02x03 - The Making of Secret Invasion

[bunniefuu]

FURY: There was an idea.

[THUNDERCLAP]

The idea was to bring together a group

of remarkable people

to see if they could become

something more.

I never put all my chips

on that number, though

because I was playing

something even riskier.

Back in the day, I had eyes everywhere.

Ears, everywhere else.

All the tech you could dream up.

Here we all are, back on Earth

with nothing but our wit

and our will to save the world.

We have no idea what other

intergalactic threats are out there.

I was ten toes in this thing

when you were still

singing nursery rhymes.

[LAUGHS]

I've been having conversations

about a Nick Fury series

for a long time.

So, when it came up or came about

that they were going to do

Secret Invasion,

I was chuffed about it

and not knowing what the story was,

I had to go back and find

that particular story line

in the comic books.

This doesn't necessarily follow that,

but once, you know,

we started dealing with the Skrulls

and the Kree in Captain Marvel,

that's when things started

to kind of bubble in that particular way.

Don't k*ll me.

That would really

complicate the situation

I'm about five seconds

from complicating that wall

with some ugly-ass Skrull brain.

TALOS: I'm sorry I simmed your boss,

but now I stand before you

as my true self.

Without deception.

In Captain Marvel,

what we learn about the Skrulls

is that they have been persecuted

by the Kree

for many generations,

that their home world has been blown up

and they are scattered across the cosmos

as refugees in search of a home planet.

You're good to go here until you recover,

but you and your family

are going to need a new look.

I could go back to being your boss.

Uh, please don't.

It felt like there was more story there,

and what we sort of came to was,

what if the end of Captain Marvel

is Captain Marvel leading the Skrulls

into the galaxy

to find a new home world?

And what if she just failed?

What if there was no new home world?

And that felt like a starting point

for sort of the

The turning of trust

into anger and hatred.

We've been helping you for all these years

to ensure that you kept your promise.

But after The Blip,

you were different.

And then you disappeared.

BRIAN TUCKER: Talos is a Skrull.

Nick Fury is obviously a human,

and he's tasked with preventing

this Skrull invasion.

Can he trust his

One of his dearest friends

in that process?

Can Talos trust Nick Fury?

So trust and, you know,

the flip side of that,

having faith in people,

having faith in your friends,

even when it's very tough to do so

is at the heart of the story.

You've got nine minutes and counting

to figure out which side you're on!

SCHWARTZ: We wanted to take Nick Fury

and put him in a genre, in a structure

in which he would shine.

And Nick doesn't have superpowers.

His superpower is his brain

and his force of will.

And those are things

that come through really well

in a spy thriller.

TUCKER: We talked about it being

a kind of a non-Marvel Marvel show.

We wanted to really

dial into Fury, the man.

You know, I may not know

when a Skrull is pretending to be a human,

but I sure as hell know

when a human is lying.

Whatever we think about

his trench coat and his eye patch,

and how cool Sam Jackson is,

Nick Fury is a human,

a human with a certain kind of power,

but not a superpower like Captain Marvel.

Making friends with the locals?

[CHUCKLES] How do you think

we kept the Cold w*r from going hot?

I, as an individual,

I'm sort of charismatic, I think.

I can be fun.

I can be intimidating.

I can be all the things

that Nick Fury needs to be.

His superpower is his persuasiveness

and his fearlessness.

I'm Nick Fury.

Even when I'm out, I'm in.

The thing that excites me

about this project, Secret Invasion,

is that you get to see

another side of him.

TUCKER: He's gotten older

since we last saw him.

He's been living up on S.A.B.E.R.,

his specially made space station.

So he's been detached as well,

and we wanted to show what it looked like

for Fury a few years older,

to come down and to have to re-acclimate.

Let's just say I had a crisis of faith.

So why'd you come back?

It followed me up there,

and I owe it to Talos.

CLAIRE ANDERSON:

At the start of Episode 1,

I think he arrives back on Earth

not sure quite what to expect,

and what his role will be.

And we wanted to use something

that made him look softer.

We used a cut of tailoring in a coat

that had a softer shoulder

to give him a more broken look.

Although we kept elements

of Fury's original style,

the collar is always popped.

But using a wool meant that

it's more sympathetic to camera.

Wool absorbs light differently to leather,

so everything about him

was a bit less commanding.

The gravitas of Nick's journey

is such that

when we get towards

the penultimate episode,

we need him to gather all his strength

and go forward to save the world

and so that's what he does.

