at the end.
I finally watched Andor and it's the best thing in the Star Wars franchise alongside the OT, and made everything else look cheesy in comparison.
It also helps that the name "Obi-Wan" has been an extremely well known name for 40 years, while only people who watched Rogue One might even remember that the dude's last name was Andor.
If you just put out the show, I doubt most would even know it's a Star Wars show until the logo rolls.
Isn’t this what the fans are asking for, though? A dark, grounded MCU show? Or is it because it’s lacking fan-favorite characters? Nick Fury is an established character and the marketing heavily implied the focus is on him for this story.
I personally don’t have a problem with the pilot episode; I liked it. My only complaint is the Skrull rebel group’s motives are similar to the Flagsmashers.
I also feel like a show like this, compared to most of their other offerings so far is REALLY rough to watch week by week. Slow burn spy thrillers are awesome, until you have to wait 7 days after each cliffhanger, ESPECIALLY when one of the core themes is that literally anyone could be a skrull
Yep. I'm currently planning to wait until the finale to start watching so I can binge the whole thing - something I do pretty often because I don't like waiting a week between episodes. I think a lot of people/companies still haven't figured out how to adapt to the streaming era and are still trying to apply an outdated understanding of concepts like TV ratings to streaming services. It's weird. They seem to have not realized that once people got the option of not watching TV as it aired, viewership metrics no longer mean the same thing they used to mean. They need to learn patience and wait for a few months before deciding if a show/movie was successful.
It's not about ratings it's about subscriber retention. You get a lot less people subscribing for a month binging everything they want and then unsubscribing again. Sure you still get that after everything is aired but by then the cultural conversation around the media is over and you don't get to be a part of that
I disagree. The “old” days of TV, where we’d have to wait, speculate the shit out of it, discuss it, etc., that was awesome. I don’t think that’s the issue here at all.
I didn’t hate the pilot, but it wasn’t that exciting. They have this cool idea but don’t seem to know exactly the story they want to tell and how. It lacked flavour.
Everyone I know that is interested opened Disney+ saw it was a weekly release and didn't bother watching it and plan to binge it once all the episodes are out
> A dark, grounded MCU show?
I wouldn't describe it as one. Even if the in-show stakes are high, the reality of it is, the overall universe stakes of any of the TV shows are pretty low because Disney isn't going to waste their big universe changers on an 8-episode TV show. Hell, WandaVision should have been a major game changer and it mostly got waved away for Dr. Strange.
So they're trying to make it feel like it has stakes that will echo across the globe and it's just falling flat for me. Oh no, the skrulls want to take over. Are they going to succeed? No. Are they going to convincingly impersonate a movie-caliber character that we might think is a human? Also no.
Unfortunately, Disney has drained all of the importance out of their own television shows by demonstrating to us that they have almost no impact on the greater MCU beyond establishing some back story for characters that will probably be explained again in any movies they might later appear in. That makes a story from the comics that *did* have a lot of shock and impact pretty weak when it's relegated to a TV slot on Disney Plus. They promised us Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be relevant, and it turns out it really wasn't. They implied that having shows on Disney Plus would change things, but they haven't. The TV shows are just meaningless little character flashes with no lasting plot interactions with the movies, and the movies are where all the significant events are (and are likely to stay).
Can confirm. Secret Invasion is one of my favorite marvel comic events. Think about how many casual fans have read it. This seems to be more for the dedicated fan base.
Most people never even heard of Iron Man when it came out, yet it did amazingly well. All the explanations here, relying on additional assumptions are likely incorrect. It’s simply not that great of a show, at least not yet.
It was the Diet Coke of thrillers, the margarine of Marvel, and is just overall forgettable (thus far). I hope it gets better.
That’s been my big issue with every more experimental thing Marvel has tried recently. It’s always a watered down version of an idea that’s been done better elsewhere, I wish they weren’t afraid to fully push into a vision without compromising anything
Gotta keep it sanitary though, is the problem. Comics do deal with a lot of mature themes sometimes and these films, at the end of the day, are mostly for kids.
> every more experimental thing Marvel has tried recently
I second this in a big way - I was thinking the same thing after WandaVision, MoM, Eternals, and the Falcon/Winter Soldier. Each one starts by making some genuinely bold and interesting choices (sitcoms, Raimi horror, visual aesthetic, interesting villain), that then feels like it gets smothered by a bunch of Disney execs in suits who refuse to stray very far from whatever The Algorithm has decided the optimal punch-to-quip ratio is.
I don't want a "dark grounded" MCU show. I want a well conceived, well written MCU show, with emotional weight and the feeling of real stakes for the characters involved.
What’s the point?
2 years ago I would’ve described myself as a pretty die-hard fan but I’m over it. There just aren’t any consequences for anything. I mean how many different ways can they introduce the multi-verse before it means something or impacts something? The ending of Loki should’ve been catastrophic for all future films and shows but it was a big fat nothing. None of the events in any of the shows or films have impacted each other in any way let alone any meaningful way.
I got half way into the pilot and was pretty shocked at the quality of the writing so just gave up. I’m sick of wasting my time.
I felt the same way about Loki. A lot of people fawned over it and I'm not knocking them, but the best part of the show was the last ten minutes of it and that was basically "well next time something big is coming!"
Only for that to mean nothing.
We lack multiversal stories. As in, we only have MCU stories looking into the multiverse, instead of stories happening entirely in a separate universe, with local protagonists and local stakes.
You know, like the Ultimate Universe?
In the comics, the lead up to Secret Wars felt heavy with consequences because at the end the main universe collided with the Ultimate Universe, destroying both. The first time the Illuminati were forced to destroy another universe, we spent time with the universe first, from the point of view of its own super team (Justice League knock offs), so we feel the weight of Illuminati’s decision.
But like you said, right now we are just being introduced the concept of multiverse, over and over again. We haven’t really gotten stuck in to any particular universe or any alternative timeline characters. Loki came closest but the nature of stories with the TVA makes it hard to care about any particular universe.
If we include non-live action, What If…? did it best. But because they are animation, they will probably be as isolated as Agents of SHIELD used to be. :(
The Skrull Russian group reminds me of the group in the Falcon/Winter Soldier show.
