Captain Marvel Art Reveals Scary Alternate Design for the Skrulls

Captain Marvel‘s trailers really faked a lot of fans out when it came to the Skrulls’ role in the movie. Now, one of the artistic forces behind the film revealed an early version of what the aliens would have looked like. Ian Joyner is the Visual Development Supervisor at Marvel Studios and his Instagram is chock full of cool images. Part of the allure of the Skrulls is their ability to shapeshift, and they brought that to bear in the movie. Everything about that moment they step out of the water in Captain Marvel is decidedly un-human. However, some fans might have preferred if the aliens looked a little bit more detailed, and that is what Joyner is bringing to the table with these concept images.

On Instagram, he wrote, “Early #skrull soldier/grunt designs for #captainmarvel from before we had any real direction for them. #mcu #marvelstudios #skrulls #marvelcosmic #aliens #conceptart #creaturedesign #marvel”

Ben Mendelssohn did a great job as Talos in the film and the switch up caught a lot of movie-goers off guard. But, there was a good reason for the trailer trickery. Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck talked about the decision to swerve and make the Skrulls the good guys on the movie’s commentary track.

“This is another one of those scenes, you know, besides the one you mentioned before Ryan, the scene that we shot at dusk, that’s kind of the heart of the movie to me,” Boden said. “She kind of finds her humanity in that scene. Carol finds her humanity in that scene and we really see the humanity of the Skrulls in this scene and it’s like these pointy-eared weird-looking shape-shifting aliens that we assumed were the villains for the first half of the film and to like open up our hearts and see that they have families and they care about the same things that we care about.

“That was one of the really exciting things about this movie us and Jonathan Schwartz and Kevin Feige and Lou (D’Esposito) and Victoria (Alonso) and Geneva (Robertson-Dworet) who we’re writing with all got really excited about and really wanted to bring to this movie,” she added. “Taking these Skrulls who’re like the villains from the comics and being able to see another side of them, and then her reckoning with warring with these people who she didn’t understand and was fighting on the wrong side of the war”