Invasion Apple+

[HiFidFan]

I watched the first episode of Invasion on Apple+.

So far it's pretty disappointing. More of a slow paced drama than an alien invasion sci-fi film. I'm not sure I can stick with it.

Anyone else watching this?

 

[NiagaraPete]

Not yet, new Foundation tonight.

 

[restorer-john]

I watched the first episode of Invasion on Apple+.

So far it's pretty disappointing. More of a slow paced drama than an alien invasion sci-fi film. I'm not sure I can stick with it.

Anyone else watching this?

I just watched the promo clip. Oh dear.

 

[daniel_chris]

I watched the first episode of Invasion on Apple+.

So far it's pretty disappointing. More of a slow paced drama than an alien invasion sci-fi film. I'm not sure I can stick with it.

Anyone else watching this?

I didn't like it too

 

[FrantzM]

“Invasion” is bad.
Slow.
Has no likable characters.
Plot makes little sense …
The list could easily go on..

Atrocious!

 

[Ata]

That is disappointing... Let's hope it picks up pace in later episodes. I am waiting until all of the season is available.

 

[tmtomh]

I'm in the minority - I like Invasion.

Don't get me wrong - I like Foundation a lot more, and I totally get the criticism of Invasion, that it's a "slow burn" that takes way too long and is not really sci-fi while the slow burn is happening.

But I like it precisely because it's doing a lot of character development, and to me it presents an interesting alternative to the usual alien-invasion story, where it's always a sudden appearance and a shock-and-awe attack. So no, it's far from my favorite sci-fi or alien-invasion series, but I like it as an interesting alternative approach.

 

[FrantzM]

I'm in the minority - I like Invasion.

Don't get me wrong - I like Foundation a lot more, and I totally get the criticism of Invasion, that it's a "slow burn" that takes way too long and is not really sci-fi while the slow burn is happening.

But I like it precisely because it's doing a lot of character development, and to me it presents an interesting alternative to the usual alien-invasion story, where it's always a sudden appearance and a shock-and-awe attack. So no, it's far from my favorite sci-fi or alien-invasion series, but I like it as an interesting alternative approach.

I'll be watching tonight episode... not much to do, lately... but the mains characters, save perhaps for the boy, are not likable... By the way the bully is so stupid as to break a radio, severing communication with the rest of the world .. and the others are quiet about it ... then, yYou have an angry soldier, I will say he is a least dense, being so slow to realize that something very strange is happening, he goes around, angry ... You have the JASA worker, quick to criticize and apparently unaware or uninterested by what is happening throughout the globe, that , from a person in a high position in a space agency, not reading or listening to the World news or discussing or chatting .. in these days of Social Networks …all she seems to care is to find what happened to her lover ... And the wife... She steals a car from a family like hers, with no fuss and will later just get in a truck with the military not asking when she will be back to take care of her family and .. poke at her husband about his affair .. husband by the way, more interested in his girlfriend/mistress situation, than the dread around him ... or his children welfare or understand what is going on... The characters do only care their petty little things ... Not the world, not their welfare not ... anything
So far, the show is BAD. Looks like it will stay that way: BAD.
Foundation OTOH is taking a better turn... That doesn't make it close to the standard bearer, The Expanse, and we mean not by several light years. Will it improve? We'll see, because the source material is very rich.

 

[kiwifi]

I gave up on Invasion after two episodes. It was just too slow for me.

Foundation is much better.

 

[kokoon]

I'm in the minority - I like Invasion.

Don't get me wrong - I like Foundation a lot more, and I totally get the criticism of Invasion, that it's a "slow burn" that takes way too long and is not really sci-fi while the slow burn is happening.

But I like it precisely because it's doing a lot of character development, and to me it presents an interesting alternative to the usual alien-invasion story, where it's always a sudden appearance and a shock-and-awe attack. So no, it's far from my favorite sci-fi or alien-invasion series, but I like it as an interesting alternative approach.

How did you like it now that the season 1 is finished? I really liked all of it and I'm so confused about being a minority in this, haha!

 

[pjn]

How did you like it now that the season 1 is finished? I really liked all of it and I'm so confused about being a minority in this, haha!

Consensus in our house - "it's not very good, really". Although a couple of somewhat compelling characters and a very good cliffhanger ending

 

[FrantzM]

Invasion is not good... It is a bad show, poorly written. Production values are good because of the budget afforded by being an Apple production, thus Cinematography is good, acting adequate; sound is good, not superlative. It remains that the plots elements (if any) are lost in a strange , irrational narrative.. The money could have been used elsewhere.
Foundation is looking better, taking a different turn.
I am not sure there would be a lot of tears shed if "Invasion" were cancelled ...

Peace. Happy Holidays!

 

[tmtomh]

How did you like it now that the season 1 is finished? I really liked all of it and I'm so confused about being a minority in this, haha!

I am ambivalent about the ending. The way the unexpected thing that happened with the aliens played out was IMHO more confusing and less well-defined than it could have been - I get the point was to raise a question about the precise cause of it, but it was a little muddled.