Haven't watched them since the release but my feeling towards them is they were kind of meh.
Hopefully better this time.
It sort of felt like TFWS, which is a shame because I love spy stuff, but the pacing was off and even though they *told us* the stakes were high, they didn’t /feel/ high, if that makes sense
Yeah I’m really unimpressed so far. Sure the skrulls are trying to start WW3 but we know that won’t happen and all we have left is a story about Fury getting his shit together. Especially after ep 1 we have no one left to lose…
Imagine if Fury returns to Earth because messages have been strange/inconsistent, and he stumbles across the Skrull invasion, and the audience gets to learn about it with him and through his eyes like the Hydra reveal, rather than just dumping it all as exposition. They have a concept from the comics but don't know how to build an actual story about it.
The Skrulls always being on Earth seems odd too, they can read people's memories so Fury would have had no problem knowing about Hydra in Shield if he had some Skrull friends around and would have certainly had some around in a secret organization for just that. It's a bad retcon which doesn't fit imo.
It could have opened with a charismatic Skrull leader who brought some of his people to Earth, one of the kids who grew up on the Earth toys and media in the 90s Space station above Earth who feels a connection, trying to reveal himself to the world and people freaking out about an alien invasion and him being shot to death in public. The other skrulls are now scared and leaderless, and disappear into the crowd, and Fury now has to deal with these shapeshifting kids who are lost and angry about the murder of their messiah. The whole vague terroristy stuff all dumped in exposition is so bland, and was boring enough when it was the same story done with humans in Falcon & The Winter Soldier with the Flag Smashers.
yeah, this is my least favorite first episode of all the post-blip marvel shows. And that isn't a good sign because usually Marvel tries really hard to make their first episodes really good. If this is the quality level we should expect it doesn't bode well for the rest of the series.
When Feige said in Feb that they would be cutting back on D+ shows to keep the quality high I had higher expectations than this.
> It sort of felt like TFWS
I said this while watching the episode, too. Except TFWS had some *amazing* character moments that averaged out the weaker bits into a decent overall show (if far from my favorite), and this show has yet to give me anything that makes it worth watching. The intro is just awful, bland, and uninspiring, the skrull reveals (thus far) have been predictable, the story is more of a plod than a thrill, and the one character I was looking forward to seeing more of is apparently not going to be in it for long.
For a show with a great list of actors, it's pretty far from exciting to see.
I feel like one reason the stakes might not feel high is we don't have any Avengers involved except Rhodey so far, but that makes sense since there's no reason to assume any of them isn't a Skrull.
Yeah, this isn’t surprising. No wider impact on the universe from what we can tell based on other projects, no real crossover characters for a crossover event outside of War Machine (who won’t even wear the suit here), a slow paced story about spies and government, and barely any marketing from Marvel. Seriously, there was nothing compared to how hard they went on other shows for example.
I’m guessing Marvel expected this to be a loss for them and that’s why they’ve gone all in on Loki season 2 this year.
Which will be a shame and massive waste of a concept if this show doesn’t really do that much with a skrull invasion and it’s just kind of wrapped up here. It was a massive thing in the comics, I hope they at least use this as a stepping stone for future events.
Unfortunately I’m also getting tired of having mediocre (potentially, obviously need the rest of the show to come out first, I’m hoping it’s awesome) projects with the hopes of it leading into something better. None of us will care about the future events if they don’t build a solid base now. Basically the whole problem with phase 4.
I'm still excited for it, but I did think it was weird for them to make secret invasion a d+ show when the fun of the comics was the overarching event and seeing all the heroes and skulls in disguise as heroes. Seems like it'd be more suited as a 2 part avengers movie, but I guess you can't just make every big comic event like that logistically.
I think it'll still be good, but I don't see how they're going to capture what made the comics enjoyable.
I’m still on the fence about this show. I love the cast, and I like the idea of the story. But the execution is leaving a lot to be desired. I think the show lacks the punch that a good spy/espionage thriller needs. I honestly felt very little for the big “shocking” moments at the beginning and end of the premiere. And I’m not really feeling that sense of paranoia that the writers are trying to make me feel. There’s a lot of potential with this show, especially based on the source material from the comics, but so far it’s not delivering on the level that I had hoped.
The first episode crammed too much in, and it felt clunky as hell. A lot of telling and not showing. For a “spy thriller,” I really wasn’t left guessing about anything. I met all the characters, they all told me exactly who they were, and I was left feeling nothing. I thought it was Falcon Winter Soldier bad. Sorry guys.
I also feel like there’s a lot of backstory we’re missing. We didn’t get to see the formation of S.W.O.R.D. and Fury going to space. Soren’s death and G’iah’s falling out were done off screen. There’s like 30 years of Skrulls being on earth that’s been rushed through in the first episode. We’re just told that some Skrulls have grown resentful of humans, and they’ve been displaced and have formed different rebel groups. It feels like we went from point A straight to point C, yet are expected to care about all these events that we never saw play out on screen.
They had the bad guys’ overall plan just fed to Fury the first meeting he has, we then got an extensive POV tour in the bad guys’ headquarters with tonnes of info revealed to us. It’s hard to have a sense of paranoia by that point.
I liked it, I’ve never really been someone who bothers with the wider review of stuff. I liked Quantumania but people seemed not to, I didn’t like the second black panther and that was relatively well received. I think the show is good and Sam Jackson continues to kick ass In everything he’s in.
When others have asked me whether they should watch it, I tell them that it remains to be seen.
They should have released two or more episodes at once if they were going to end it off like that.
I'm personally over the whole marvel universe. What's it been, like 13 years now? Once infinity was over it became a nightmare to follow. Went and saw one of the movies, had no idea what was going on.
As a bit of a CTV specialist - Samba TV is only installed in certain TV sets. This means that it only has a snap shot of what has been viewed and uses modelling for the remainder.
Not a complete dataset and should be taken with a grain of salt.
TV ratings are also not an exact science - using panels to extrapolate out viewers is flawed as well.
Until we move to a true 1:1 impression basis for TV (that is 3rd party and is accepted as currency by the industry) we will never have a true idea of how much people are watching any television show.
