It was probably inevitable that within an hour after the first public screening of Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, in spite of embargoes against reviews and warnings to all present, that the closely-guarded secret of Loki’s army would be revealed. And while it’s certainly not definitive yet, there does seem to be a small and growing consensus as to who the villains are.In the run-up to this evening’s premiere, there was one fan on YouTube whose comment stuck out. In the midst of celebrity gossip and fanboy enthusiasm for the film, someone declared something along the lines of “Spoiler alert: The aliens are Chitauri.” Given the speed with which comments were flying by and the fact that it could have been removed by the video’s moderators, we were unable to obtain that original comment but the definitive nature of it certainly seemed unusual.A little homework revealed that the Chitauri are essentially Ultimate Skrulls, something that would allow the statements made by Whedon and others to be factually accurate even while skirting the issues that fans had guessed the identity of the invaders, and that the Skrulls themselves could possibly be included in the Fantastic Four film rights and thus inaccessible to Marvel Studios at present.This jives with a theory we put forth last week regarding the movie being essentially written with Skrulls in mind, then changed to suit the needs of the studio. It also explains why they’ve taken great pains to explain that Skrulls are NOT in the film, while they’re clearly represented in other media surrounding the picture.
