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Фото автораNikolai Rudenko

"Invasion" - 200mln Apple TV+ blockbuster about how people experience an encounter with an unknown

A surprisingly tedious and actionless project about how people solve their problems against the backdrop of an alien invasion.



Something strange is happening all over the world. The small-town sheriff spends his last working day to understand what happened to the cornfield, around which the crows fly suspiciously; a family of Syrian migrants runs away from home when it begins to disintegrate for no reason in front of their eyes; an employee of a Japanese aerospace company is trying to figure out what happened to the crew of the crashed shuttle; British schoolchildren survive alone after a mysterious road accident. In general, something strange is really happening, but it is not very clear what exactly.



If you read the phrase "200 million blockbuster about an alien invasion," you first thought of "War of the Worlds" by Steven Spielberg or the opening scene of "A Quiet Place 2" in which ordinary people are forced to act on instinct and survive while the alien walks through the streets. form of life, then you, alas, are mistaken. The Apple TV + series with the telling name "Invasion" ironically deprives the viewer of the episode with the usual cinematic alien attack on Earth. Instead - exhausting suspense and a series of dramatic stories about people who seem to have already encountered something unearthly, but not directly, but tangentially. Actually, this is the trick and the main disadvantage of "Invasion" - a series that tries to present an alternative view of what the first contact with aliens might be.



In the great comedy series Seinfeld, there was a meta-arc - the characters pitched to the NBC management a series about nothing, in which nothing would happen, as in life. It is impossible to resist and joke that in about the same vein the authors of "Invasion" presented Apple a new blockbuster about the war with aliens, in which ... there will be no aliens. In fact, the viewer will see something resembling an alien already in the second episode, but its design, although very high quality, is so faded and inexpressive that it would be better if the audience was kept in the dark for a couple of hours. Otherwise, Invasion is a series that focuses on people in a panic-prone world that looks like The Walking Dead, from which the already few zombie episodes would be removed. Left without adults, aggressive schoolchildren cosplay "Lord of the Flies" and even talk about domestic violence and betrayal of parents; Syrian migrants, during a general panic, work through their family problems and so on. Everything is very important and modern, but not very interesting.



The funny thing is that on paper this concept looks intriguing: such a collective portrait of people from different countries (the aliens have finally visited somewhere other than the United States), who, as in the great TV series "Left Behind" (apparently, the participation of composer Max Richter is no coincidence) they especially try to understand the nature of the mysterious incident, but learn to emotionally cope with its consequences. It's another matter that all this is implemented rather superficially and primitively - the series is completely devoid of humor and takes what is happening too seriously, and the creators prescribe the characters with an excess of additional information, but still reduce their plot arcs to the most obvious events and conclusions. "Invasion" revels in the drama of what is happening, the tragedies and problems of the heroes so much that it is impossible not to agree with the comic opinion: the series simply forces the viewer to root for the aliens - so, you see, even though the suffering of earthlings would sooner end.

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