And he moves from a dark, heavy coat

to the black leather coat

and the eye patch,

something that represents

the Fury of old that we know.

So in working in Secret Invasion,

we really wanted to bring back a lot

of our familiar faces within the MCU.

Listen to me. I am here to help you.

You know, I had to pinch myself

many mornings

when I would step on set with Sam Jackson,

Don Cheadle, Ben Mendelsohn.

Some of my favorite actors in the world.

How's that? You loved that, didn't ya?

Ben, I got to know a little bit

when he was Talos in Captain Marvel.

It was such a fun, cool,

amazing emotional character

that it was a no-brainer

to bring him back for Secret Invasion.

She's cheeky.

Yeah, 'till she sees

an ugly-ass Skrull like you.

Then she goes into hunting mode.

I'm considered good-looking

amongst my kind there.

BEN MENDELSOHN:

In Captain Marvel, the original brief

was that Talos d*ed in about Page 64.

Once we started working,

the plan changed a little bit.

Was it something I said?

Once he was sticking around,

there was a relationship

which developed with Fury.

Go on, talk to her. She's your type.

All right, if you're done.

You always know just what to say.

[BOTH CHUCKLE]

JACKSON: He was a lot of fun.

And he brings this really

He brings this verve

to this whole Skrull thing.

Cut that. Let's reset. One more, please.

One more? That was amazing.

Again, again? You want it again? Cut.

That was the best one.

That was the best ending. We got it.

MENDELSOHN: It is one of the great

pleasures of my working life

to have an onscreen banter relationship

with a character

that's being played by Samuel L. Jackson.

- I'm working with Sam Jackson.

- Break the window.

- I'm working with Sam Jackson.

- MAN: So, A-cam, we lost video.

[SINGS] Every day

SMULDERS: I started my journey

with Marvel, gosh, probably a decade ago.

It was on the first Avengers film.

So I went in and read for "female agent."

And I don't know

how I weaseled my way into this role,

but I can't believe ten years later,

you know, she's still

running around with Nick Fury.

You gonna move?

I haven't decided.

See, that's what I'm worried about.

The Fury I knew

was always three steps ahead.

I was excited when I read the scripts

that we got to see Maria

sort of more in action.

- Drop the bags.

- I can't do that.

You don't have a choice, sweetheart.

We sh*t in here yesterday.

It was a pretty quick fight

[CHUCKLES] as we had to, to make it

because Maria Hill is no match

for sweet Emilia Clarke.

Where'd he go?

She.

Depending on how well you remember

the events of Captain Marvel,

you may remember Talos

reconnecting with his daughter,

who's been hidden from him for many years.

That daughter, years later,

has become G'iah.

Last warning!

It's what you always say

but there's always another.

G'iah.

Working with Ben Mendelsohn

is the joy of my life.

I was so nervous about meeting him

because me and my friends

had a Ben Mendelsohn fan club.

We're obsessed with him as an actor.

There are certain actors

that are actors' actors to watch,

and he is 100%, like,

top of the tree with that.

I didn't know what to expect,

but what I got

was this magical human

who just wants to play

and is so intuitive and is so much fun.

You know what?

- It's all falling apart for me.

- [LAUGHS]

- Let me just check out on this.

- They've always stopped coming.

MENDELSOHN:

You act with people, you get a

You get an idea of who they are.

It's not always right,

but you get an idea.

And Emilia really blew me away.

She's like fresh air.

Just, you know, really knocked me over.

- One and done.

- There aren't many of those here, mate.

- I'm telling you that.

- It's beautiful.

- No worries.

- Respect.

With G'iah, throughout the show,

you sort of see her go on a journey

of self-discovery as a woman,

but also a journey of self-discovery

as a person.

What her beliefs really are, are tested.

And

She's a general's daughter,

so there's a responsibility there.

And it's the kind of question of

will she accept it or not?

You don't see me because I'm not here.

I understand you're taking a risk.

A risk?

Is that what you explained to Mum,

that following you could get her k*lled?

Your mother d*ed

while you were working for her k*ller.

KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR:

With someone like Gravik,

what was most interesting

about exploring him is that

someone who has that impulse

towards v*olence and destruction,

who also has such a high IQ

is the most dangerous.

GRAVIK: You know the difference

between statesmen and soldiers.

One lot spends the w*r

posing for pictures,

while the other does all the k*lling

and the dying.

Krell made his decision when he signed on

to your delusional w*r against the house.

You know, I would be doing us both a favor

if I just put you out of your misery.

