‘Secret Invasion’ Proves Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Up To The Challenge of Replicating the Artistry That Powers TV’s Best Opening Credits Sequences

The first thing you need to know about the opening titles for Secret Invasion is that they’re ugly. Planets meant to convey the Marvel/Disney+ show’s intergalactic scope look like tumorous growths. Cityscapes vibrate arrhythmically, as if drawn by people who were very, very nervous. People bear only a passing resemblance to people, and the distortion of their faces has no Picasso-like considered intention or aesthetic weight behind it; as my 12 year old put it, “They look like faces drawn on rocks or vegetables.” When the face is intended to be recognizable, as it is when a melty simulacrum of star Samuel L. Jackson appears, the meaningless contrast with flesh-and-blood reality is laughable. You start to wonder what the multibillion-dollar company behind this latest installment of its flagship franchise paid the hacks who animated this thing.

The answer is nothing, and they got what they paid for. 

Human artists did not create Secret Invasion’s opening credits — or they did, but only in the roundabout sense that the AI that did create those credits is, like all AI, a plagiarism machine, stitching together Frankensteinian monstrosities from the plundered parts of real, living people’s art. As we speak, the Writers Guild of America is on strike against the studios in part over the now clearly justifiable concern that this kind of shit will happen to them. The show’s pro bono defenders online claim the replacement of humans with algorithms here is a clever echo of the show’s plot about an alien conspiracy to replace humans; this is like saying that since The Sopranos is about gangsters, it would have been okay for James Gandolfini to murder someone on camera to “Woke Up This Morning.” At any rate, the Skrull doppelgängers are the bad guys. 

But the problem with Secret Invasion’s AI credits isn’t just one of ethics, or of ugliness. It’s a waste of some of the most valuable creative real estate any television show has. Throughout television history, thoughtfully crafted opening title sequences have set the tone for the shows to follow, conveying valuable information about everything from the mood you can expect to the plot of the show itself. Some are woven so deep into the fabric of the series they kick off that the two become synonymous. The best function like short films, artistic statements on their own. Speaking plainly, AI just doesn’t have the juice.

When Cheers wanted to show you a place where everybody knows your name, they relied on a carefully curated and edited selection of illustrations and photographs depicting nostalgic good-old-days revelry created by James Castle, Bruce Bryant, and Carol Johnsen. Monty Python member Terry Gilliam established his troupe’s style of surrealistic inanity with animation that would become a staple of the show. David Lynch and Mark Frost used second-unit footage and the evocative music of close Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti to transport you to Twin Peaks.

Other shows have employed their opening titles to an even more practical, though still artistically memorable, effect. Game of Thrones established both the specific locations and overall scope of its fantasy world, courtesy of trendsetting clockwork-style animations by Elastic. Creator and star Patrick McGoohan spelled out his character’s entire backstory in The Prisoner’s opening sequence, and it’s as straightforward a depiction of Number Six’s life pre-imprisonment as any to follow. 

You don’t even need to leave the Marvel Cinematic Universe to find artfully done opening credits designed by human hands. Elastic’s Daredevil titles drape the invisible outlines of the hero, Lady Justice, the cityscape, and Catholic statuary in blood, a three-for-one shot that establishes the show’s bloody mature-audiences stakes, the seeing-without-seeing nature of Daredevil’s superpowers, and the iconography of the character established by creators Bill Everett, Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, as well as later artists like Frank Miller. (That Lee’s contested contributions to the Marvel Universe were celebrated at the expense of the artistic collaborators who did the lion’s share of the work in a Disney+ documentary released just days ago feels only too appropriate now.)

To bring things back around to that friend of ours, David Chase’s opening credits for The Sopranos would rank among the show’s best episodes if stood on its own. It too establishes the all-important location of its show, New Jersey, via Tony Soprano’s road trip from New York City into the burbs. But it also shows you, rather than tells you, who Tony Soprano is, as James Gandolfini’s immediately commanding screen presence conveys his character’s swagger, menace, even his mean little temper via that closing car-door slam. A mini-masterpiece, for arguably the biggest TV masterpiece of them all. 

You’ll never get any of this out of a machine. A machine can’t think in nuances, can’t make intuitive leaps, can’t be relied on to relay information correctly. (Go ahead, ask chatGPT something, I dare you.) AI will never create an opening title sequence so close to the heart of the show it feels like a character. AI can’t do what real human artists and workers, and they alone, can do. If we say yes to artists and workers and no to AI, this is one invasion we can stop.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.