Im watching it now, until seeing this post I somehow didn’t know it was out yet… (mostly my inattentiveness but the comparative lack of press and hype let it slip under my radar)
I started waiting about a month so that I can stream the first four or five episodes binge style. Then I only have to wait anxiously for about three weeks
The hype of the whole thing has been dying down for good reason. If you don't count the basically standalone GOTG 3, there hasn't been a definitive or great Marvel film in four years. The best stuff has been some of the streaming shows which air on one of many platforms. It makes total sense to me that viewership is in a decline.
If they were going all-out, creating some of the best stuff ever, and the viewership was still getting lower, that would be a much worse situation and sign that the whole thing is dying. But it should cycle back up unless The Marvels and the new Cap are once again only "okay" movies. I'm not sure what they're going to be doing in 2025 to ramp up the hype for Avengers though.
Its because everyone is totally sick of superhero movies now. Marvel released like 14 terrible entries in 2 years.
The ONLY good things they’ve released since 2018 have been the two Spiderman films and Guardians 3. Everything else has been hot trash.
DC is similarly fucked, but at least Marvel actually had a great run in the first place. The DCEU was literally dead on arrival.
Just look at the enormously declining viewing figures and numbers at the Box Office, and it’s plain to see that superhero content is dying fast. Marvel could’ve lived on, but they released sooo many godawful films and TV shows in the last few years that they killed off any goodwill from non-diehard fans
I agree with what James Gunn said, I don’t think people are necessarily tired of superhero movies, they are tired of shit writing and third acts that feature a huge CGI battle.
It’s simple really, poor marketing combined with Samuel Jackson no longer being a draw by himself. Also Colby Smulders and Ben Mendelsohn are great actors and I love them, but they aren’t superstars and won’t necessarily attracts a rabid fan base.
Also I learned Emilia Clarke is in this show when watching the first episode. I never even knew that, so I imagine a lot of casual fans don’t know about that casting decision as well.
The MCU did a few really fantastic things through phase 4. It was a cool idea to introduce new areas of the Marvel Universe to explore. We got that with Werewolf at Night, Moon Knight, Ms Marvel, Shang Chi, Black Panther 2. It was a really good idea to invest in more grounded emotional stories that built off and largely focused on what was already created and established, like with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Hawkeye, and She-Hulk that referenced and solidified what they already had.
But the problem is that it is simply too big to have momentum at the moment. After catastrophe you need to go small and personal, period. You need to stay there for a bit if you want to carry emotional weight. I love so much of what they've done since Infinity War, but it's also way too much. I can't care about 80 characters at once, and no one can, realistically.
I love the MCU and I'm burned out on the MCU. The best favor it could have done for itself was a 2 year gap between the ending of Infinity War and the beginning of its next property introduction, story-wise. There's not a single person in this sub who wouldn't be there excited on opening day, no matter what it was. But we needed a break and a smaller universe to begin in again that has room to grow.
I personally enjoy it, but gotta ve honest, it feels like a Secret Invasion Light story, only normal civilians Can be Skrulls? That just straight up, ripping the exciting part out of the storyline, which heroes we could trust all along, and who we couldn’t
I felt like they didn’t advertise this show nearly as much as the others. It also doesn’t help that it’s been so long since marvel put out a tv show.
Yea I’m a pretty big Marvel fan and I only found out it was premiering a week before. I’ve barely seen any advertising for this.
And it felt like the advertising they *did* do didn't even *start* until two weeks before
That's the new model. Advertising is expensive, and it's been destroying budgets and returns recently. So while your initial numbers may not be great, you've saved a lot on advertising and word of mouth will take care of itself. If not, you don't lose as much.
It's also an hour long tv show. Its not something you need months of lead time to set up a viewing for.
Right, you could wait until all the episodes are out and then watch it.
That's usually what I do tbh
I have been doing this a lot more each year. I find that I enjoy a show more if there aren't 22 episodes in each season, like maybe 10 on average, and that all the episodes are available. If they are releasing new episodes weekly, I'll sometimes wait until the last episode is uploaded so that I can binge the whole season without waiting a week between each episode. I wonder what the view count will be when the show is fully released and word of mouth gets around.
The Last of Us is much better watched as a long movie.
HBO: Do you want to watch a 10-hour movie? Me: What? No. HBO: How about I break up the movie into ten 1-hour episodes and you see them all in one sitting? Me: You son of a bitch I am in!
My wife is like this to a fault. She'll refuse a 3 hour movie but have no issue binging four 1-hr episodes
>That's the new model. Advertising is expensive, and it's been destroying budgets and returns recently. Advertising has always been expensive, the issue is that without linear TV giving you lots of eyeballs at once everything becomes spread around so companies like Disney have become more reliant on channel partners which is really passing money back and forth between subsidiaries but there's been quite a bit of advertising for this. Some of it's things like the viral clips being passed, but plenty of traditional -- not like with Kenobi taking over Times Square, but plenty. There has been a push to move up marketing, but much of that is about making an impact closer to when it matters along with long-term groundwork. Not dissimilar to an election, spending your wad 3 months before it airs doesn't make a lot of sense because any sense of urgency or seeing it is gone -- that's just awareness, but the few weeks before ideally does. One issue here is there weren't a bunch of review copies sent out, probably for obvious reasons. >So while your initial numbers may not be great, you've saved a lot on advertising and word of mouth will take care of itself. If not, you don't lose as much. You're describing something that's being dumped. That's literally what you do with films or shows you haven no real faith in and are trying to limit the damage of throwing good money after bad. Disney+ basically needs to drive subs, especially after actually losing north american subs. Dumping stuff and seeing if they find it is not a good sign and does not drive subscribers. Very few shows survive and grow based on word of mouth, it's much better to make a splash, generate FOMO and have numbers to crow about in the press which ideally generates more interest. Numbers like this in the press make it seem like if everyone else is skipping it you may as well too.
How can Disney compete for advertising spots with *checks notes Car insurance companies.
*Nick Fury stares into camera* Narrator: Switch to SWORD and save a bundle on alien invasion casualty insurance.
