Creator/Executive Producer Simon Kinberg talks to The Inside Reel about thematics, character, structure and tone in regards to the third season of his Apple TV+ science fiction series: "Invasion"
00:28All this time, all I wanted to do was destroy them.
00:35Maybe humanity's time is over.
00:38Maybe it's their turn.
00:43The world keeps spinning.
00:50The idea of perception and power, who retains the power in this season is very key.
00:58Could you talk about that thematic?
01:00Because it's all about how people are seen and how they work towards something else.
01:05Yeah, it's a really interesting point.
01:07I do think that the idea of who has power, who deserves it, and who earns it is a big part of the thematics of this season.
01:18And when the season starts, in many ways, power is in the hands of people who are maybe not abusing it, but they're not using it for the greater good of humankind.
01:30Partly because what's happened is that it's peacetime.
01:34And in peacetime, a lot of people will take advantage of the sort of vacuum that's left from the battle of the war that preceded it.
01:42And then suddenly, the show is, and the characters and the world are thrust back into a warlike situation.
01:51And so they have to rely on our main characters, and our main characters are given a certain new measure of power, because the world is relying on them.
02:00The portal is activated.
02:02Spread out and surround the hatch.
02:05If you see any alien lifeform, fire on sight.
02:14Opening the hatch in...
02:16Three...
02:17Two...
02:18One...
02:23Captain, home!
02:24Be ready for anything.
02:35Holy shit.
02:47Now, the character work, obviously, with Yamato, with Mizuki, and with Cole, is very key to that.
02:54Could you talk about, because for them, that there's a feeling of also loss in the face of, you know, doing great things.
03:01Could you sort of talk about that? Because the way it sort of plays into the season, you really get to see that internal battle that they go through in certain ways.
03:08Yeah, for me, the thing that's my favorite part of Invasion, and I think the thing that is perhaps most unique about it, is that it balances really big, epic, world stakes storytelling with something that's really intimate, too, and emotional.
03:26And so the character work is as or more important than the alien and battle and action and visual effects and all that.
03:35So our main...
03:36I mean, there's a lot of main characters in the show, but I think two that certainly people seem very connected to are Shamir, Trevante Cole's character, and Shioli, Mizuki's character.
03:51And there are two characters that are carrying around a lot of grief and a lot of loss.
03:56From the first season, Mizuki lost the love of her life, Renata, and, you know, recovered to some extent in season two.
04:02But there's a lot of those hard memories that are coming back this season, and she's having to balance sort of her emotional and mental instability with the chaos that they're facing.
04:15And for Trevante, he's come back from a mission that he only remembers bits and pieces of.
04:22And on that mission, he lost, you know, Casper, this little boy who became like a son to him.
04:28So they're both grappling with something really internal and emotional while they're also grappling with something external and, you know, wildly challenging.
04:36You see, I volunteered two years ago to go on a mission.
04:42A mission to save our species because I care about humankind.
04:48And like many of you, I lost loved ones.
04:55But I did not lose hope.
04:58I did not lose the will to keep fighting for what I believe.
05:03And today, seeing the world at peace...
05:09He's acting strange.
05:11I can only think of something Casper once said to me.
05:20We've talked before about structure and how important structure is.
05:24Now, obviously, you know, when we talk about feature films, it's a different sort of beast.
05:29But even with your previous series here, it's interesting because the way the structure has to work is sort of leapfrog and can be nonlinear in certain ways.
05:37But it also reveals certain things. There's one episode this season that's a wonderful throwback to understand.
05:42And that's a wonderful device.
05:44Can you talk about looking at the evolving structure of a series like Invasion and how you apply your expertise in that way?
05:52Yeah, there's a lot. You know, features are what I've been doing for the vast majority of my career, which is 20 plus years now.
05:59And I'm still learning TV.
06:02And part of what's exciting to me is that I'm still learning TV and that TV is in some ways a more malleable, more radical structural medium than features.
06:14And it's not always linear.
06:16So that's what I explored a bit this season.
06:19This season, all the characters come together for the first time.
06:21So what has been a show of parallel tracks now collide this season.
06:27And that's why this season is different than the previous ones.
06:30But as you said, there's also an episode that's just a full flashback backstory of a character, like a bottle episode like that, that you would never be able to do in a feature film.
06:39You wouldn't be able to like pause a feature film to spend, you know, 45 minutes on the backstory of a character.
06:45And I just thought that was really liberating.
06:47And for the audience, I feel like, you know, the great thing about TV is that you want to keep delivering for the audience that they love, but also find ways to surprise them.
06:57Find ways to surprise them.
07:27My last question.
07:28Tone.
07:29Tone is of all, but tone is a very specific thing that you can find.
07:32You have to look at the logistics, but you also have to look how the editing works.
07:35Can you talk about the tone of this?
07:37Because it can be really high stakes action and then it goes intimate and quiet.
07:42Can you talk about sort of that balance of energy in the tone?
07:46Yeah.
07:47I mean, tone is so critical to, I think, all storytelling and all movie making and television.
07:52And I think part of what I have always tried to do with this show is keep it emotional and intimate and balance that with the bigger storytelling.
08:03And the tonal templates for me, the paradigms and sort of the north stars or movies I grew up with like Empire Strikes Back and the Terminator films that have these really personal stories set against these massive backdrops with huge stakes.
08:20And so I've always tried to maintain those two things and keep it, you know, dramatic.
08:24I think there's a there's there's a lot of science fiction today and certainly sort of commercial storytelling that gets goofy or ironic.
08:34And I wanted to play this really straight so that you're you're in it with the characters and experiencing it the way they would experience it without any kind of winking to the audience.
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