Simon Kinberg is a triple threat. The writer/producer/director’s first screenplays, xXx: State of the Union and Mr. & Mrs. Smith, catapulted him into Hollywood’s spotlight. He consequently ushered in a new era of mutants, with X-Men 3: The Last Stand, X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, Logan, The New Mutants, the TV series Legion and The Gifted, as well as the Deadpool trilogy. Kinberg made his mark in a galaxy far, far away by co-creating the animated Star Wars Rebels and has been tapped to pen and produce an upcoming Star Wars film. If that wasn’t enough, the Apple TV+ series, Invasion, only further cemented his genre cred.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Invasion’s third season takes place a couple of years after the previous events. In present day, the alien motherships have been destroyed. Humans have seemingly overcome the Hunter-Killer predators. Mankind has moved on. But that peace and tranquility come under fire when an extraterrestrial menace rises up to once again conquer the planet.
Kinberg spoke to ComicBook about time jumps, character trauma, designing a unique alien species, adapting Magic: The Gathering into a feature film, and modernizing The Running Man.
ComicBook: Invasion picks up two years after the season finale. What did that time jump allow you to explore with the characters and the state of mankind?
Simon Kinberg: The two-year time jump that starts this season does a lot for us. For one, it let us see what the world would look like as it returned to some semblance of normalcy. It was interesting to me to imagine the way that people would be able to return to normal life, but there would still be strands or echoes, shadows, of the shared global trauma. Then, there was a chance to take the main characters — because most invasion stories don’t really spend a lot of time on a post-invasion reality — so this was a way to show what they would do after an invasion. Two years is a fairly long time to recover. I wanted to see who could move on and I wanted to see who couldn’t. I wanted to build a marriage and a life for Aneesha and Clark. I wanted to see how Jamila would respond to the loss of Caspar and to start moving on as a young adult in college. I wanted to see how Mitsuki would handle retreating from the world. I thought it would be an interesting lens into the characters and the return to peace would provide us.
And I also thought there was something cool about the end of last season, where Trevante and, in his own way, Caspar, go on the mothership on this mission. I didn’t want to pick up at the beginning of this season and have it feel linear. I wanted to take whatever happened on that mothership and make it a continuing mystery that gets revealed over the span of the season. That was a more compelling way to tell that story than to see it all in front of you in the first episode.
And it’s not lost on me that we went through, as a species, a collective trauma with COVID a few years ago and have managed to recover, and go back to life and going back to the movies and the mall. And yet, you and I are talking over Zoom now. There are aspects of our life and our world that have changed, perhaps, forever. I just thought it would be cool, from a science-fiction standpoint, to be like, “What would our version of that on the show look like?”
Trevante returns after being missing in action for those two years, but he’s different. What is he dealing with and in what ways could he hold the key to permanently defeating these alien invaders?
He doesn’t remember what happened on that alien mothership that brought it down. So Trevante does hold the key to actually destroying the mothership forever. He just doesn’t know it. Over the span of the season, certain things happen where he becomes more central and critical, even though it’s always foggy about what happened up there. There’s a reason for the mystery. There’s a reason why he can’t remember it. Beyond the science-fiction and plot aspect of it, I liked the idea of him surviving and his surrogate son, Caspar, not surviving and letting that play out as another source of returned trauma for him, having lost his actual son before the invasion even happened.
If Season 2 concentrated on assembling some of the core members for a final hurrah, where does their focus lie this year?
This year is really about taking all of our main characters, hurling them together, and seeing if they can survive each other. On a mission, it’s about the challenge of the aliens, but it’s also about the challenge of actually having to cooperate with strangers, who come from completely different backgrounds and completely different situations. That’s a big part of this season, is this Saving Private Ryan kind of mission with strangers. One person is living in the woods. One person has PTSD and no memory. One person is going to college. One person is living in the suburbs as a married couple. They are vastly different and if they can’t overcome those differences, then it might be the end of the human species. If they can, then we have a chance. I would say that’s a big part of what this season is about, is this mission that relies on their human connection.
How pivotal of a role does Mitsuki play in this new gambit?
