By Below the fold, obviously. If you guys are smart, you’re doing you best to avoid spoilers for stuff like The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers and the other big movies of next year. As such, I’m not going to say any of the spoilers I’m reporting on for The Avengers right here. If you really, really want to spoil a big chunk of the movie’s surprise, click on through. Be warned again, though, that there are MAJOR spoilers here. Some of it is based on actual evidence, some is based on rumor, and some is just me making some big sweeping guesses based on what we think we know.
For real, though, you should probably click on something else. Did I mention that we promoted a great c-blog today? You could read that. Or, I dunno, play with yourself for a few minutes while you watch Star Trek. Use your imagination. I’m gonna spoil things now. Go away if you’re not into that.
[Via io9, Eurogamer, Comic Book Movie, IMDB]Just in case you clicked through by mistake, I’ll give you a little spoiler space. Seriously. I aim to spoil the living fuck out of this.
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
We’ve known that the shape-shifting Skrulls were going to be involved in The Avengers since way back in March. We now have not one but two bits of information that have come together recently to corroborate this. Firstly, a few days ago, Cobie Smulder’s IMDB page was updated, showing that she will be playing not only Maria Hill, second in command to Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury, but also a character named “Anelle.” Eagle-eyed Marvelites like myself recognize Anelle as a crown princess of the Skrull homeworld and mother to Young Avengers member Hulkling. This is corroborated by a rumor we heard months ago but never reported on from Comic Book Movie, which reveals the same information, along with the shocker that Anelle/Maria will kill fan-favorite Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg). I can certainly believe that. It’s got Joss Whedon written all over it, especially since he’s probably forbidden from killing off Hawkeye or Black Widow or someone like that.
In addition, video game site Eurogamer discovered footage of a cancelled Avengers tie-in game lumped into one of the game’s animators’s online portfolio. The video is available on io9, as the Youtube link at Eurogamer is now dead. THAT video shows Captain America and Thor fighting nice, big Skrulls. It’s unlikely that the film’s Skrulls will look like the characters in this very early footage of a cancelled game, but it does strongly suggest their presence. That said, it’s also common practice for these games to not follow the stories of the films they’re tied into. Look at the recent Thor and Captain America games for proof of that. The game also shows the Avengers fighting what looks to be a Super Skrull. THAT might not be the case in the film, as the character Kl’rt, the original Super Skrull posessing the powers of all the members of the Fantastic Four, is owned by Fox, as he’s a sometimes enemy of the Fantastic Four.
What all this says, to me, is that we’re potentially looking at a bit of a hybrid of the comic storylines Secret Invasion and Kree/Skrull War. Anelle as a disguised Skrull, whether she is replacing a human already at Nick Fury’s side or if she’s a long-time sleeper agent, shows shades of Secret Invasion, while the notion of big heroes fighting big aliens, with invasion fleets in space, is a lot more like Kree/Skrull War. Could we potentially see an army of Skrull sleeper agents attacking the Earth? The Comic Book Movie page linked above also states that Loki draws the Skrulls to Earth by claiming the Cosmic Cube can help restore their homeworld, so there’s the possibility for Skrull sleeper agents bursting out of every orifice, if this was an invasion planned for longer than Loki’s discovery of the cube during the post-credits stinger of Thor.
So! Thoughts? Opinions? Extra notions of stuff?