But on the whole I did like it because, as I noted in my prior comment, I feel it was basically consistent with the overall tone and approach of the show, which was to give the viewer little if any information beyond what the various characters knew.

I too am a little confused about why so many people seem not to like it. I guess my argument would be that it's not a bad show or a poorly written one, but rather a show that, for a lot of sci-fi fans, simply does not give them what they want. So I'd say it's not for everyone, and it's probably not really even a sci-fi show but rather more of a post-apocalyptic one. I would hypothesize that a lot of what folks don't like about the characters - and I really do like the characters myself - is that most of what they're reacting to has little to do with the aliens themselves. It's a story about lost love, broken families, cross-cultural encounter, and so on. I think it parallels The Walking Dead's gradual transformation from being mostly about humans vs. zombies to being mostly about humans vs. humans (although Invasion is far more restrained and less dumb than The Walking Dead's shark-jumping later seasons).

 

[FrantzM]

@tmtomh

Don't you think that the characters reactions to an alien invasion a bit strange, unusual? Unrealistic? I mean ... the world is being invaded by Aliens and all that a Japanese worker is trying to do is to get news or her lover's get her lover back? Risking everything in the process and being helped by her superiors coworkers and her lover's father? The soldier is angry all the time and also against the locals but fail to realize something really momentous is going on? The wife seems to be only interested in .. her marriage? The husband in his mistress ... his children? Not so much... And it goes on and on? The president of the USA having declared the World is under an Alien as in from Space. Invasion? No sense of fright ? Of befuddlement?
Where will that take us going forward? In term of the characters? Where will they be? In the next season? Who will they become? There is a lack of focus in the series? What is this about? Really?

 

[pkane]

I thought Invasion had potential when it started. While I didn't like the often plodding and unnecessarily detailed diversions into side-stories, overall, I preferred it to the nearly universal shoot-the-alien-monster invasion format so common to this genre.

The unusual circumstances and the lack of understanding of what's happening explains a lot of the human behavior in the show. Human beings are flawed and often focused on their immediate needs and things that they are used to, those that are within their immediate world view. Something so unusual and hard to understand as an alien invasion will be hard to accept, and it'll take some time for us to adjust. I see this show more as an exploration of how the human race will react to such an event, rather than about the invasion or the heroic attempts to defeat the aliens. The story line could've been better written, but I certainly didn't dislike it.

 

[hege]

Utter garbage, I have no idea how someone could find any character or their interactions likeable, interesting or entertaining. Same thing with Foundation. There's simply no charisma or intellect there, why watch something bland, when you can do shows like The Wire or Le Bureau des Légendes?

Only redeeming point was one hifi scene.

 

[kokoon]

I am ambivalent about the ending. The way the unexpected thing that happened with the aliens played out was IMHO more confusing and less well-defined than it could have been - I get the point was to raise a question about the precise cause of it, but it was a little muddled.

But on the whole I did like it because, as I noted in my prior comment, I feel it was basically consistent with the overall tone and approach of the show, which was to give the viewer little if any information beyond what the various characters knew.

I too am a little confused about why so many people seem not to like it. I guess my argument would be that it's not a bad show or a poorly written one, but rather a show that, for a lot of sci-fi fans, simply does not give them what they want. So I'd say it's not for everyone, and it's probably not really even a sci-fi show but rather more of a post-apocalyptic one. I would hypothesize that a lot of what folks don't like about the characters - and I really do like the characters myself - is that most of what they're reacting to has little to do with the aliens themselves. It's a story about lost love, broken families, cross-cultural encounter, and so on. I think it parallels The Walking Dead's gradual transformation from being mostly about humans vs. zombies to being mostly about humans vs. humans (although Invasion is far more restrained and less dumb than The Walking Dead's shark-jumping later seasons).

Yes the final episode could have been better, I still liked it though. I'm not saying S1 is perfect, but it's still way better than any other "sci-fi" television I've seen this year.
I did binge it over two days, so the slow pace might have bothered me if I had to wait a week between the episodes. But the way I watched it, I could hardly stop the first night halfway into the season, at like 3am - I genuinely enjoyed every second of it. Yeah, I didn't agree with every decision from the characters. Yes, some characters were painfully obnoxious. Some were plain stupid. None were particularly likeable, at least not from the get-go... but hey, isn't that how life is? Overall it felt astonishingly realistic, compared to anything else in recent memory. Which I really appreciated.
It also didn't feel slow to me, at any point. It really puzzles me how people say things like "there's no story" and that they needed to fast-forward all the time. What the hell, how can we be so different?? I didn't want to miss a second of the show, pretty sure I rewinded some scenes here and there, to make sure I caught all the nuanced details.
Also, the sound design - I really liked how the aliens sounded and the way it was mixed. And more... and again, I'm just baffled by the general disapprovement of the whole thing.

