Marvel Studios: Assembled (2021) s02e03 Episode Script

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 kill 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 War 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 died 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 shot 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 killed?
Your mother died
while you were working for her killer.
KINGSLEY BEN-ADIR:
With someone like Gravik,
what was most interesting
about exploring him is that
someone who has that impulse
towards violence 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 war
posing for pictures,
while the other does all the killing
and the dying.
Krell made his decision when he signed on
to your delusional war 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 war with the humans.
All these miscreants know
is murder.
Look how they treat each other.
That's what's gonna happen.
We're gonna murder 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 attack or bomb
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 shot 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 explosives
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!
[GUN 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 shot 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 shooting
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 torture 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 attacks
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 attacks?
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 bomb 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 war 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 terrorist
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 military Skrulls
have got map pockets and military 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 military sense,
they adapted aspects
of military 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 shooting
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 shots, 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 attack 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 gun battle happens,
and through that gun 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 knife
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 weapon
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 kill 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 kill me this time?
"They ain't kill me yet.
"Are they gonna kill 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.