Marvel’s Secret Invasion promises a bold departure from previous MCU series on Disney+. By stripping back the superhero elements that derailed previous shows, Marvel ostensibly wanted to create a grounded spy thriller, set in the franchise’s world and framework—as grounded as a show with shapeshifting aliens that squelch like garbage when they transform can be. The first impression viewers get from Secret Invasion, however, isn’t that it’s a tight thriller. Rather, the show distracts us from the show itself, with its discombobulating, slightly grotesque, AI-generated title sequence.
Secret Invasion’s ugly opening credits were made using AI imagery; so much so that someone named Sagans Carle—clearly a nom de guerre—receives credit on the show as an AI technician. Visual effects company Method Studios, which previously worked on the Disney+ MCU series Ms. Marvel and Moon Knight, developed the sequence using generative AI tools.
Thanks to AI, Nick Fury becomes a bulbous, pulsating version of himself in this sequence, before it shifts to cubist nightmares that grow and shrink; everything turns a sickly green. The title credits portray a series of facsimiles that evoke a certain aesthetic style but never capture it, as they gurgle in the roiling artistic soup that makes up AI tools’ datasets.