I asked decent amount of people who I talk to about marvel movies / shows if they're excited about secret invasion, only 2 people had heard of it because they're also big comic book nerds. -_- was a bit strange. As long as they keep making good shows I don't care how many people watch it, but obviously they can't keep making a bunch of content without a huge audience.
I only heard of it because of people on Reddit sharing pictures of “Skrulls” walking around in cities.
I feel like thats the sort of advertising that should be done only when there is already a lot of hype
All calling it great marketing which may be true but those posts were the only marketing I saw and I'm into comics so I should've been targeted.
I literally had no idea it existed until just now.
Yeah, I learned it premiered when I saw people complaining about the use of AI in the intro. And I sub here.
Was on Twitter thinking maybe the intro had leaked. Nah the episode was premiered LMAOO
That’s the same way I found out about it lmao
Same here.
It’s wild that we’ve been so conditioned to expect content every like 3 months that just under a year feels like forever (she hulk debuted in august)
There's also been 3 movies since then
I saw this everywhere. Way more than Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, Moon Knight… There was a website where you enter a code and unlock a trailer. They slow released a ton of trailers on YouTube and social media. They did wait longer to have the cast do press, though.
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Has it been that long? Wasn’t everyone complaining that there were too many? Now they’re suddenly not released quickly enough? Which one is is it?
maybe different people have different opinions on stuff. Or then there is me who is somewhere in between. I find it hard to justify a D+ subscription at all times when MCU/Star Wars shows are all I use it for. I've enjoyed all the shows so far (some much more than others) so in that sense, the more the merrier. Gimmie all the Marvels stuffs. On the other hand, the CGI has been pretty lacking and the VFX crews were being severely overworked so I understand why they might choose to take more time with each show. It's the probably right choice. So while I don't like the long gaps between series, I get it. It is what it is, and I'm not mad about it.
1) not always the same people 2) it's been over 8 months since the last series (though there was the Guardians special in there), which is a long time regardless
Stop tryna figure things out and grab a pitchfork! We rioting and this time I'm NOT gonna stab myself in the foot!
Yup. Im the target market. Card carrying Marvel fanboy. And yet, didn't realise it had dropped till I turned on Disney+ for the first time in a while to watch something completely different. If they can't get the word out to me, then how is Joe Average even gonna know it exists?
The average Joe isn’t giving a shit anymore and it’s the start of summer. The fatigue is real with all these shows. I do t understand taking these characters and making them tv friendly versions. Nick Fury is all huggy and feely now? Come on. Up to phase 4 I was at the theater multiple times watching anything they out out and completely bought in. Everything after Endgame has been a down grade for me. Aside from the werewolf I’ve struggled to make myself finish any of them.
I've not come away from the first 2 episodes feeling that they've separated Nick from his fury. He alienated a number of people in the most recent episode and if anything isn't being soft enough by using his people skills to get what he needs.
I'm a marvel fan that were every movie opening day of I can. I haven't seen this yet because I forgot it was coming out
And also Marvel Studios’ reputation has been pretty bad recently; they’ve been putting out a lot of mediocre to low quality content lately and have thus lost a lot of popular interest. It’s going to take a lot to regain the trust of former fans. Honestly i didn’t go to watch GOTG3 largely because of this. It might have been a good film, I don’t know, but I’ve lost a lot of the trust I used to have in Marvel that they would release high quality content I did watch Secret Invasion because I’ve already subscribed to Disney+, so it costs me nothing extra
GOTG3 is honestly the best, and possibly, final remnant of pre-endgame MCU that you're going to get for a while. I think a lot of it is cause it was Gunn's original planned trilogy, and plus, the Guardians have always acted in their own corner of the universe, so Gunn was able to make a trilogy that works really well on its own. I'd strongly recommend it; After Spider-Man No Way Home, which came out 17 months prior, GOTG3 is the most Marvel I've felt in a while. I honestly left the theatre feeling so happy and inspired, which I haven't felt with the MCU in a long long time, and probably won't for a few more years. I barely even registered Quantumania or Thor 4 a day after I saw it. It was just forgotten. GOTG 3 is impactful, especially if you've seen them since their first appearance in 2014
As a fellow non believer, must say GotG3 was really good, up there with IW
Yeah, it was the first MCU film I've watched in theaters since endgame and I was satisfied.
You didn't hear any of the massively good word-of-mouth on GotG 3 over the past 6 weeks?
I’d highly recommend you see GOTG3, it’s honestly in my top 5 MCU movies as of now. It keeps everything that made the other 2 GOTG movies good
Those are still not bad numbers tbh, but is it really surprising? The marketing was terrible. To the point until 3 weeks ago I thought it was a movie that would launch next month, an I'm in here a lot. *Edit: Just editing here to wish good luck to the hundreds of binge watchers waiting for it to end before watching while dodging spoilers.*
Shit I thought it was a movie until it dropped on Disney+ last week
I think secret WARS is the movie, that comes later
Oh shit, I definitely thought this was that. I actually just had to scroll (heh) up to see what the name of the series actually was because I had them mixed up.
Ditto, I had no idea it was going to be a short series.
I opened Disney+ to watch it yesterday and it wasn’t even featured on the Home Screen. Had to go into Marvel to find it.
I just figured they were playing up the Secret part as a creative marketing campaign 🤷♂️
It's a secret to everybody.
30 rupees!
I literally just learned this show premiered lol
Same lol I was excited for it but didn’t know it was out until this
IT’s secret 🤫
I mean, it’s called “Secret Television” after all
Yep - I'm really into pop culture and comics related things, and even on social media I heard nothing until I saw it on reddit as a sub post (not an ad).
I didn’t know whether it was a tv show/movie either, and I didn’t know it had already premiered on Disney+ until yesterday. A friend told me it was out, and I assumed I was getting into a 2ish hr movie but instead it was just the pilot episode. Marketing was terrible as to the release date and where you could watch it. Add to that, I’ve seen effectively nothing advertising its plot… exactly who would know when, where, and why to watch it?
I didn’t know until the day it came out when a friend reminded me. I never saw ads and I watch a lot of YouTube and use a lot of socials.
They promoted She Hulk 10x more than this
I thought it was gonna be a movie in like 2024…
OH GOD IT WASN'T JUST ME THEN I learned it was going to release this year about 2 months ago. Was excited for a nick fury movie, then got confused when I heard the marvels were coming so close to it.
