(SPOILER ALERT)
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(LAST CHANCE)
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(Okay you've been warned)
So, according to Captain Marvel, Skrulls aren't bad guys.
Holy fucking shit, Kevin Feige. What in the name of the late, great Stan Lee have you done?
I have absolutely no problem with any of the other liberties that were taken with the characters in this film. I don't really care that Nick Fury lost his eye because an alien that looks like a cat scratched him and not in a more badass incident like a bomb explosion or something. I don't give a shit that Mar-Vell went from being a man to being a woman because that character, who's been dead in the comics for 37 years, was never much more than an excuse for Marvel to hang onto the name "Captain Marvel" in the first place. I don't even give a flying fuck that the Kree-Skrull War takes place outside an Avengers movie, even though it would have made a pretty solid follow-up to the Thanos mega-arc.
But through this business of basically stripping one of the most long-standing rivalries in your comics of any nuance whatsoever, you have done both the comics and your future movies a huge disservice.
By allowing the makers of Captain Marvel to cash in on one of your usual story tropes, i.e. the third-act story twist, using this egregious deviation from the mythology of the characters, you may have shot yourself in the foot on a level that only the people over at Warner Brothers have done so far.
Truly, this twist makes your Mandarin-related twist over in Iron Man 3 look like something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Here are a number of reasons why this ham-handed attempt to shock the audience really is just a bad idea:
1) Not only do fans of the comic books (who apparently don't matter at this point) already know that the Kree are capable of mayhem, mass murder and supreme displays of egotism, but fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thanks to Ronan the Accuser's antics in Guardians of the Galaxy, know it as well, so the "revelation" that the Kree are bad guys isn't much of a twist at all. Hell, my eight-year-old daughter saw Ronan the Accuser show up and said, almost instantly: "Isn't he a bad guy?" You weren't really fooling anyone, in short.
2) The story doesn't work hard enough to earn the reversal. There is little to no camaraderie between "Vers" and the Star Force, just a few quips that don't really work all that well, and a brief exchange with Yon Rogg in the beginning this is equal parts flirtation and violence. Apart from a few lines of dialogue there is very little to really cement the notion that Vers really believes in what she is doing as a member of Star Force, especially because she is given very little reason to believe in it, quite honestly. Finally, there is something really off about the way Yon Rogg acts all throughout the film that telegraphs the twist way before it is eventually unveiled. This is truly a far, far cry from the masterful twist in Spider-Man: Homecoming that basically pulled the rug out from under almost everyone who wasn't paying close attention.
3) To go back to your printed universe, your twist actually does quite a disservice to the Skrulls themselves, who have long evolved past mere villains and have acquired plenty of character nuance through the work of Marvel's talented writers and artists. In fact, there are quite a few Skrulls who are either heroes like Hulkling of the Young Avengers or Xavin of the Runaways or, at the very least, sympathetic characters like Lyja. The fact that these and other characters have to transcend the sins of their race makes them all the more interesting, and re-casting the Skrulls as plain-vanilla "refugees" or "victims" deprives characters such as these of potential journeys in the MCU. Talos has a throwaway line about having dirty hands because of war, but it really isn't enough to give him the moral ambiguity he deserves.
4) Finally, declaring that Skrulls aren't bad guys takes a number of landmark stories off the table, like Secret Invasion, or the Fantastic Four's encounters with Kl'rt, the Super Skrull. I imagine that Captain Marvel was already deep in development, if not already shooting, by the time you found out you were getting the Fantastic Four back, but really, to totally rule out the possibility of the FF fighting one of their most formidable villains feels uncharacteristically short-sighted of you.
I gave this movie a decent rating, no matter how much the twist infuriated me because 1) I honestly enjoyed the movie; I thought it was good, though quite a long way from greatness and 2) This twist, while a central part of Captain Marvel's narrative, can be easily undone by shifting the larger narrative, making Talos and his sympathetic group of Skrulls outliers, and introducing Veranke, the Skrull Queen, and her followers as the true representatives of the Skrull Empire. Imagine, if you will, the Avengers going up against Veranke and her armada, or even Carol Danvers going toe-to-toe with an enhanced Veranke herself. You can't tell me the possibility of this happening hasn't crossed your mind. Tweak the writing; make it clear that while there are some good Skrulls, there are nonetheless very, very bad ones who are very much at large.
Please consider this last suggestion, Kevin (and Nate, Victoria, Louis, and whoever else is in charge). I had faith that Captain Marvel wouldn't be the clusterfuck that all of its pre-cooked haters already knew it would be when it was announced, and by and large I feel my faith was justified. You're no Kathleen Kennedy, in that you've always put story over some heavy handed advocacy, and unlike her, you have managed to produce excellent movies that actually contain meaningful, socially-relevant themes rather than be "woke" just for the sake of it.
To recap, the twist involving the Skrulls was to my mind (and to those of many fans, I'm sure) a huge mistake, but not an irreparable one. You already course-corrected the Mandarin twist over in Iron Man with a well-received short-film revealing a different, true Mandarin, so maybe you can consider rectifying this error, too, and pave the way for some pretty awesome stories as you embark on the next Phase of Marvel movies.
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