A key 'Captain Marvel' character's introduction was changed to preserve the movie's biggest twist
- "Captain Marvel" editor Debbie Berman told Business Insider that Ronan (played by Lee Pace) was originally introduced at the beginning of the movie in the script, but was moved to preserve the movie's major twist.
- Ronan was first introduced as the villain in "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2014. "Captain Marvel" takes place before "Guardians of the Galaxy."
Warning: This post contains spoilers for "Captain Marvel."
Marvel Cinematic Universe fans are familiar with Ronan, the "Guardians of the Galaxy" villain played by Lee Pace who shows up again in the 1990s-set "Captain Marvel." That posed a problem for the movie, though.
"Captain Marvel" editor Debbie Berman told Business Insider that Ronan was originally introduced earlier in the movie in the script, but was pushed back to preserve the movie's biggest twist.
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"He used to be introduced right at the beginning of the film, but people would recognize him from 'Guardians of the Galaxy,'" Berman said. "That affected their interpretation of the Kree."
In the movie, the Kree are an alien race "at war" with the shape-shifting Skrulls. Vers (played by Brie Larson) is a Kree warrior with a past she doesn't remember on Earth. By the end of the movie, it's revealed that Vers' Kree "mentor," Yon-Rogg (played by Jude Law) killed Mar-Vell (Annette Bening), a Kree renegade who discovered that the war was built on lies and was helping the Skrulls find a new homeworld - with the aid of Vers on Earth, whose real name is Carol Danvers.
Since the major twist of the movie is that Yon-Rogg and the Kree warriors are the bad guys, and the Skrulls are just refugees, introducing the murderous Ronan earlier in the movie "would have made people suspicious of the Kree," Berman said.
"You have test screenings to see how the audience reacts to the film and you do little tweaks here and there to make sure the film is telling the story that you want to tell," she added. "You try a variety of different things, and you can intellectualize it but ultimately you just go with your gut with what feels good to you. And then hopefully the audience will have similar feelings. Ronan wasn't a specific point made [with test audiences]. You just feel the energy of the room, so that didn't come up necessarily as a specific note but you can just see how things were working and what needed to be changed."
Read more of Business Insider's coverage of "Captain Marvel":
- 'Captain Marvel' editor describes what makes Marvel Studios a unique place to work, and the funny way she got the job
- How a false story about 'Guardians of the Galaxy' back in 2012 might have helped the 'Captain Marvel' directors land the job
- 'Captain Marvel' had the 3rd-biggest March opening weekend in movie history, raking in $153 million
- 'Captain Marvel' is the latest movie to be attacked by online trolls
- 'Captain Marvel' directors on why they have nothing but love for the internet trolls, and how being falsely linked to another Marvel movie might have gotten them the job
- 'Captain Marvel' will give the box office a big boost after a miserable start to 2019