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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
- puts on Marvel history hat*
Well, the Skrulls in the comics actually ARE based on the tinfoil conspiracy hat theory of shapeshifting lizard people. However, the thing about Marvel is they are fully aware it's a joke.
Also, the Skrulls used to be the most advanced and beloved race in the galaxy who went around visiting other planets to help them be uplifted by sharing their technology as well as wisdom. Then they came to the Kree who, I shit you not, did the exact same scene from Star Trek Enterprise's Mirror Universe to butcher everyone onboard then steal their technology so they could wage a 10,000 year war against them—turning the Skrulls from peaceniks to monsters.
The idea being that, yes, the Kree who look more like us (and included "Pink Kree" for a given value of us—not smart Marvel) then were the aggressors as well as the objectively worse race.
Note the Skrulls have traditionally had more heroic members than the Kree until the Secret Invasion.
edited 26th Mar '18 3:11:50 PM by CharlesPhipps
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.Yeah, if they just leave out that aspect of their backstory it should be fine. Not that the Skrulls have to be totally one-dimensional or unsympathetic, but the whole former slave aspect would really bring some Unfortunate Implications.
If there's one thing I want them to keep, it's that idea. The Skrulls can and should be bad (imo, the whole thing should be along the lines of how Justice League interpreted the Thanagairans vs the Gordanians: Evil vs. Evil, even if they think they have good reasons) but the idea that a race of inhuman monsters was Driven to Villainy by the even-worse visually relateable humanoids is something mainstream Sci-Fi could use more of.
Especially since, if they play it safe as they often do, Marvel will just default of having the inhuman Skrulls, who so far have no major characters, be the unambiguous villains and the Kree be Knight Templar or something.
edited 26th Mar '18 3:15:21 PM by KnownUnknown
I fully expect it to go like this:
- Carol Danvers finds out about the Skrulls
- Captain Marvel gets superpowers from the Kree
- Carol Danvers fights the Skrulls
- Carol and the Kree are friends...until they reveal they will now occupy Earth
- Carol sabotages the Kree's invasion
- Carol gets rocketed forth 30 years in the future
Mostly because the MCU loves political commentary and Earth being a pinball between larger more advanced powers is a good metaphor.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.The Skrulls are right in the tradition of pod people. So absolutely Cold War xenophobia and paranoia
The best part of the origins of the Kree are that the reason they snapped and killed the Skrulls is they were pissed at being outdone by some ambulatory trees
They weren't even going to kill the Skrulls until they got upset over the wanton tree slaughter
Forever liveblogging the AvengersThese last pages remind me of how I noticed while watching Doctor Who that the Zygons were basically Skrulls and how the series recognized some of the Unfortunate Implications and had the ones who want to conquer Earth be an extremist minority and then that group moderate and decide to join the others and peacefully assimilate by remaining in human forms.
I say some of the Unfortunate Implications because while it dowplays/averts the alien lizardmen aspects that are parallel to/overlap with right wing Jewish conspiracy theories, it seems reasonably clear that they are supposed to be a metaphor for Muslim immigration to England. And so while it's nice that it treats extremists as a a minority and then treats those extremists as sympathetic/redeemable, it still has a metaphor about immigrants being sleeper agents, and has some creepy but probably unintentional implications of the Islamphobic Taqiya
accusation, since Zykons are butt ugly in their true forms and are only able to assimilate/avoid engaging in/being subject to violence by remaining permanently shape-shifted.
So yeah, some definite issues with this approach too. But I give a lot of props for totally avoiding the kind of Guilt-Free Extermination War plotline that would be likely in another work.
Since I know that some Skrull characters have been sympathetic in the comics, I'd like the movie to go that route and not have them as Always Chaotic Evil. Although for what it's worth, I am kind of arguing for the Kree being pretty Always Chaotic Evil, other than Mar-vell himself.
There are two things l'd really like to see, both involving Nick Fury:
First, him saying a line about having had it with those Skrulls on a plane.
Second, The Stinger, where Fury takes off his eyepatch (possibly the result of an injury during the movie) and reveals a healed eye, which then turns yellow and reptillian before he shapeshifts into his true, Skrull form.
Alternatively, you could reveal Coulson to have been a Skrull in connection with showing Fury faking his death in The Avengers, which would be a hilariously meanspirited way of decanonizing Agents of Shield.
But I really like the Fury reveal, because since I've watched anime, I believe that you don't give a character an eyepatch if they aren't going to take it off and do something cool.
edited 26th Mar '18 5:28:59 PM by Hodor2
But Fury takes out his eyepatch during winter soldier and we see his eye is a regular wounded eye.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Eh. I think you can still do a reveal that's earlier in-universe, later out-of-universe, because the implication would be that Skrull!Fury shape-shifted his eye to look like a normal, wounded eye.
That being said, I would wonder how if Fury was a Skrull, he wouldn't have shifted back into his true form after being seriously injured in Winter Soldier. Ditto Coulson in The Avengers.
It has been discussed every now and then that Maria Hill would be the best person for a Skrull reveal. She can smoothly be said to have been a skrull without much contradiction. Other than her, Hawkeye is somewhat plausible.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Hawkeye is too ordinary
Clearly Peter Parker is a skrull!
edited 26th Mar '18 5:43:11 PM by Ultimatum
have a listen and have a link to my discord serverHeh. So in other words, the reason this version of Hill is nicer is because she's a skrull?
That would be typical.
I think Fury revealing he put his injured retina in the systems as a secret backdoor is a sufficiently cool eyepatch reveal
Forever liveblogging the Avengers![]()
That's really the problem with the vast majority of secret infiltration / Evil All Along reveals. There's usually far too many moments that make no sense if you know a heroic character was evil the entire time and had no reason to do half the things they did.

They even look reptilian, and the whole "lizard people control the government" thing is actually a dog-whistle for "Jews control the government".
edited 26th Mar '18 3:08:11 PM by PushoverMediaCritic