She is always pretty pivotal in this show. And Shioli Kutsuna is such a frigging amazing actress. She is so watchable. Even when she is doing very little, she is so subtle. We saw last season that Mitsuki understands the aliens in a way. We pick up on that this season and explore it in some different ways.
Earth seemed to have vanquished the Hunter-Killers. What makes the new Apex alien species even nastier and more menacing than anything humans have encountered before?
In the past, they’ve come up against the alien physical threat. They are used to the physical threats. Even if they are supernatural, we can shoot at them. When we are fighting wars, we are fighting each other on a physical plane. These Apex aliens have a different way of attacking and it’s not simply physical. I don’t want to give it away, so it becomes a psychological battle as much as it is a physical battle for our characters.
Tentacles attack through the portals. Will audiences be seeing these Apex aliens in all their glory at some point?
We are going to see them. We spent a lot of time and effort to create sentient aliens who are responsible for this invasion. We finally get the aliens behind the things we have seen in other seasons.
How difficult was it to create a striking alien form that hasn’t been seen before?
It’s super difficult. Obviously, there have been so many great aliens in movies, books, and other mediums. Erik Henry, who is our VFX supervisor, and I went through hundreds of artists, thousands of renderings, and tons of iterations of each of them. There was lots of painstaking work in the visual effects, like the detailing of things. But we looked less at aliens that had been in movies and looked at a lot of organisms that exist in the real world. We looked at underwater life. We looked at insects, rainforests, and jellyfish, which are underwater, both for the look of the Apex aliens and the movement, so the movement would feel a little bit like it was underwater and wouldn’t feel like its relationship to gravity was the same as our relationship to gravity.
How much closure did you want to deliver in the Season 3 finale? Or, are you taking any big swings in case there’s a renewal?
There are things that are somewhat resolved at the end of Season 3 and there are other things that are ripped wide open. It’s a little bit of both. Ultimately, I always say it is up to the audience and the people above my pay grade if we get to come back, but there are certainly ideas I have for continuing the story with these characters beyond the season.
Looking ahead, any updates on your Star Wars movie?
None that I can share. I am sorry to tell you that, but I am sure you are not surprised to hear that. I can tell you I love Star Wars and I am very excited to be around it whenever I get a chance to be.
Have you read a script for it yet?
That I cannot tell you.
What have been some of the challenges of adapting an IP like Magic: The Gathering into a feature film?
I can answer you, but I am not involved with Magic: The Gathering anymore. What is hard about it is it’s not a narrative medium. Obviously, there is world creation and characters, but it’s not narrative in the same way as a comic book. It’s just harder to come up with what feels like a linear story that is touching all the things you want to touch. It’s just a little easier with a comic book.
In what ways are you giving The Running Man remake a modern twist this fall?
I am so excited about it. Edgar Wright is somebody I have been a fan of for 25 years … whenever Shaun of the Dead came out. I met Edgar when I first came out to Los Angeles early on in my career. It was early on in his, too. It might have even been before Shaun. It was before Mr. & Mrs. Smith for me. It was around 2000. We were just talking about this recently. We met at a hotel and sat outside, and we’ve kept in touch all these years. I had sent him a bunch of things over the years that I wanted him to direct, but it never happened.
I had seen he had tweeted something like the only remake he would ever consider was The Running Man. Paramount had the rights and I got involved. The first call was to Edgar and he was like, “Yeah, I would be interested in that.” It’s much more loyal to Stephen King’s book. I guess I would say it’s a real Edgar Wright movie, which is very high praise, and that Glen Powell is extraordinary in it. We have incredible actors. Colman Domingo is amazing in it. Josh Brolin. Michael Cera. It’s a really great cast, but it rests on Glen. He is the Running Man. He is in almost every scene of the movie. It’s a cool new gear for Glen.
It looks like you physically put Glen Powell through hell in those trailers.
Glen was really down for it. He comes from the Tom Cruise school of doing your stunts and being in shape and being the readiest person on set. That is the way Glen operates.
Invasion Season 3 premieres on Apple TV+ on August 22nd.
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Crunchyroll -
Image Courtesy of Netflix