BEN-ADIR: For me, the key into that

was the destruction of his planet

and then coming to Earth

and then trusting in Fury

and then giving him 30 years

and still nothing.

Enough's enough. Now I teach.

Now I'm the teacher.

[SPEAKS SKRULL LANGUAGE]

MENDELSOHN: Kingsley brings

an incredible energy

and a real interrogation of who Gravik is

and why Gravik is,

and he brings

a great amount of power to it.

And he's very heartfelt.

GRAVIK: You ask me, Talos,

choice between having my story told

in ink and oil paint,

or having it written in blood.

I choose blood all day long.

There's a hurt that has calcified

into his madness and his rage,

and I think he's playing

those things wonderfully.

He's absolutely the Gravik

that I had in mind.

That's what this is all about, isn't it?

You're gonna take our people

to the edge of extinction

with the w*r with the humans.

All these miscreants know

is m*rder.

Look how they treat each other.

That's what's gonna happen.

We're gonna m*rder them all.

SCHWARTZ: Secret Invasion takes place

in the real world and a real world.

It's not alien planets.

It's not starships far away.

It's not other dimensions.

It is Earth and Earth is the stakes.

And that allows us to do a lot for real.

Our production designer, Frank Walsh,

has constructed

some amazing real world sets.

I do like to have

very kind of tangible kind of sets

that you feel you can see the dirt on.

So you can touch something

that feels very real.

I definitely wanted to kind of

create worlds in camera

and not relying a lot on visual effects.

The script was asking some amazing sets

from the safe houses

in Moscow,

which kind of harks back

to very kind of early thrillers, you know,

up to reactor room in Skrull Town.

So it was kind of a broad spectrum

of sets to design

from very gritty places to very high end.

But probably the biggest set piece

we will do is this Unity Day festival.

We're in Piece Hall

in Halifax, West Yorkshire.

We have recreated

a central square in Moscow

that is celebrating Unity Day,

which Gravik decided to att*ck or b*mb

during a time

when there are more people here.

It's enormous. We had 250 extras.

The square could probably

contain 5,000 people to make it look full.

And so we used those 250

and we tiled the floor with them,

moved them around

in different configurations,

so when we get a wide sh*t of the square,

it looks like it's really full

like Times Square on New Year's Eve.

There are explosions that go off

and we've built,

thanks to John Van Der Pool,

the special effects guy, we've built

bombs that explode with air and fire

and throws debris out

so it looks like buildings are breaking.

VAN DER POOL: This was a busy week for us.

It's quite involved because

we're actually using compressed air,

so as to keep the noise down with

a lot of very ancient windows around us

and confined space.

So we're using high pressure air mortars

and we're using small expl*sives

linked with propane gas.

We release propane gas

and then ignite it to give us a fireball.

Bit more labor intensive,

but hopefully we'll get the right effect.

I think we'll probably do

ten explosions over the weeks,

especially with an effect like this

with so many variables,

not just from our point of view

but from actors, from cameras,

we're always prepared to do

more than one take.

MAN: Three, two, one, action!

Fury, Talos, what's your status?

One of the kind of

just important decisions

that we had to make early on

was how to really illustrate the scale

and the reality of the danger

that Gravik and his rebels

pose to humans.

And to do that, we couldn't allow

all of our characters

to make it out safely.

This is a contest for the planet.

It's being fought on the ground

and it's gonna be bloody.

There will be casualties in this conflict,

and that means making, you know,

those tough decisions

to say goodbye to beloved characters.

FURY: Hill!

[g*n FIRES]

[GROANS]

It's a wrap. That's a wrap on

On this big day.

We were out in the square

and there was multiple explosions

and there was chaos and madness and

And in all of that,

Nick Fury was looking for Maria Hill,

and Gravik got to her first

and shape-shifted into the form of Fury

and sh*t Maria Hill,

in the In the gut.

In the gut right there.

[FURY GRUNTING]

SMULDERS: I've enjoyed my time

with Sam immensely, and

And being his partner

in all these adventures

and it's somewhat poetic

that he's the one who I think

kills me, but isn't. It's

It's going to leave his character

in a very dark place.

TUCKER: With the death of Maria Hill,

he now understands

this is personal between him and Gravik.

I think the real question is,

is Fury capable?

Like, is Fury still Fury,

or has he lost it?

SONYA: I think Thanos's snap changed you.

Taught you that no matter

how hard you fight for what's right,

there's always someone stronger

to undermine you.

