‘Captain Marvel’: Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrull Character Details Revealed

Just two months away from the Marvel Studios film’s premiere in theaters, fans are finally starting to learn more about Captain Marvel and the titular hero’s problems with intergalactic diplomacy.

In the new film, Carol Danvers will struggle with the two sides in the Kree-Skrull War, which will engulf the Earth unless she can intervene. But she’ll have to go up against the Skrull villain Talos, played by Ben Mendelsohn, in order to save her home planet.

ComicBook.com stopped by the set of the new film and spoke with executive producer Jonathan Schwartz about Mendelsohn’s role and how he’ll affect the events of the film.

“Ben kind of plays the face of the Skrulls the leader of the Skrulls and that’s that’s Talos,” said Schwartz. “Over the course of the movie he’ll shapeshift a little bit so we’ll get to see him in human form as we saw in that sizzle. I think it’s sort of fun to show off both the Skrulls powers and Ben’s range as an actor because he’s very different in all of those parts. It’s been super fun to watch.”

Captain Marvel will show Carol Danvers attempting to stop the Skrull’s invasion of Earth, but she’ll also be undergoing a more personal journey. Most fans of the source material understand that Danvers is an Earthling, but in the movie, she’ll think she hails from the Kree homeworld Hala much like her allies in the Starforce.

“I mean, a lot of the movie is about Carol not remembering her human past,” Schwartz said. “When we meet her at the beginning of the movie, she believes that she is a Kree, and kind of has been inducted into their army. She’s proud as a person, she loves being a Kree. And then over the course of her adventure, realized there’s more to her story than that. So the movie kind of becomes her unraveling the root of her own origin, the root of her own mystery.”

The movie will be unlike other Marvel Studios origin films, and co-director Anna Boden promises Captain Marvel will flip that tradition on its head.

“I think one of the really fun things about this movie, because it is an origin story, is that it’s not your traditional origin story,” Boden said. “What’s going to be fun and surprising for an audience is going to be uncovering the mystery of how this particular superhero got her powers and became who she is, along with [being] on a journey with this character. It was a really fun way to make a movie, a really fun way to imagine an origin story, because it has this nontraditional structure. I think it’s going to be a fun ride for people.”

Captain Marvel premieres on March 8th.