New Invasion Pictures Unveil Dynamic Alien VFX (Exclusive)
Apple TV+ and Wētā FX show off their work on Invasion Season Two.
Throughout much of the first season of Invasion, the aliens that invaded Earth were kept hidden with only certain teases given to viewers every now and then. Now that the show's second season is well underway, the aliens have taken center stage in the series—which shows an alien invasion from multiple points of view from around the world. In fact, there are two new kinds of aliens viewers are introduced to this season: the Hunter Killers and the Entity.
The Hunter Killers are the the decommissioned aliens from the first season, brought back to life by their alien overlords. The Entity, on the other hand, may or may not serve as a god to the boots on the ground.
"They're biotech aliens," Invasion creator Simon Kinberg said in a press briefing for the show. "They die at the end of season one but in season two, they are back. They create a significantly more scary and violent alien breed — a bigger, more intense, more aggressive machine essentially here just to kill humans."
For the Hunter Killers, a crew at Wētā FX used pieces of visual development art to come up with the final, spiky look. "We'd riff on these ideas and come up with what these things could look like and what they can do," Apple's on-set VFX supervisor Martin Davidson added. "The new aliens are muscular and strong, they can ram and kill you with blunt force trauma. They really are unstoppable."
In line with the biotech aliens on the ground, the Entity is a consciousness discovered by adventurer Matsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) in a downed ship. "Mitsuki is in a state where it's really hard to believe her sanity," said Kutsuna. "She feels herself physically and mentally falling apart. The alien takes the form of Hinata, her former love, and now she knows they aren't just physically threatening but they're managing to get in her head and are trying to tear her apart from the inside."
Though tech-based, Davidson said they wanted to give the Entity a sense of humanity so that viewers would resonate with the alien overlord. "To give the Entity character and emotion we came up with a color that was translated into patterns that could be played on LED panels in the enclosure, and throw out interactive light onto the actors," Davidson explained. "We like to put things physically on the set, the camera can frame with, and actors can react to. But in creating a beam of light — the choices are limited as to what you can do practically."
New episodes of Invasion are released on Apple TV+ every Wednesday. The show's first season is currently streaming on the platform in its entirety.
Editor's note: The quotes in this piece were provided prior to the actors' and writers' strikes.