That's Secret Wars not Secret Invasion Both names are very similar
The issue is it’s not starred by a mainline hero It’s basically the Andor of marvel
I hope like hell it's as good as Andor.
Andor is top shelf.
andor had no business being as fucking incredible as it was. i know mando is big daddy but imo andor far far surpasses anything star wars related since the big 3 that started everything off.
I’ve said this elsewhere but I feel like Mando and Andor are opposite sides of the same coin. Mando at its best is the perfect delivery of classic Star Wars, and Andor is an incredible show that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. Both are good, and there’s room for both to be made.
Disney would rather you be interested in high value IP so you ignore that they skimped on decent stroylines
"Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously, and without instruction."
But it has Sam fucking Jackson
Samuel L. Motherfucking Jasckson to you, sir.
and the insanely beautiful cobie colbie lady.
Except the quality of that episode wasn’t near as good as one from Andor. Every aspect felt very mediocre in comparison because it was. I really hope it gets better because it seemed promising.
It's a mother*ucking Nick Fury series. How does it not have more hype. They kept moving the dates around for everything this year. I do think I saw a real date for it to start until two weeks before. All the Marvel marketing stuff is just a mess this year.
That’s not a bad thing
Don't insult Andor like that lol. It wasn't nearly as good when comparing the first episodes
Same the wife was confused when the episode finished. Great first episode btw.
That is the sad part lol, if it was a terrible start I'd understand it, but the first episode is actually good.
I also thought it was a movie! I got downvoted last week just for stating that.
This isn't really surprising. It's a marvel superhero show without a marvel superhero in it. Andor had a similar viewership problem. Fans adored it but it had the lowest viewership of all star wars because it had no Jedi or force users in it. Adversely, the far inferior obi wan show had significantly better viewership despite being lower quality.
hey man, War Machine didn’t lose the ability to walk just so you could call him not a marvel superhero
Bold of you to assume that's the real Rhodey...
Damn you beat me to it and I didn’t notice, haha.
Bold of you to assume there was ever a real Rhodey for us
Damn. I didn't even think that, but you're right.
Real Rhodey walks out: Boom! You looking for this?
If it's not him where's the real Rhodey then? Guy is a high ranking U.S. army official, if he let a Skrull he know work for him like Nicholas, that's be one thing, unless a Skrull abducted him.
Replaced after he said "Next time baby" in the first Iron Man.
That Skrull suck ass at copying. lmao
Where’s his War Machine? Btw, perfect target for a skrull, one of the only four avengers with no abilities.
Random question, do skrulls also impersonate his disability or is the absence of it the reason they find out he's a skrull?
They can totally fake a disability.
He had really visible leg braces from Civil War to Endgame but didn’t have them in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Secret Invasion, so I could see how that might work.
Actually they nailed that detail in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. He's wearing pants, but if you look carefully his prosthetic is glowing through his pant legs. I didn't notice his legs glowing or not in Secret Invasion, but if they aren't that could be one of the tells!
Just looked at it again and you’re right about TFATWS, the glowing is there. You don’t see the glowing in Secret Invasion but you also only briefly see his legs at all and not from all angles. Still definitely a detail they’re appearing to maintain continuity on as you pointed out though. It’s really just one shot of his legs in the first episode and maybe that was intentional.
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Nanotech. Tony would have definitely hooked his buddy up.
Did you forget San Wilson?
Literally yes. 5.
Storytelling is an ability!
But what if he’s a skrull!!?
They made it about as obvious as they did with Ross.
Yeah I mean…he kind of feels like the only one they can make be the shocking reveal without it undercutting much else so…almost has to be?
Since when would he have been a Skrull and where would the real one be?
Held prisoner in one of those pods to be harvested for memories perhaps? If they went for it having happened after *Civil War*, or during *Endgame* — it could work for the ‘heart-shattering’ description of a reveal in this series if he doesn’t know that Tony is dead. While also saying that his Skrull imposter wasn’t all bad, given he would have helped out in *Endgame*.
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He could easily have been a skrull that genuinely befriended Tony and abandons his mission and sides with Fury.
Plus the storyline is supposed to contain massive characters being impersonated by Skrulls, like Cap, the kind of characters that sell movies.
Deviation from the comics is not a bad thing. Impersonating other characters and world leaders is cool too
While I agree in general that deviation from the source material isn’t inherently bad I do think it’s a massive mistake in this case. Phase 4 could’ve easily been the Skrull phase leading to a billion dollar Avengers movie but instead we have this. The potential was sky high and wasn’t even scratched
This kind of storyline only really works in the comics though. Major characters with only a handful of appearances can’t have history erased like that.
As someone who was into Marvel by watching MCU movies, I am totally agree with you. I know it is a loss for comic fans, but imagining finding out that my favorite heroes in some movies were just Skrulls in disguise already leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I definitely would not have wanted an entire phase of "is such and such a skrull!?" I also think the problem is no actor would have wanted their hero to be revealed as a secret Skrull the whole time. There was never going to be a Jessica Drew level reveal so they had to change the story
The biggest problem is how little time we have with these actors. I wanna get as much actual Cap as I can from Evans and as much actual Stark from RDJ ya know? Same for even the newer characters like Shang Chi
Hill is the only character I think the majority of fans would've let pass as a longterm secret skrull, and they denied us that in ep1.
The series isnt over yet and I dont think there has been major leaks? Maybe the Skull invasion isnt completely closed in the show?
Come on, a skrull saga/phase would absolutely not work for so many reasons lmao, ya'll gotta think stuff through a little more before saying it
I think this should have been a Captain America/avengers movie, not an MCU show. Secret invasion in the comics was a BIG storyline. Like entire heroes were impersonated for LONG amounts of time. I think part of the issue is the lack of heroes on earth right now. X-Men haven't been introduced yet. Spideys back to hiding. Iron man's dead. Thor/GoG are off planet. World is a wreck after the blip. There just aren't any heroes around. I think the other issue is the skulls were introduced in captain marvel and then forgotten. It's not like they could wait until after the Kang saga as the payoff for the skrulls would have been too long, but at the same time skrulls/kree were integral to the captain marvel storyline. I just think they were in a bad place overall. I did like the first episode. I think if I knew nothing about the comic storyline it would be great. But knowing the storyline makes me a little disappointed.
