Marvel Cinematic Universe

How the mighty have fallen.

Wake me up at your own risk.

Unlike the Kree or Shi’ar whose empires have tumbled a couple times but always manage to snap back to status quo

Forever liveblogging the Avengers

> Speaking of the Skrulls, them and the Kree are equally bad in the comics. I'm legit interested in why the movie chose to make the Skrulls clearly in the right.

Because they had to give the audience someone to root for and bother sideism is tired as old hat at this point

New theme music also a box

Because heroic orc-like creatures are more interesting than evil ones.

Jason has come back to kill for Mommy.

It probably also played into the main themes of Captain Marvel. Carol was lied to about her past and her powers. The Skrulls being victims of the Kree empire is another truth she uncovers over the film and it touches upon the idea of governments using propaganda to obscure details from their own citizens and troops. People in power using misinformation to control those who follow them.

Plus, everybody knew the Kree were evil going in. It was a bigger twist for comic fans that the Skrulls were genuine good guys this time around.

To be fair, the Kree where the initial aggressors in the comics too.

They're both jerks, but the Kree are always the bigger jerks.

Like how when Mar-Vell was dying of Cancer, the Skrulls actually sent someone to pay respects, but the Kree(His own people) did not.

Did it? Didn't the Russos say Steve just stayed in a separate timeline with a separate Peggy?

As for Banner being an expert, do remember that the Ancient One confirmed his hypothesis and she was the one with the Time Stone. I feel like if he was wrong, she'd be the one to point that out, it didn't seem like it was her first time dealing with alternate timelines.

So it doesn't seem he was wrong and the narrative pointed at him being correct.

Edited by Cortez on Oct 15th 2019 at 9:32:06 AM

I think the Skrulls are also partially because, at some point during the creation of the story, the makers likely realized the metaphor they could track here (i.e the paper-thin "hegemonic warmongering empire hunting down refugees and labeling them as terrorists" allegory the movie rolls with) would work much better with the Skrulls as innocent victims.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Though granted, Talos points out his hands aren't clean either.

Because it makes things more complex and grey. Can you imagine Captain Marvel being in Phase 1? Talos and the Skrulls would be like those Not-Skrulls in Dark Phoenix as in who the hell are these guys?

Mileena Madness

It’s funny how true that is.

DP had to make do with not-Skrulls which was embarrassing.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

I think the creators also mentioned that not every Skrull was like Talos and his group. Some of them may very well have a more violent agenda when it comes to dealing with the Kree.

Maybe that's how Kl'rt the Super-Skrull will be introduced.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Having the Skrulls be heroic worked better for Captain Marvel's metaphor of patriarchy as a deceiving force. Also since movies are shorter than comics it would've taken longer to go in depth about both Skrulls and the Kree so it had to simplify things by the time the reveal happens.

Granted, the comics Skrulls were also originally the less shitty side as mentioned before.

When the Skrulls first showed up on the world of Hala, they had to decide who they would favor as a trade partner (the Skrulls of those times were very much a Proud Merchant Race) — the Kree or the Cotati. They decided to use a contest: whoever created the most impressive thing to them would be their partner.

The Kree built a beautiful city, while the Cotati grew a beautiful garden. The Skrulls picked the Cotati's garden. The Kree were so pissed off by this snub that they killed fucking everyone. They attacked the Skrulls, waged a genocidal campaign against the Cotati (which mostly worked), and then waged a genocidal war against the Skrulls after they were done with the Cotati. And while the Skrulls were far from saints even before that, fighting this war would eventually make them just as bad as the Kree.

Disgusted, but not surprised

Yeah. One of those things about contemporary film-making you kind of just have to accept. If it wasn't in the comics there was probably something the film maker was trying to comment on.

I don't imagine HYDRA infiltrated SHIELD in the comics either, but it made for a better movie.

Edited by Soble on Oct 15th 2019 at 6:59:43 AM

I'M MR. MEESEEKS, LOOK AT ME!