SELIM: We are at Hatfield House

outside of London,

and this is the location for

the Russian townhouse of Sonya,

who is the MI6 counterpart of Nick Fury.

Back in the day, you would've seen

my rather mediocre bag men

coming a mile away.

The fact that you didn't see them coming

means you sure as hell won't see

Gravik and his rebels coming.

Which makes you as a partner

rather pointless.

I don't need to say anything

about Olivia Colman as an actor

because everybody already knows.

She's one of the greatest

living actors in the world

who brings a sense of fun and adventure,

and this amazing spirit

to everything she does.

Alone at last.

Now, shall we do this

the easy way or the other way?

I know after every Marvel film released,

I would phone my agent and say,

"Please, can I be in a Marvel?"

But I don't know

if that actually is how it happened,

but I got a call and said, "Yes."

JACKSON: I just really, really,

really love working with her after

after watching her

in so many wonderful things

and knowing what kind of actor she was.

COLMAN: I was so excited and so nervous.

Like proper kneecap jelly

when I knew I was going to meet him.

And he was just so lovely.

I think we might have even both gone

[LAUGHS] when we met.

- Ooh!

- JACKSON: That was amazing!

He called my sneakers dope.

I don't think I took them off for a year.

JACKSON: It's one of those things

where I've always known,

you know, from watching her

that as serious and as convincing

and as honest

as her work is when you see it,

you can see the twinkle in her eye

that's fun.

She is a very fun, fun actor

that, you know, like me,

this is sort of a playground for her.

She wants to come to work

and do this thing that we do.

And the better you are at it,

the better she becomes at it,

and the more you engage with her,

the more, you know, we give each other

and the scenes become even fuller.

Well, they do say Darwin never sleeps.

- Let's give our extinction a nice leg up.

- [CHUCKLES]

SCHWARTZ: While Nick is relatively

sympathetic to the Skrulls

and has been working with them

for a long time,

Sonya is not,

and will go scorched-earth

in order to protect Britain and the world.

I've thrown everything at him

and he hasn't said a word.

What makes you think

you can get him to speak?

Oh, I can be quite persuasive.

COLMAN: So, today, we've been sh**ting

a scene where Sonya is torturing Brogan

because he's a Skrull

and there's some good ones, some bad ones,

and she likes to find out who's who.

- So she chops off his finger.

- [SCREAMING IN PAIN]

We watch the human finger

turn to Skrull so she knows,

"Okay, he's one of them." And then,

tortures him with this injection,

which makes his blood cook.

And then she kicks him over off his chair

so that she can get to the escape hatch.

Sounds like your lift is here.

So I had to kick Brogan over

off his chair,

and I'm quite ashamed

at how much I enjoyed it.

- I really enjoyed it.

- [ALL LAUGHING]

But it's just so exciting to come on set,

on a Marvel set,

and there's gadgets and t*rture things

and liquids that make people bubble.

Oh, I love it. It's really fun.

What'd you tell 'em?

Nothin', just lies.

Nothin'?

Just lies?

That's all, I swear.

SELIM: Gravik has come up with

a version of the classic chaos theory,

which comes from many types of warfare,

specifically, Skrull warfare,

where you get your enemies

to fight against each other

and reduce their numbers

so that then you can come in

and either finish them off

or just turn them into refugees

and take over.

You've got all these European crybabies.

They're all saying

we had something to do with Moscow.

Well, I call bull on that.

I see no evidence.

There's no way the Moscow att*cks

were committed by Americans.

What are you hearing, Senator Byers?

For us to feel like

we could reasonably and believably,

explore this idea of sowing world chaos,

we really felt that the rebel Skrulls

had to infiltrate on a global capacity.

That means infiltrating

different countries,

governments, businesses, communities.

Colonel, are you denying

that two of your citizens,

Mr. Nicholas Fury and Miss Maria Hill,

were present in Moscow

at the scene of the att*cks?

We are aware of allegations

that Mr. Fury and Miss Hill

may have traveled to Moscow.

TUCKER: Another example

of trust no one in our show

that has kind of far-reaching

implications for the MCU,

looking backward and projecting forward,

is that we find out that

Colonel Rhodes is, in fact, a Skrull.

It's been an interesting ride,

and through all of the different

iterations of Rhodey,

and it's great to have an opportunity

to keep exploring a character

and finding new facets to him

and new ways to play it.

If Slovakia rolls its eyes at me

one more time,

I'm gonna put on the suit

and carpet b*mb it.