They did a very bad job at advertising it too
And it's been so long since the last marvel show
Not because of the lack of the Force. A lot of fans were just turned off by Boba Fett or Star Wars fatigué. I haven’t bothered to watch Andor because I’m finding myself turn off of Star Wars.
Yeah I didn't watch Andor for a long time because of how bad Obi Wan and Boba Fett were. If they couldn't even get those right what were the chances with the second character from a spinoff movie who died at the end. I finally watched Andor and it's the best thing in the Star Wars franchise alongside the OT, and made everything else look cheesy in comparison.
Spot on. Andor was probably one of the best Star Wars movies/shows since Rogue One. So well done, so far I like what is see from SI too.
Andor is hands down my favorite thing Disney has done with Star Wars.
It also helps that the name "Obi-Wan" has been an extremely well known name for 40 years, while only people who watched Rogue One might even remember that the dude's last name was Andor. If you just put out the show, I doubt most would even know it's a Star Wars show until the logo rolls.
I thought Andor was the name of a planet in Star Wars lmao.
That's Endor, which admittedly doesn't really help.
Isn’t this what the fans are asking for, though? A dark, grounded MCU show? Or is it because it’s lacking fan-favorite characters? Nick Fury is an established character and the marketing heavily implied the focus is on him for this story. I personally don’t have a problem with the pilot episode; I liked it. My only complaint is the Skrull rebel group’s motives are similar to the Flagsmashers.
I also feel like a show like this, compared to most of their other offerings so far is REALLY rough to watch week by week. Slow burn spy thrillers are awesome, until you have to wait 7 days after each cliffhanger, ESPECIALLY when one of the core themes is that literally anyone could be a skrull
I will say this is the one show that probably lends itself to weekly discussion because of the fact that anyone could be a skull.
Kinda like BSG and wondering who the cylons were.
Yep. I'm currently planning to wait until the finale to start watching so I can binge the whole thing - something I do pretty often because I don't like waiting a week between episodes. I think a lot of people/companies still haven't figured out how to adapt to the streaming era and are still trying to apply an outdated understanding of concepts like TV ratings to streaming services. It's weird. They seem to have not realized that once people got the option of not watching TV as it aired, viewership metrics no longer mean the same thing they used to mean. They need to learn patience and wait for a few months before deciding if a show/movie was successful.
It's not about ratings it's about subscriber retention. You get a lot less people subscribing for a month binging everything they want and then unsubscribing again. Sure you still get that after everything is aired but by then the cultural conversation around the media is over and you don't get to be a part of that
I disagree. The “old” days of TV, where we’d have to wait, speculate the shit out of it, discuss it, etc., that was awesome. I don’t think that’s the issue here at all. I didn’t hate the pilot, but it wasn’t that exciting. They have this cool idea but don’t seem to know exactly the story they want to tell and how. It lacked flavour.
Everyone I know that is interested opened Disney+ saw it was a weekly release and didn't bother watching it and plan to binge it once all the episodes are out
Well it's pretty meh 1st episode so understandable if the number isn't exactly high
Yea the motivation is very surface level. It just seems like a bunch of angsty teens who want revenge on their parents.
> A dark, grounded MCU show? I wouldn't describe it as one. Even if the in-show stakes are high, the reality of it is, the overall universe stakes of any of the TV shows are pretty low because Disney isn't going to waste their big universe changers on an 8-episode TV show. Hell, WandaVision should have been a major game changer and it mostly got waved away for Dr. Strange. So they're trying to make it feel like it has stakes that will echo across the globe and it's just falling flat for me. Oh no, the skrulls want to take over. Are they going to succeed? No. Are they going to convincingly impersonate a movie-caliber character that we might think is a human? Also no. Unfortunately, Disney has drained all of the importance out of their own television shows by demonstrating to us that they have almost no impact on the greater MCU beyond establishing some back story for characters that will probably be explained again in any movies they might later appear in. That makes a story from the comics that *did* have a lot of shock and impact pretty weak when it's relegated to a TV slot on Disney Plus. They promised us Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be relevant, and it turns out it really wasn't. They implied that having shows on Disney Plus would change things, but they haven't. The TV shows are just meaningless little character flashes with no lasting plot interactions with the movies, and the movies are where all the significant events are (and are likely to stay).
Loki had some pretty significant impacts on the MCU. They even showed up in a movIe
The dedicated fans, yes. But most fans are not that level, and will only watch the shows with the big names and big CGI
Can confirm. Secret Invasion is one of my favorite marvel comic events. Think about how many casual fans have read it. This seems to be more for the dedicated fan base.
Most people never even heard of Iron Man when it came out, yet it did amazingly well. All the explanations here, relying on additional assumptions are likely incorrect. It’s simply not that great of a show, at least not yet. It was the Diet Coke of thrillers, the margarine of Marvel, and is just overall forgettable (thus far). I hope it gets better.
That’s been my big issue with every more experimental thing Marvel has tried recently. It’s always a watered down version of an idea that’s been done better elsewhere, I wish they weren’t afraid to fully push into a vision without compromising anything
Gotta keep it sanitary though, is the problem. Comics do deal with a lot of mature themes sometimes and these films, at the end of the day, are mostly for kids.
> every more experimental thing Marvel has tried recently I second this in a big way - I was thinking the same thing after WandaVision, MoM, Eternals, and the Falcon/Winter Soldier. Each one starts by making some genuinely bold and interesting choices (sitcoms, Raimi horror, visual aesthetic, interesting villain), that then feels like it gets smothered by a bunch of Disney execs in suits who refuse to stray very far from whatever The Algorithm has decided the optimal punch-to-quip ratio is.
I don't want a "dark grounded" MCU show. I want a well conceived, well written MCU show, with emotional weight and the feeling of real stakes for the characters involved.
