No Escape

I think what's going to help Annihilation: Conquest avoid being a cheap knockoff of Annihilation is that the writers have set up a very different scenario.

In Annihilation, all life in the universe was threatened by a being determined to ensure its own survival by killing everyone else. In Conquest, the Phalanx don't want to kill many people, they want to bring them into the Phalanx, and bring about greater safety and peace by making it so all the life in Kree Space is connected as a greater whole. I would be surprised if there aren't a few Kree that are happy with the Phalanx taking over because now they feel safer, whereas not too many months ago they might have been on the verge of being exterminated (I think that would be something to explore in the aftermath, probably in Nova: the people who liked being part of the Phalanx).

In Annihilation, the resistance had the entire universe to hide in. Places to set up shop were not in short supply, it was just that once Annihilus found it he was either going to teleport his army into your camp, or just use Galactus to destroy the entire world. With Conquest, there's likely to be a lot less property damage, if only because it defeats the purpose of bringing peace to the sector if you destroy everything. But this time around, as Nova's found out, you can't fall back. There's ultimately nowhere to retreat to, because the Kree - and now the Phalanx - have eyes everywhere. Where you go, they'll track you. Where you stop, they'll attack you.

It feels a bit like The Fugitive, or in Quasar's case, the story of that Green Lantern that lives on Apokolis. The one that only has about a three second charge left in the ring, so he has to save it for a really dire emergency? Whereas the enemy in Annihilation took the approach of having so much power on their side it just overwhelmed the resistance quickly, the Phalanx are going to just gradually grind their enemies down, just keep chasing them until they can't go on.

There is one big similarity, though. In both Annihilation and Conquest, the key to victory is going to lie in going right into the heart of the enemy. In Annihilation, that was where you found Annihilus. In Conquest, that's where you'll find that tower that's transmitting the "transmode virus" that's infected all the Kree and their tech. Of course, getting their is the tricky part. Nova already found that out the hard way. Query: Has anyone in comics ever found things out "the easy way"?