Secret Invasion‘s director revealed that the climactic fight in the Disney+ series’ finale was the idea of Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige.
Warning – The rest of this article contains spoilers for Secret Invasion.
Emilia Clarke and Kinglsey Ben-Adir squared off in an epic final fight to end the Secret Invasion Season 1, or, at least, it was supposed to be epic.
Now Super Skrulls with the powers of dozens of the most powerful MCU superheroes, G’iah and Gravik battled to the end, leading to the series’ main antagonist’s demise.
This controversial CGI battle, which was part of the lowest-rated MCU project ever, put Carol Danvers, Abomination, Mantis, and more powers on display.
Kevin Feige Wanted the Super Skrull Fight
While speaking with Deadline, Secret Invasion director Ali Selim confirmed that the Super Skrull CGI fight “starts with Kevin Feige.”
Selim said that Feige was set on the battle, saying “We’re gonna have a Super Skrull fight and all superpowers are fair game:”
“It starts with Kevin Feige, who says ‘We’re gonna have a Super Skrull fight and all superpowers are fair game.’ I think that is actually best communicated in the moment where Gravik takes the vial from Fury and puts it in the computer for analysis. We see oh, it is all the superpowers scrolling up here.”
From there, Selim said it was “a discussion of paper, scissors rock” when determining which MCU superpowers G’iah and Gravik would use on each other:
“Then honestly, it’s a discussion of paper, scissors rock, which superpower from G’iah is going to dominate a superpower from Gravik? Paper, scissors rock, which superpower from Gravik is going to dominate G’iah momentarily?
The director added that there were some abilities they wanted either character to use, but it “just didn’t look good:”
“It’s also just a little bit of choreography and visual elegance or beauty, just making it work. There were some transitions from a superpower to another superpower that made sense in story that just didn’t look good. So we shifted the story to accommodate the choreography.”
Selim was asked a similar question about the MCU powers on display when speaking with Variety and reconfirmed that “it comes from Kevin Feige, who says, ‘It’s all fair game.'”
The director added that “the decisions are Kevin Feige, then story and then just practicality” are what he and the creative team have to figure out.
The CGI-filled sequences were storyboarded for a month, and Selim was helped by comic book creator Aaron Sows and artist Ian McCaffery:
“We storyboard those sequences for month. I had two storyboard artists working on it — Aaron Sows in L.A., who’s a Marvel fanatic, and Ian McCaffrey in Dublin, Ireland, who is a little more of a choreographer and less involved in the MCU. And together, the two of them found a rhythm between superpowers that had meaning and superpowers that had choreography and elegance.”
Following the storyboards, it headed into stunt work, leading to the controversial over-use of visual effects. Selim confirmed that one transition “from this arm to a different arm” was an attempt “to be more elegant:”
“Then those storyboards go to stunts, and stunts work out that some of those movements are impossible to do. And then it goes to visual effects [who] say, ‘I know this is what we planned, but it looks funny, so let’s maybe go from this arm to a different arm, because we want it to be more elegant.'”
What’s the Future of Super Skrulls in the MCU?
Keeping Emilia Clarke’s G’iah alive, fully equipped with an arsenal of abilities, and making her the most powerful character in the MCU was a surprising choice.
This is especially true when considering she will now be working with Olivia Colman’s Sonya Falswroth character. There’s clearly a plan for the over-powers alien to reappear in the universe.
Based on the final fight in the finale, G’iah could possibly take over the entire Earth as Gravik seemingly wanted to do in the name of Skrull liberation.
With that being said, G’iah isn’t meant to be a villain, but is she now an Avenger? That doesn’t seem likely, despite her unbelievable powerset.
One theory is that G’iah will be the Sentry replacement in the Thunderbolts movie. Currently, Steven Yeun is rumored to be cast as Sentry, a superpowerful villain when becomes the Void.
Why have the Thunderbolts take down a brand-new character like Sentry when a Superman-like character in G’iah now exists?
Secret Invasion is now streaming on Disney+.