I think that's always the exciting thing

to me about these shows is

Is seeing the other colors

of these characters

and what they're having to deal with.

While the country appreciates your service

to the President tonight,

I'm here now. You can go.

You must be outta your Skrull-ass mind,

you think I'm gonna let you

get anywhere near the President.

Don and I were like golf buddies,

and we've known each other forever

but never worked together.

- Enticing offer.

- Word.

I would think that's what they call

in this business a win-win.

Can I make you a counteroffer?

JACKSON: So, this has been, you know,

a wonderful opportunity for Don and I

to, you know, step in

and do some stuff together

and be able to, I'd say, joust

in that way that good friends

who respect each other's work

and have been anxious to actually,

you know, get in that space together

and do it.

This is a w*r I got to fight.

When we finish, we can look at each other

and kind of go,

"Yeah, I think we did it.

Yeah, we did it. We did it. Yeah."

TUCKER: One of the special reveals

that we thought was important

in building out this series

and building out a Nick Fury

who was fuller than just his job

is Mrs. Fury.

- Good morning.

- Morning!

TUCKER: Her name's Priscilla Davis

and they met 30 years ago.

There's a rule that, you know, commander

of station and operatives cannot be

Our unit doesn't exist, Fury.

That means I don't work for you.

- That's an intriguing possibility.

- [CHUCKLES]

TUCKER: And what we further reveal

is that Priscilla's, in fact, a Skrull.

WILLIAMS: She's very much a peer to Fury,

which is something

we don't see often in the MCU.

He's the smartest guy in the room,

and with Priscilla we had somebody

who could match his wit

and his intelligence,

and that was really exciting.

Charlayne Woodard, a friend of mine

that I've known for a very long time

back in the '70s and '80s,

when all of us were, you know,

pounding the pavement

and doing plays

and doing all this other stuff.

She's, you know, fascinating to work with.

I never had a chance to work with her.

We've just been friends forever.

So all of a sudden,

we're working together,

so that's an amazing kind of thing.

- Fancy.

- My old Moroccan pour.

I thought she was something really special

and she knew how to have fun with it.

Thank you for the best time

I've ever had on any project.

- MAN: Yeah.

- Why lie to them? [CHUCKLES]

It's the truth.

If it was Gravik,

then why does he need me?

What Gravik needs,

what Gravik doesn't need,

that's none of your concern.

Gravik is, depending on your perspective,

either a global t*rror1st

or, you know, a freedom fighter.

BEN-ADIR: Gravik doesn't trust anyone

apart from himself.

Skrulls, humans, they're all the same.

I see you've kept the circle tight

on this one.

- We're the circle. No one else.

- Oh, yeah?

We're over 500 strong now.

BETO: So, is everyone a part of

G'IAH: The resistance? No.

Gravik provides refuge.

But if you do choose to be a warrior,

there is one advantage.

Oh, yeah? What's that?

You get to leave.

Everyone else stays in the compound.

SELIM: The idea was to have a place

where the Skrulls could survive

and the humans couldn't get to.

So it was like a hideout,

like a refugee camp that was undetectable.

And the Skrulls realized, or knew,

before the story started

that they could withstand radiation.

And there's a town

very much like Chernobyl

that has been the victim of a nuclear

power plant meltdown some years before,

and the humans stay away from it

because the radiation levels are too high.

And the Skrulls, it has no effect on them.

WALSH: I always imagine

it was like 20 years adrift,

that it had been abandoned

at least 20 years.

The buildings there probably date

from maybe 50 years ago?

So I was trying to create

that sort of sense of a place

where it has a history.

It looks derelict in a way

that people have abandoned it.

It needed to feel that

it was kind of natural, degraded,

you know, the way that

nature takes over places.

The Skrulls are not

trying to make it home,

so they're never fixing anything up.

They're just existing there

because this is just

a stopping off place in their journey.

The Skrull experience

is a refugee experience.

It's an experience that has required them

to live in the shadows,

and they want nothing more

than to continue

to be able to live in peace.

Welcome to New Skrullos.

ANDERSON: I looked back

at the Secret Invasion comic,

I looked at Captain Marvel

where we see the Skrulls,

I dug into Marvel Archive

to see if there was anything else.

We explored the Skrull language.

We got Skrull text.

We explored all of those elements,

and what we decided was

the Skrulls will have kept an element

of who they were about themselves.

So, we wanted to find a texture

that represented their skin.

So we have given all the Skrulls

a waffle texture as a base layer,

because that felt close to their skin.

