Friday, October 22, 2021

Invasion Creator Says Show Is Like This Is Us With An Alien Twist

Invasion creator Simon Kinberg describes his new series as a sci-fi version of This Is Us. Apple TV+'s new show, heavily written by Kinberg and co-creator David Weil, depicts alien visitation on a global scale by following characters scattered across continents. The first three episodes of Invasion premiered on the streaming service today, October 22, with future episodes to release weekly on Fridays.

Going into today's release, audiences were told little about the show's story beyond its basic premise, but the main Invasion cast and character list already revealed a plurality of perspectives. Award-winning Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill plays Sheriff John Bell Tyson, shown in rural settings in early footage, while Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani plays Aneesha Malik, who appears to live around New York City with her family. Shamier Anderson's Trevante Ward plays a Navy SEAL stationed abroad, approaching the extraterrestrials from a military point-of-view, and Shiori Kutsuna's Mitsuki is a scientist who stresses the possibility of inter-species communication.

Related: Every Sci-Fi Movie Still To Come In 2021

In an interview with CBR, Kinberg stresses that these characters are more than just a means to capture the alien invasion from different angles. Instead, he says, the show is really more of a drama with sci-fi elements that push their personal crises to a breaking point. If the lives of the characters aren't as compelling as the global event they're experiencing, Invasion won't be able to hold its audience the way he intends:

Well, I think the heart of it was always the characters for me. So I wanted to make sure that the character stories, the crises that they were going through, their dramas were interesting enough that if it was just This Is Us with these characters you would be watching it. [...] If the alien invasion ever becomes so overwhelming that it's not actually moving the characters in a direction other than just making them run away, if it's not moving them in an emotional direction. I'm not doing a good job with the alien story.

Elsewhere in the interview, Kinberg discusses the films and TV shows that inspired his approach to his show's sci-fi premise, name-dropping two seminal works in War of the Worlds and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The Invasion trailer hints at these influences, along with the crop circles of Signs and the set-up of Arrival, suggesting that its expanded scope is in part to recreate the genre's multiple paradigms for human-alien interaction. However, somewhat surprisingly, Kinberg also mentions Lost as a major touchstone, indicating the story will be driven forward by an element of mystery.

If potential viewers weren't already intrigued by the concept of Invasion, Kinberg's comparison of the show to the hit character drama This Is Us is a reason to give the series a chance. Apple TV has been positioning themselves as a home for fans of science fiction, and Kinberg's show seems like a counter-point to Foundation, which offers futurism, detailed lore, and intergalactic expanse. Invasion instead promises a careful balance of human drama and extraterrestrial thrills, which should be especially appealing to those who prefer their speculative fiction a little closer to home.

Next: 2021 Can Save Smart Sci-Fi Movies (Like 2020 Was Supposed To)

Source: CBR



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