Also the Skrulls paid tribute to Captain Marvel on his death bed with a Medal of Valor while the Kree sent nothing.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

The Ancient One's speech was about how removing a Infinity Stone from the timeline will result in that timeline falling to darkness (or perhaps it was just because she knew they needed the Time Stone to stop Dormammu). Banner said that if they replace the Infinity Stone the moment it was taken, nothing changes — even though, of course, they do end up changing things and causing alternate timelines, those timelines, however, won't fall into darkness.

Also, once again: the AOS form of time travel is vastly different from the Endgame one. AOS was pulled into a dystopian future, then had to figure out what to change in order to stop that future from coming about, and then did so...but that dystopian future still exists (or else Deke would have disappeared), so, in essence, they did create a new timeline, it just was their timeline and their old timeline was shifted into being an alternate one.

In the next (and last) season, the treat is the Chronicoms, who are using time travel to try and destroy SHIELD throughout history, therefore create a timeline that is optimal for the Chronicoms to take over Earth without resistance.

As for Captain America — it's really never explained, only explained by Word of God. But if Steve did create an alternate timeline and lived there for however long...how did he get back to the main timeline? The writers stated that they believe it's a time loop and that Steve was always Peggy's husband, which violates Endgame's rules of time travel, unless they account for time loops somehow? But also, if that isn't the case, then Steve just replaced her actual husband, which was a pretty shitty thing to do.

Edited by alliterator on Oct 15th 2019 at 7:03:16 AM

They did, actually. It was a whole thing in Secret Warriors, but done in a more or less completely different way and with a different double twist than what was in the movie.

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Yeah, the whole "Hydra has been inside SHIELD since they were founded" came directly from the comics.

Hell, SHIELD used to be an ancient organization called the Brotherhood of the Shield and Hydra was the Brotherhood of the Spear.

Oh, Steve. You were so great in Endgame up until the very end where you got sidetracked after returning the Stones to their timelines.

Self-serious autistic metalhead who goes by any pronouns. (avvie template source)

That's what their devices are for, they tether them to the original timeline/point of origin.

So long as the quantum portal exists, Steve can get back to the prime timeline.

In the Russo's explanation, he just came through the portal earlier than he left.

They were inconsistent about how the time travel works. I forget who said what, I think it was the Russos who said that returning the stones to their proper places fixes the timeline and "clips the branches" regardless of other changes or stolen items (such as the Mjolnir they stole from 2013 or the Thanos they stole from 2014), while other involved figures say that every change creates a new timeline, while the stones just keep them from unraveling.

You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!

@alliterator: Though in a sense, the whole "HYDRA infiltrates SHIELD" also illustrates the point about the movies tweaking things for social commentary rather nicely. In the original story there's not much intended social commentary and the situation is played more as a Game Of Wits being two rival spy factions, and the double twist clarifies Nick Fury allowed SHIELD to be infiltrated so he could also infiltrate HYDRA and take them down from within, plus SHIELD itself being rebuilt more or less unscathed from the whole event.

Winter Soldier more obviously uses this "beautiful parasite within SHIELD" to make a (also rather transparent) allegory for the growing ruthlessness of the US intelligence services since the Cold War and particularly since the War on Terror (hence the Snowden-esque leakage of files that brings them down) and also arguably about the growing influence of Neo-Nazism in the US political landscape. Which was a brilliant adaptational tweak.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 15th 2019 at 7:27:12 AM

"All you Fascists bound to lose."

Granted, the movie is still more optimistic since it has the evil outside power spending decades to corrupt things from within. In real life, there was no big secret conspiracy at work.

In the MCU, all of the fear and ugliness of the Cold War era (and post Cold War era) was essentially a massive con by HYDRA.

Edited by M84 on Oct 15th 2019 at 10:30:42 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

The clipping of branches means different things in both schools of thought.

Markus and McFeely, the writers, use that to explain how Old Steve was always in the prime timeline (and was always Peggy's husband).

The Russos stick to the alternate timelines explanation. And returning the stones prevents the doomed branches from happening, but the alterations stick, thus alternate MCUs.

Edited by MrSeyker on Oct 15th 2019 at 7:52:39 AM

See, reading all of this, I can't see how anyone would object to AOS's time travel. Especially since it uses a completely different method and they spend half a season attempting to change the timeline, with zero results into the very last second.