Now, the more m*llitary Skrulls

have got map pockets and m*llitary pockets,

I think, pockets for equipment

because as they assimilate to humans,

they gather information

about what's useful

and what the human does.

So in a m*llitary sense,

they adapted aspects

of m*llitary clothing and militia look.

And then the more civilian Skrulls

that we see in Skrull Town

are more, more utilitarianly dressed,

and we looked at French work wear,

we looked

at what uniform does society

give its civilians

when they're in a politically

transient situation.

What is your name?

BROGAN: Warrior.

What is your fight?

BROGAN: Skrullos.

PAGON: What is your dream?

BROGAN: Home.

When we came to designing the makeup

for the Skrull refugees,

we were talking about the reality of that

and how we were going to reflect that

with our cast and our Skrulls.

And, you know, they've all got to look,

like, downtrodden and tired

and world-weary.

You may not notice,

but they've all got quite grubby nails

and the necks are all a bit grubby,

and the pores on the

Across the noses of the children

have got worn in dirt,

little details like that

which just bring that kind of reality

of being constantly on the move.

We're now in the finishing

department of Cam Effects.

This is where we do

all the painting and the seaming

and getting things all ready

just before things go on set.

This is kind of the final stage

before we take the prosthetics on the set

and stick them onto the actor.

Some prosthetics

we actually have done the ears separate.

So the ears would go on first,

then the chin, then the face.

In some cowls, we've done the ears intact.

The reason that we've done them

slightly different for different people

is because some people's ears

are so close to their head

that actually, we can get away

with keeping the ears on the cowl

and some they stick out,

so it's actually easier for us

to do the ears separately.

It just depends on time as well.

The good thing about doing it this way is

the time in the makeup chair

is vastly reduced

because we can stick on this large piece

in probably about 40 minutes

and then that's half the makeup

pretty much done,

and then chin and face goes on

and it's very, very fast.

We have a lot of background Skrulls.

The difference between the cast

and the background is actually minimal.

You know, the actual level of detail

and the application

is pretty much the same.

But the very background

is literally pull-on masks,

and that's to save on time and labor,

and you know, each Skrull actually

has two prosthetic makeup artists on.

So as soon as you have 20 Skrulls on set,

which they will be in makeup,

you know,

that's 40 prosthetic makeup artists.

And then we want

another 15 people in masks,

so we want to minimize that crew.

One of the longest things

that we have to deal with

is painting hands.

So you do these These Skrull makeups,

but it takes an hour to paint the arms

up to here and put all the detail in

and sometimes back-of-hand prosthetics.

So we've actually avoided that

with basically producing

our Lycra pull-on Skrull gloves,

and then it's It's done.

You know, you've got a Skrull hand

very, very quickly,

and it means that

they can take the mask off,

they can take the gloves off,

have their lunch.

Talos is the only character

that we haven't sculpted

bespoke ourselves.

This is the character

that is transferring from Captain Marvel.

Ben Mendelsohn's makeup hasn't changed.

Everything still fits okay.

Prosthetics. They do a couple of things.

They tend to make you

better-looking in some ways.

They'll tend to improve

upon the shape of your head.

They take a very long time.

But there's a golden rule, I think.

There's not

There's nothing to be gained from

From, you know, bitching about

being inside the costume

or complaining about its difficulties.

You got to suck it up, roll with it

and work inside a superhero

prosthetics and the costumes.

Did you feel that sort of scrolling pain?

Right, look

SELIM: We are at Dunsfold,

which is a decommissioned air base

that's used for Top Gear.

Top Gear is filmed here,

and so people are very excited about that.

And we're sh**ting

the presidential motorcade ambush

at the end of Episode 4.

This scene has been

in development for months,

working closely with Rob Inch,

the stunt coordinator

and second unit director,

who is really the hero of this sequence,

which I think will end up being

seven or eight minutes of screentime.

And he's been working on it full-time

since probably May,

and it's now middle of November.

I work with a storyboard artist,

develop the sh*ts, show them to Rob.

Rob develops,

sort of reverse engineers

how to create the car flip

that's been drawn,

then the storyboards go into

an animation sequence called pre-vis

where we pre-visualize

what's going to happen.

The pre-vis people work,

then the editor takes over,

edits together the storyboards

and the pre-vis animation

and ultimately comes up

with a sequence that is paced and timed

as the final sequence will be.

And that gives Rob Inch and myself

a greater sense of

how long the car flips need to take

and how to achieve them.

