We watch several movies a week. Every Friday, we'll talk a little about some of the movies we watched that we felt were Worth Mentioning.
Cody marvels at Full Moon vampires and Hemsworth action.
SECRET INVASION (2023)
Back in 2008, Marvel Comics published a crossover storyline called Secret Invasion, which showed various Marvel superheroes dealing with an invasion of Earth by the shape-shifting aliens known as Skrulls – and some of the heroes are revealed to be Skrulls in disguise along the way. Fifteen years later, Marvel Studios brought a six episode adaptation of the Secret Invasion concept to the Disney+ streaming service... and in the process, they removed every costumed superhero from the story. Which may be the first reason on a list of several why I haven’t seen many fans say anything positive about this show.
Rather than focusing on a superhero, the Secret Invasion mini-series centers on Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, former director of the spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. I haven’t read the Secret Invasion comic books yet, so that may be why I was more accepting of this show than a lot of Marvel fans were, because I didn’t go into it with any superhero expectations. Instead, I was glad to see Fury finally get his own project. The story goes that back in the ‘90s, soon after the events of Captain Marvel, Fury recruited the Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and a handful of other Skrulls to work as spies. Fury and Captain Marvel also promised to find the Skrulls a new world to call home – but somehow, nearly thirty years later, they still haven’t managed to accomplish this. So some Skrulls are understandably upset, and have decided to just infiltrate Earth instead. There are now a million Skrulls living among us, taking human form, stealing identities... and there’s a rebel group led by Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) that intends to manipulate world events, set of a nuclear war, and wipe out the human race. Skrulls are immune to radiation, so living in the aftermath of World War III won’t be any problem for them.
Gravik is also working on a scheme that involves harvesting the DNA of Avengers and/or other super-powered beings in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and pumping them into select Skrull soldiers, creating Super Skrulls.
Feeling rightfully responsible for what’s going on with the Skrulls on Earth, Fury – who everyone believes has lost a step since he was flaked out of existence for five years in “The Blip” - decides to deal with this situation himself rather than call in the help of any Avengers. Well, there is one Avenger character hanging around – Don Cheadle as Iron Man’s buddy James Rhodes, who has a suit of his own that he wears to become the hero known as War Machine. But War Machine doesn’t suit up. Instead, Rhodes is working as an advisor to U.S. President Ritson (Dermot Mulroney)... and also scheming with Gravik, because Rhodes happens to have been replaced by a Skrull at some point. Which was upsetting to fans who were left hoping the switch hadn’t already taken place before Rhodes’ involvement in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
Rhodes’ working solely as a political advisor and not as War Machine in this show is indicative of the fact that it plays out like an old school spy thriller. The pacing of its episodes are sometimes achingly slow, and most of them primarily consist of people sitting around and talking to each other. So it’s a good thing we have actors like Jackson, Mendelsohn, Ben-Adir, Cheadle, and Mulroney to watch. Not to mention Emilia Clarke as Talos’s daughter G’iah, Olivia Colman as MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth, Cobie Smulders returning as Fury associate Maria Hill (reactions to this show indicate that a lot of fans cared more about Maria Hill than I ever did), Martin Freeman as Everett Ross from Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther, O-T Fagbenle as Rick Mason from Black Widow, and Charlayne Woodard as Fury’s wife Priscilla. Surprise, Fury has a wife!
Secret Invasion isn’t a very exciting show, unless you get a thrill from watching these actors exchange a lot of dialogue. The action is sparse and usually low-key. There were definitely questionable decisions made over the course of the development and production (and apparently there were substantial reshoots as well). There are lingering issues that are going to have to be addressed in future MCU projects. But there were things I enjoyed about it, and I didn’t find it to be the complete mistake / disaster some fans seemed to. It may not be one of my favorite MCU projects, it will probably be a long while before I have any urge to watch it again, but it was... fine.
VAMPIRE JOURNALS (1997)
With the vampire franchise Subspecies seemingly wrapped up as a trilogy, writer/director Ted Nicolaou moved on to another story about bloodsuckers with the 1997 Full Moon production Vampire Journals – but couldn’t resist tying to the new film to the vampire movies he had made before. Tying movies together is encouraged at Full Moon; the company’s founder Charles Band has said he always intended it to be the Marvel Comics of sci-fi and horror movies. (He had this idea at the end of the ‘80s, long before there was a Marvel Cinematic Universe.) All of the movies take place in the same universe, so characters from one movie can cross paths with characters from another (Dollman vs. Demonic Toys is a prime example of this), or at least make reference to them. That’s the case here, as the villain from the Subspecies movies, Radu, is referenced in Vampire Journals. We don’t see him or hear from him, but we know he was the master of a vampire named Ash (played by Jonathon Morris), who is prominently featured in this movie.
