‘Captain Marvel’ Directors Reveal Why They Chose To Change The Skrulls

Heads up, spoilers for Captain Marvel ahead.

As you likely know by now, Captain Marvel featured the Marvel Cinematic Universe debut of the Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting aliens. While the vast marketing campaign for the film painted the Skrulls as the next big bads of the entire MCU, Captain Marvel disproved that very notion. You see, the Skrulls in the MCU — or how they were portrayed in Captain Marvel, at least — are simply refuge-seeking aliens trying to escape persecution from their Kree oppressors.

It’s a pretty big change for the characters from the comics mythos, where they’re often times seen shifting shapes for nefarious purposes. Captain Marvel co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck were recently on The Empire Film Podcast to break down the film, which included a moment where Boden explained the change behind the Skrulls.

“We knew from the beginning that this was so much about Carol’s journey towards finding her own humanity,” Boden reflects. “But part of that is seeing humanity in other people even people you don’t expect to.”

“The idea of having Carol go through that journey and seeing the unexpected humanity in Skrulls, realizing that she’s been wrong and having to face that was really powerful for us,” the filmmaker continued. “If we can make an audience member have that same experience of assuming that they were one thing and having their expectations subverted, we thought that would just be all the more powerful.”

Regardless of the change to the initial appearance of the Skrulls, Captain Marvel is well on its way to a monstrous box office run. After tallying a massive $455m opening weekend worldwide, the film is hovering around a total box office haul of $559m as of this writing. It’ll likely walk away with another weekend title in its second week with little competition in theaters — at least on a wide-release blockbuster scale.

Captain Marvel is now in theaters. Other upcoming Marvel Studios films include Avengers: Endgame on April 26th and Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 5th.

What’d you think of the big Skrulls twist? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

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