And we come here to Dunsfold

and Rob basically works

with the mechanics of all that

and any time you see an actor's face

emoting or delivering some information,

that's my job.

So, I'm the main unit,

he's the second unit

and we come together in this week

to put together this sequence.

Ready, and three, two, one, action!

Cut that!

So there's loads of elements to this.

First of all, the

You know, we're doing two-car flip

and with one of the cars,

ultimately, what we do is

we're gonna do a cannon roll,

which is a charged cannon

in the bottom of the car

that throws out a piston which flips it

and as that happens,

we have the presidential car behind that,

swerves out of the way of that one

and he gets hit

and we're going to do

a more conventional pipe ramp with that

which will roll that car over

and disengage the two cars

from the presidential cavalcade.

We got hold of a couple of old cars,

put roll cages in them

and went to Dunsfold and tested it

where we were going to film it.

How's the distance, for this to go under?

It looks It looks pretty good.

- Okay, good.

- Yeah.

VAN DER POOL: There's several stages

before we actually get to do it.

Certainly, each time we do it,

it's a completely new car,

and they're quite expensive,

those Suburbans, so [CHUCKLES]

We didn't have too many to play with.

The att*ck really happens then.

We've got three vans

coming from up in the woods here.

We're doing a jump through some hedge

to introduce the kind of Russian baddies

and then the g*n battle happens,

and through that g*n battle,

we take down a couple of helicopters.

They land left and right

of the presidential car that's flipped up.

We're going to be ratcheting a couple

people away from that as that happens.

But then the story is a navigation

of getting Fury and Talos

back to where the president is to

To break open the window, pull him out,

and take him away.

[GROANS]

He's a bloody alien.

He's trying to get to Ritson!

No, no, no! Hold your fire!

He's with me!

The president cannot be got.

He can't be got.

If the president gets got, it's game over.

So, Talos does the only thing that he

That he can.

He's trying to get him out of that car.

Talos, hang in there.

I'll be back for you.

And you know, it's a

It's a great move by Gravik.

Put him down.

I said put him down.

TUCKER: I think Nick Fury is aware

that his personal attachments

to other people,

other Skrulls opens him up

to what's at stake.

Not just for humans here on Earth,

but for Skrulls here on Earth,

that they do share the same values

and that Talos has just paid

the ultimate price to demonstrate that.

MENDELSOHN:

It's the Obi-Wan Kenobi thing.

He is more powerful as an example

when he's gone

than I think he would be capable

of living at that time.

SELIM: On a surface level,

the fact that

Nick Fury has lost Maria Hill

and lost Talos,

both at the hands of Gravik,

I think, is just a further extension

of Gravik sinking the Kn*fe

and twisting it into Nick Fury.

But I also think it's good to take

a character who has a lot of questions

and needs to make a lot of decisions

and isolate them

so that the pressure

becomes entirely on them

and they are unable

to point fingers anywhere.

Nearly every Avenger

spilled blood in the Battle of Earth.

Even Carol Danvers.

In the aftermath,

some were sent in to collect that DNA.

Some with the ability to blend in.

Nobody knew about them

but me and the collectors,

- led by

- Gravik.

Gravik, yes.

Which is probably where he got the idea

for the Super Skrull machine.

- So you are responsible for all this?

- Yeah.

Why do you think I came back?

We're developing this process

of injecting ourselves with the DNA of,

you know, other characters,

very powerful characters from the MCU.

It's all going towards the machine,

which is the creation of this machine

which is right behind us,

which you go into and

It's kind of like a pick-and-mix.

You can choose

I'll take the DNA of Abomination

or Cull Obsidian, or whoever,

and then you take on their powers.

It's all leading towards basically turning

the minimal Skrull population

into a force of super soldiers.

It was an ongoing conversation throughout

pre-production and even into production,

about which characters,

which superpowered beings

we would pull from for this DNA.

You want to feel that

the strength and the DNA they collect

is powerful enough

to make them a compelling

and interesting and scary villain.

So, we began our search with this hunt

over Planet Earth and we're like,

"Where could they have found

Frost Giant DNA?

"Where could they have found EXTREMIS DNA,

or Groot DNA?"

And so, we started to search

through the movies and they're like, "Ha!"

They found Groot DNA

at the site in Wakanda

where Groot put his arms into the ground

to try to defeat Thanos.

Cull Obsidian's arm gets chopped off

in one of the battles in New York.

So, it was It was really fun to, like,

pick these, like, seemingly random strands

out of the MCU

and find a new place for them

within the context of Secret Invasion.