David Gunn plays Zachary, a vampire who is so anti-vampire that he hunts down his fellow bloodsuckers and slays them with an enchanted sword that was handed down from a vampire slayer called Laertes. His quest to eradicate vampires leads him to Eastern Europe, where he plays to kill the music-loving vampire Ash, who runs a nightclub called Club Muse. Zachary arrives just in time to protect a pianist named Sofia (Kirsten Cerre) from Ash, but she’s still wrapped up in Ash’s world because the vampire is infatuated with her and wants her to play at his club. Even though she’s a bit weirded out by Ash, playing piano is her career, so she decides to deal with him so she can make a living. Now Zachary is conflicted: does he focus on keeping Sofia safe, or use her to lead him to Ash’s lair?
Vampire Journals is a very different sort of vampire tale than the Subspecies movies, but it’s an interesting examination of the larger vampire world that exists beyond Radu and his castle. There are multiple bloodsuckers in this movie, as well as their human familiars, and this vampire society is reminiscent of the things Anne Rice wrote about in her Vampire Chronicles. I have a connection to the Vampire Chronicles (I mentioned it in my Interview with the Vampire write-up), and anytime I encounter something that reminds me of those stories, it brings up fond memories. So I enjoyed seeing how Nicolaou presents his vampires in this movie.
The story doesn’t play out in the most thrilling way and Zachary’s narration – which are passages lifted from his “journal”, as promised by the title – can be a bummer, but it still makes for an interesting 82 minute viewing experience. It’s a bit Subspecies, it’s a bit Vampire Chronicles, and it’s worth a look.
EXTRACTION II (2023)
Back in 2020, stuntman Sam Hargrave teamed with Joe and Anthony Russo, the sibling duo directors of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame, to make his feature directorial debut with an action movie called Extraction (based on a graphic novel the Russos had co-created called Ciudad), which starred Chris Hemsworth as mercenary Tyler Rake. Packed with impressive action sequences, Extraction was a hit for the Netflix streaming service – which is why we got Extraction II three years later, even though Rake was so severely injured at the end of the first film that we, at least momentarily, thought he might not have made it through.
Scripted by Joe Russo and again directed by Hargrave, the sequel picks up at the final moments of Extraction and shows that Tyler was able to survive thanks to his associate Nik, played by Golshifteh Farahani. We follow Tyler through the recovery process, and at first he’s not very happy to still be alive, as he feels he’ll never again be as capable as he was before. As it turns out, he’s just being a big baby, because before long he’s back in action and proving to be just as capable of smashing and shooting his way through action sequences as he was in the first movie.
This time around, Nik and her brother Yaz (Adam Bessa) accompany Tyler on a mission to Georgia – that’s the country, not the state. Criminal kingpin Davit Radiani (Tornike Bziava) is locked up in prison, but has enough pull that he’s able to keep his wife and two young children locked up in there with him. And his wife Ketevan (Tinatin Dalakishvili) wants out. So Tyler, Nik, and Yaz head to Georgia to extract her and her children from this prison, and there’s a personal edge to this mission because Ketevan happens to be the sister of Tyler’s ex-wife Mia (Olga Kurylenko). The extraction proves to be quite difficult, because Davit not only has a legion of criminal henchmen that want to thwart Tyler and his cohorts, he also has a very intense brother named Zurab (played by Tornike Gogrichiani), who doesn’t react well when he finds out that Davit is killed during the extraction.
Once again, a lot of action ensues, and Hargrave has a lot of fun showing off the skills of his fellow stunt performers. In between all the fights, shootouts, and explosions – many of which are presented as if they were shot in one long take, but the viewer knows that wouldn’t be possible because there’s way too much going on and too much ground being covered – we get some nice moments of drama. Tyler has interesting interactions with Nik, Yaz, and Mia, and there’s also drama going on among members of the Radiani family, because Davit managed to fill his teen son’s mind with a lot of fairy tales about loyalty to their crime syndicate before he was taken out of the world. Zurab is an irritatingly resilient villain, and he and his lackeys cause plenty of trouble for our heroes.
When you get one sequel, there’s always hope there will be more sequels, so Idris Elba also shows up as mysterious character who opens the door to a larger franchise.
I really liked Extraction, and found Extraction II to be a worthy follow-up. I enjoy watching Hemsworth take and dish out punishment as Tyler Rake, and hope to see him continue to do so in further installments.
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