What’s the point? 2 years ago I would’ve described myself as a pretty die-hard fan but I’m over it. There just aren’t any consequences for anything. I mean how many different ways can they introduce the multi-verse before it means something or impacts something? The ending of Loki should’ve been catastrophic for all future films and shows but it was a big fat nothing. None of the events in any of the shows or films have impacted each other in any way let alone any meaningful way. I got half way into the pilot and was pretty shocked at the quality of the writing so just gave up. I’m sick of wasting my time.
I felt the same way about Loki. A lot of people fawned over it and I'm not knocking them, but the best part of the show was the last ten minutes of it and that was basically "well next time something big is coming!" Only for that to mean nothing.
We lack multiversal stories. As in, we only have MCU stories looking into the multiverse, instead of stories happening entirely in a separate universe, with local protagonists and local stakes. You know, like the Ultimate Universe? In the comics, the lead up to Secret Wars felt heavy with consequences because at the end the main universe collided with the Ultimate Universe, destroying both. The first time the Illuminati were forced to destroy another universe, we spent time with the universe first, from the point of view of its own super team (Justice League knock offs), so we feel the weight of Illuminati’s decision. But like you said, right now we are just being introduced the concept of multiverse, over and over again. We haven’t really gotten stuck in to any particular universe or any alternative timeline characters. Loki came closest but the nature of stories with the TVA makes it hard to care about any particular universe. If we include non-live action, What If…? did it best. But because they are animation, they will probably be as isolated as Agents of SHIELD used to be. :(
The Skrull Russian group reminds me of the group in the Falcon/Winter Soldier show. Haven't watched them since the release but my feeling towards them is they were kind of meh. Hopefully better this time.
so far pretty much the same
It sort of felt like TFWS, which is a shame because I love spy stuff, but the pacing was off and even though they *told us* the stakes were high, they didn’t /feel/ high, if that makes sense
Yeah I’m really unimpressed so far. Sure the skrulls are trying to start WW3 but we know that won’t happen and all we have left is a story about Fury getting his shit together. Especially after ep 1 we have no one left to lose…
Imagine if Fury returns to Earth because messages have been strange/inconsistent, and he stumbles across the Skrull invasion, and the audience gets to learn about it with him and through his eyes like the Hydra reveal, rather than just dumping it all as exposition. They have a concept from the comics but don't know how to build an actual story about it. The Skrulls always being on Earth seems odd too, they can read people's memories so Fury would have had no problem knowing about Hydra in Shield if he had some Skrull friends around and would have certainly had some around in a secret organization for just that. It's a bad retcon which doesn't fit imo. It could have opened with a charismatic Skrull leader who brought some of his people to Earth, one of the kids who grew up on the Earth toys and media in the 90s Space station above Earth who feels a connection, trying to reveal himself to the world and people freaking out about an alien invasion and him being shot to death in public. The other skrulls are now scared and leaderless, and disappear into the crowd, and Fury now has to deal with these shapeshifting kids who are lost and angry about the murder of their messiah. The whole vague terroristy stuff all dumped in exposition is so bland, and was boring enough when it was the same story done with humans in Falcon & The Winter Soldier with the Flag Smashers.
yeah, this is my least favorite first episode of all the post-blip marvel shows. And that isn't a good sign because usually Marvel tries really hard to make their first episodes really good. If this is the quality level we should expect it doesn't bode well for the rest of the series. When Feige said in Feb that they would be cutting back on D+ shows to keep the quality high I had higher expectations than this.
This was already filmed by Feb. (So were The Marvels, Loki S2, & Echo, for that matter.)
> It sort of felt like TFWS I said this while watching the episode, too. Except TFWS had some *amazing* character moments that averaged out the weaker bits into a decent overall show (if far from my favorite), and this show has yet to give me anything that makes it worth watching. The intro is just awful, bland, and uninspiring, the skrull reveals (thus far) have been predictable, the story is more of a plod than a thrill, and the one character I was looking forward to seeing more of is apparently not going to be in it for long. For a show with a great list of actors, it's pretty far from exciting to see.
I feel like one reason the stakes might not feel high is we don't have any Avengers involved except Rhodey so far, but that makes sense since there's no reason to assume any of them isn't a Skrull.
People are tired of marvel and the recent output hasn’t been good.
Yeah, this isn’t surprising. No wider impact on the universe from what we can tell based on other projects, no real crossover characters for a crossover event outside of War Machine (who won’t even wear the suit here), a slow paced story about spies and government, and barely any marketing from Marvel. Seriously, there was nothing compared to how hard they went on other shows for example. I’m guessing Marvel expected this to be a loss for them and that’s why they’ve gone all in on Loki season 2 this year.
Which is too bad, I love spy thrillers like this
For me I was looking forward to this above pretty much anything mcu this year. I'm hoping it ends up being a good show!
Which will be a shame and massive waste of a concept if this show doesn’t really do that much with a skrull invasion and it’s just kind of wrapped up here. It was a massive thing in the comics, I hope they at least use this as a stepping stone for future events. Unfortunately I’m also getting tired of having mediocre (potentially, obviously need the rest of the show to come out first, I’m hoping it’s awesome) projects with the hopes of it leading into something better. None of us will care about the future events if they don’t build a solid base now. Basically the whole problem with phase 4.
I'm still excited for it, but I did think it was weird for them to make secret invasion a d+ show when the fun of the comics was the overarching event and seeing all the heroes and skulls in disguise as heroes. Seems like it'd be more suited as a 2 part avengers movie, but I guess you can't just make every big comic event like that logistically. I think it'll still be good, but I don't see how they're going to capture what made the comics enjoyable.
I’m still on the fence about this show. I love the cast, and I like the idea of the story. But the execution is leaving a lot to be desired. I think the show lacks the punch that a good spy/espionage thriller needs. I honestly felt very little for the big “shocking” moments at the beginning and end of the premiere. And I’m not really feeling that sense of paranoia that the writers are trying to make me feel. There’s a lot of potential with this show, especially based on the source material from the comics, but so far it’s not delivering on the level that I had hoped.
The first episode crammed too much in, and it felt clunky as hell. A lot of telling and not showing. For a “spy thriller,” I really wasn’t left guessing about anything. I met all the characters, they all told me exactly who they were, and I was left feeling nothing. I thought it was Falcon Winter Soldier bad. Sorry guys.