And we no longer just change faces.

We change powers.

We're gonna be uniquely programmed

weapons of mass destruction.

All of us.

Super Skrulls.

SELIM: Gravik realizes that

he needs to be stronger.

He needs bigger weapons,

and the biggest w*apon

you can have is Avenger DNA

and become Carol Danvers.

Carol's DNA

represents the highest of the high

in terms of the powers,

even more than the Avengers, I think.

Once he gets

Captain Marvel's powers,

everyone will then

be able to experience his pain

and absolute destruction and chaos

or cleanse or whatever you want to call it

will be inevitable.

It's part of what I

I know it's a part of his mind game,

but what part of a mind game is it?

It's, um

I think this

This entire thing is a tribunal.

To put you on trial, put Nick Fury,

the man that made this promise,

the guy who sacrificed

his life, his relationships

Things he should have done,

but he never did.

All the relationships he's had

have been tainted by it.

Everything you've touched.

- His commitment to something else.

- Right.

- you've tainted in his estimation

- Yeah.

put you on trial for that.

[COUGHS]

What we're sitting in at the moment

is the core of the reactor control room.

The assumption

is there's still power here,

that the Skrulls are using this as

a power source for their own experiments.

I was in Budapest last year

and visited this power station

this is based on

and just thought, "What an amazing space."

It was an Art Deco,

it's period

and there is a pattern in here.

You've got an oval space

with a sphere inside it.

But I just thought the idea of it

being an eye in some way was interesting.

What is so interesting about the Skrulls

is that they have

this shape-shifting trick they do

that fools the eye,

and what you see and what you don't see

is a constant theme all the way through,

and it's something

I have kind of exploited in subtle ways.

I was interested in reflections,

I was interested in mirrors,

and sometimes you look into spaces

and you see something

but it's not really there.

The Skrulls are like magpies.

They take stuff away

from what they find around

and make their own things.

So I just thought

it was kind of great foil

to have redundant technology

and future technology

existing in the same place.

So I pitched it and I don't know,

they seemed to like it. [CHUCKLES]

Whoa! Colonel Rhodes, I've got you.

You've been held hostage

for a long time.

[GROANS]

CHEADLE: One of the big themes in the show

is the theme of the other and

And feeling

like you don't have a place that you

That you don't belong.

And that gives us a feeling of what we are

dealing with day-to-day in this world.

This happens every once in a while

where, you know, writers write a show,

and by the time it comes out,

it's the life we're living.

It's dealing with

some very real human issues

and very real human struggles

and to give that air time,

to give that space,

I think it's remarkable,

and I feel utterly privileged

to be a part of that conversation.

I just wanted to tell you that I love you.

As I am.

Only as you are.

- Oh, Lord.

- [CHUCKLES]

Well.

Yeah. I'm gonna miss this one.

I'm gonna miss it a lot.

I will miss the degree

to which this is in people's hearts.

I'm gonna miss a lot of the people

that the audience don't see

who make up the real experience

of what it is to do this

These things.

The people I work with every day,

and I'm going to miss

being on set with Sam.

JACKSON: I've been fortunate

from the first time I showed up.

I was making sure they didn't k*ll me.

I'm here to talk to you

about the Avenger Initiative.

So I could be the next one

and the next one

and I kind of keep doing that in this,

hoping, "Well, okay,

are they gonna k*ll me this time?

"They ain't k*ll me yet.

"Are they gonna k*ll me

in the series now?"

But that's another story for another time.

I think the luxury of doing a series

within the Marvel Universe

is you get to spend time.

We get to jump into Nick Fury's world

which is very Spy vs. Spy.

Not bad. Not a bad plan

for a washed-up old man.

I am literally half your age.

[CHUCKLES]

SMULDERS: It's very

dark alley conversations.

It's very film noir,

and you're able to sort of see

him trying to navigate

using his old techniques

in these new waters.

[ALL LAUGHING]

I think that the thing

that I'll take away from it is just like

- the effect that these films have

- [CREW CHEERING]

in people's lives.

It's so cool

being a part of Marvel history,

and when you meet people and you see

how much they love these movies

and you see how How excited they are

about the characters and the story

and the future of it,

it's just like It's entertaining.

But I think, you know, when it started,

I think we all knew that

it was something special.

JACKSON: There was an idea.

SMULDERS: I think that there was

so much excitement,

but I didn't imagine that the scope of it

would widen so much

and this world would become so large.