Despite the fact that the Kree-Skrull war plays a big part in Captain Marvel, it’s not quite the same as fans familiar with its comic book origins were probably expecting. That’s because, as Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos tells Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers at the end of the second act, they’re not the real villains of the story. Longtime comic book readers were unsurprisingly split on Marvel’s creative license, but audiences were ultimately on board with the reveal. In a new interview, the directors dug into their reasoning for doing it.
Speaking with Comic Book to promote the film’s home release, Captain Marvel co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck explained that, most importantly, presenting the Skrulls as victims (instead of oppressors) had to do with helping Danvers “find her humanity”:
“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.”
Boden added that it “was one of the really exciting things about this movie,” and something the rest of the writers and producers, including Marvel head Kevin Feige, “got really excited about.”
“Taking these Skrulls who’re like the villains from the comics and being able to see another side of them” was tantamount, she concluded, to Danvers’ “reckoning with warring with these people who she didn’t understand and was fighting on the wrong side of the war” against. This still doesn’t mean that some bad Skrulls won’t one day turn up in a future MCU entry (as they very nearly did in Dark Phoenix), of course, but we’ll just have to wait for that moment, should it ever come.
(Via Comic Book)