Don't you think that the characters reactions to an alien invasion a bit strange, unusual? Unrealistic? I mean ... the world is being invaded by Aliens and all that a Japanese worker is trying to do is to get news or her lover's get her lover back? Risking everything in the process and being helped by her superiors coworkers and her lover's father? The soldier is angry all the time and also against the locals but fail to realize something really momentous is going on? The wife seems to be only interested in .. her marriage? The husband in his mistress ... his children? Not so much... And it goes on and on? The president of the USA having declared the World is under an Alien as in from Space. Invasion? No sense of fright ? Of befuddlement?
Where will that take us going forward? In term of the characters? Where will they be? In the next season? Who will they become? There is a lack of focus in the series? What is this about? Really?

I don't think their reactions were unrealistic. It's hard to be smart about how it would really go down, but I'm leaning more to the side of people still resembling people, with their own personal problems and all... even when the aliens invade. What do you think that would look like?

 

[FrantzM]

I mean under an Alien invasion? The sky literally falling? No sense of despair? Just the usual? It is one thing to know there is somewhere else to go .. Such an attack remove the "somewhere else" from the equation. It would create panic, claustrophobia, despair.. Not a sense of going back to normal ... even the kids seem to be quite at ease with something killing people in their neighborhood ... Stretching things too much IMO.

 

[kokoon]

I mean under an Alien invasion? The sky literally falling? No sense of despair? Just the usual? It is one thing to know there is somewhere else to go .. Such an attack remove the "somewhere else" from the equation. It would create panic, claustrophobia, despair.. Not a sense of going back to normal ... even the kids seem to be quite at ease with something killing people in their neighborhood ... Stretching things too much IMO.

Yes, if I just found out my wife is cheating on me, I'm pretty sure that would still occupy my mind the most. And as a kid, being stranded somewhere with my bully? For sure the aliens / world is ending, wouldn't be my first concern. A highly trained soldier left all alone in enemy territory, of course they'd mostly care about surviving the next minute. All that, I've absolutely zero issues with. And I think the show succeeds in presenting how the ongoing invasion skews these people's issues, a lot of times they do act differently, due to insane circumstance of the world possibly ending.

 

[tmtomh]

@tmtomh

Don't you think that the characters reactions to an alien invasion a bit strange, unusual? Unrealistic? I mean ... the world is being invaded by Aliens and all that a Japanese worker is trying to do is to get news or her lover's get her lover back? Risking everything in the process and being helped by her superiors coworkers and her lover's father? The soldier is angry all the time and also against the locals but fail to realize something really momentous is going on? The wife seems to be only interested in .. her marriage? The husband in his mistress ... his children? Not so much... And it goes on and on? The president of the USA having declared the World is under an Alien as in from Space. Invasion? No sense of fright ? Of befuddlement?
Where will that take us going forward? In term of the characters? Where will they be? In the next season? Who will they become? There is a lack of focus in the series? What is this about? Really?

I intentionally did not engage directly with your initial negative comment when I replied to @kokoon above, but if you want to, okay, sure.

On a general level, the idea that we have any idea of what a realistic reaction is to an alien invasion makes no sense to me. So the premise you are relying on in order to judge the show is not one I can agree with.

More specifically, the main storyline of the invasion has two fundamental aspects to it: (1) most people don't know what's happening, especially for the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the season; and (2) the invasion itself has a murky, under-the-radar type of quality to it: there aren't fleets of alien ships entering the atmosphere all at once; power outages, communication disruptions, and violent attacks are piecemeal and don't initially come with any clear pattern; swarms of 1000s of aliens are not storming all the world's military installations or blowing up the White House. It's not Independence Day, Battle Los Angeles, or even something more mysterious like Signs or Arrival. It's murky and messy.

So in that context, yes, the characters' reactions are completely within the realm of sensible. The soldier knows he's been through something bizarre and inexplicable - and since he can't understand what exactly happened, he follows his training to try to get to a base or a central source of reorganization, command, and information - it makes total sense. He's "angry" all the time? Why would he not be? Is he supposed to just wander alone in the Afghan wilderness looking freaked out the entire time and not actually doing anything, just so you can never forget for a single second that something "momentous" is happening?

The doctor/mother character similarly reacts repeatedly to save her children - she's completely freaked out because the world is being turned upside down. She temporarily joins with her husband despite the fact that she literally just got the shock of her life in her marriage moments before the windows of their house blew out and the neighborhood caught on fire. So she does in fact let go of the anger at her husband when it's necessary to focus on getting the kids safe. Then in calmer moments when she has a minute to collect herself, the pain and shock of her marital situation comes back.

This is why I argued above that the "problem" with this show is not that it's bad, but rather that it's not giving you what you want - which seems to me to be a more one-dimensional aliens-invade-we-freak-out-we-fight-them narrative. There are plenty of those available, and I really enjoy them. And I also enjoy this for what it is. It's no less realistic than those other types of alien-invasion films - and in fact is IMHO far more realistic in how messy it is.