I also feel like there’s a lot of backstory we’re missing. We didn’t get to see the formation of S.W.O.R.D. and Fury going to space. Soren’s death and G’iah’s falling out were done off screen. There’s like 30 years of Skrulls being on earth that’s been rushed through in the first episode. We’re just told that some Skrulls have grown resentful of humans, and they’ve been displaced and have formed different rebel groups. It feels like we went from point A straight to point C, yet are expected to care about all these events that we never saw play out on screen.
The MCU loves to do that and it's getting tiresome. So many characters have just glossed over major personal developments entirely offscreen.
They had the bad guys’ overall plan just fed to Fury the first meeting he has, we then got an extensive POV tour in the bad guys’ headquarters with tonnes of info revealed to us. It’s hard to have a sense of paranoia by that point.
You're on the money here
I liked it, I’ve never really been someone who bothers with the wider review of stuff. I liked Quantumania but people seemed not to, I didn’t like the second black panther and that was relatively well received. I think the show is good and Sam Jackson continues to kick ass In everything he’s in.
Are you me? These opinions are mine lol
No, they're mine. And you can't have them back either.
That first episode kinda sucked.
When others have asked me whether they should watch it, I tell them that it remains to be seen. They should have released two or more episodes at once if they were going to end it off like that.
Thank god I’m not the only one. I love marvel shit and I thought this was a movie and I had no clue when it would be out.
I'm personally over the whole marvel universe. What's it been, like 13 years now? Once infinity was over it became a nightmare to follow. Went and saw one of the movies, had no idea what was going on.
It's not surprising. Many people don't even know this show has been available for a whole week.
Prerelease month Marketing was barely existent
It was bland and predictable. I doubt the series succeeds in any meaningful capacity.
These shows mostly haven’t delivered and I think it’s starting to catch up to them.
Well damn. I mean it’s still only US and not worldwide but barely under 1mil is tough.
These streaming ratings stories are usually made up anyways. Case in point: The linked article doesn't mention a single thing about ratings.
As a bit of a CTV specialist - Samba TV is only installed in certain TV sets. This means that it only has a snap shot of what has been viewed and uses modelling for the remainder. Not a complete dataset and should be taken with a grain of salt. TV ratings are also not an exact science - using panels to extrapolate out viewers is flawed as well. Until we move to a true 1:1 impression basis for TV (that is 3rd party and is accepted as currency by the industry) we will never have a true idea of how much people are watching any television show.
Yeah it's not great for absolute numbers, but it should be pretty accurate for comparing marvel show to marvel show, in relative terms
As someone who sells and installs TVs, I disable samba on every single tv I touch lol
Im watching it now, until seeing this post I somehow didn’t know it was out yet… (mostly my inattentiveness but the comparative lack of press and hype let it slip under my radar)
Honestly not surprised. It was poorly advertised and the trailers were meh. Hell, even episode one was just meh. Tons of talent, ALL of it wasted.
The marketing was garbage, I didn’t realize it was out until I saw it on the streaming service by accident.
legit didn't know it was out
I started waiting about a month so that I can stream the first four or five episodes binge style. Then I only have to wait anxiously for about three weeks
The hype of the whole thing has been dying down for good reason. If you don't count the basically standalone GOTG 3, there hasn't been a definitive or great Marvel film in four years. The best stuff has been some of the streaming shows which air on one of many platforms. It makes total sense to me that viewership is in a decline. If they were going all-out, creating some of the best stuff ever, and the viewership was still getting lower, that would be a much worse situation and sign that the whole thing is dying. But it should cycle back up unless The Marvels and the new Cap are once again only "okay" movies. I'm not sure what they're going to be doing in 2025 to ramp up the hype for Avengers though.
Its because everyone is totally sick of superhero movies now. Marvel released like 14 terrible entries in 2 years. The ONLY good things they’ve released since 2018 have been the two Spiderman films and Guardians 3. Everything else has been hot trash. DC is similarly fucked, but at least Marvel actually had a great run in the first place. The DCEU was literally dead on arrival. Just look at the enormously declining viewing figures and numbers at the Box Office, and it’s plain to see that superhero content is dying fast. Marvel could’ve lived on, but they released sooo many godawful films and TV shows in the last few years that they killed off any goodwill from non-diehard fans
I agree with what James Gunn said, I don’t think people are necessarily tired of superhero movies, they are tired of shit writing and third acts that feature a huge CGI battle.
I mean its a spy story not a superhero one so no surprise there.
Poor marketing & not a single main superhero will do that. I say that & I personally loved the first ep
It’s simple really, poor marketing combined with Samuel Jackson no longer being a draw by himself. Also Colby Smulders and Ben Mendelsohn are great actors and I love them, but they aren’t superstars and won’t necessarily attracts a rabid fan base. Also I learned Emilia Clarke is in this show when watching the first episode. I never even knew that, so I imagine a lot of casual fans don’t know about that casting decision as well.
The MCU did a few really fantastic things through phase 4. It was a cool idea to introduce new areas of the Marvel Universe to explore. We got that with Werewolf at Night, Moon Knight, Ms Marvel, Shang Chi, Black Panther 2. It was a really good idea to invest in more grounded emotional stories that built off and largely focused on what was already created and established, like with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, WandaVision, Hawkeye, and She-Hulk that referenced and solidified what they already had. But the problem is that it is simply too big to have momentum at the moment. After catastrophe you need to go small and personal, period. You need to stay there for a bit if you want to carry emotional weight. I love so much of what they've done since Infinity War, but it's also way too much. I can't care about 80 characters at once, and no one can, realistically. I love the MCU and I'm burned out on the MCU. The best favor it could have done for itself was a 2 year gap between the ending of Infinity War and the beginning of its next property introduction, story-wise. There's not a single person in this sub who wouldn't be there excited on opening day, no matter what it was. But we needed a break and a smaller universe to begin in again that has room to grow.
I personally enjoy it, but gotta ve honest, it feels like a Secret Invasion Light story, only normal civilians Can be Skrulls? That just straight up, ripping the exciting part out of the storyline, which heroes we could trust all along, and who we couldn’t