Did Disney blow too much money on hiring Samuel L. Jackson for Secret Invasion? In a new interview with Polygon, director and executive producer Ali Selim revealed that the opening sequence of the new show, which premiered on Disney+ yesterday and sees Jackson back as Nick Fury against the shape-shifting Skrulls, was largely generated by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, seemingly with little to no real involvement from traditional artists. Method Studios declined to provide any real technical details on how the opening credits were created, but Selim, whose other credits include Sweet Land and The Looming Tower, thought it was a great way to echo the themes of the new Marvel Studios show that also stars Ben Mendelsohn, Emilia Clarke, and Cobie Smulders, who’s back as former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill.
From a Polygon report:
[…] it looks a lot like if an AI was prompted with the concept of “Skrull cubism” — which, actually, isn’t that far off of what it is. As director and executive producer Ali Selim tells Polygon, the intro sequence was designed by Method Studios using artificial intelligence, something he thinks plays with the very themes of the show.
“When we reached out to the AI vendors, that was part of it — it just came right out of the shape-shifting, Skrull world identity, you know? Who did this? Who is this?” Selim says.
Like many people, Selim says he doesn’t “really understand” how the artificial intelligence works, but was fascinated with the ways in which the AI could translate the sense of foreboding he wanted for the series. “We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words, and then the computer would go off and do something. And then we could change it a little bit by using words, and it would change.”
[…] Selim says he was excited by what Method Studios brought to the show: “It felt explorative and inevitable, and exciting, and different.”
Discussion (4 replies)
Join Discussion →Watched it and honestly it did nothing to capture my attention. Hopefully it gets better.
Good to know. Yeah, my hopes are not high for this one. As someone who read the entirety of the original Secret Wars I/II and most of the crossover issues back in the 80s (II sucked bad) and then saw some of the rewrites in various cartoons over the last 20+ years, it's been depressing to see how the original concept keeps deteriorating.
As news of this and the larger arc for the Marvel movies was announced I did some research into to the current comic book iterations these are based on and was only further let down. I think the Skrulls, and Kree, are a cool storyline but the build-up they're trying to do here doesn't seem impressive to me, at least not yet anyway.
I was big on the original Secret Wars (I was around 12 at that time I believe), and I still enjoy going back to read that story. I remember going to the supermarket with my parents and picking up the next issue when it came out on the spinner rack. Secret Wars II really wasn't that good. Looking back now I seen the original SW was a cash grab by Marvel with whomever they were in collaboration with to make that toy line. Nevertheless I still enjoyed it.
Back to Secret Invasion, I just really never go into that story line and was just about out of comics all together by that point. I don't have high hopes for this series either, but I do hope it gets at least more watchable.
For sure and it was their 2nd attempt after the whole Champions thing failed. With DC it was Crisis and I don't remember what it had tried before that (SuperPowers?). Some years after those it became a somewhat regular occurrence each summer for them to do the next major event which spilled over into most of their respective titles like SW II did which was an obvious cash grab. That was about the time (late 90s early 2000s) I got out of it but kept track of what was happening through friends and reading things online.