'Captain Marvel' Directors Respond to Popular Theory About Nick Fury
By Ryan Carroll
Since it hit the big screen in March, Captain Marvel has been a smash hit, raking up sizable profits and igniting critical and fan enthusiasm. One fan theory has gained popular attention, using evidence from the film to argue that Nick Fury is, in fact, a Skrull--and this week, Captain Marvel’s directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck responded.
The theory, according to Elite Daily, is based on a scene in Captain Marvel in which Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) share personal memories with one another to prove that they are not Skrulls, and Fury shares that he cannot eat toast when it is cut diagonally. But, as eagle-eyed fans noticed, there is a scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron where Fury eats toast that is cut diagonally, suggesting that there is something else going on. Boden and Fleck responded positively when the theory was brought up to them.
“Well, there are two options here. Either Fury became a Skrull or he got over his weird fear of diagonally cut toast,” Boden joked in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “We'll never know the truth.” Fleck added that, “Either he's a Skrull or he just changed, like we all do.”
Subsequently, however, Boden and Fleck clarified that the detail was not necessarily an intentional one--but that they appreciate it nonetheless, as all films inevitably change once they are released to the public.
“I guess you always kind of expect that that's going to happen, and the folks at Marvel, who've had a lot more experience with this than we have, they did warn us that on every single movie they discover something about their own universe,” Boden said. “But really, isn't that the beauty about this kind of an art form? Is that it's about more than the filmmakers' intentions”
We’re not sure how much we buy into the Fury-as-a-Skrull theory, but we love the level of detail that went into discovering it, and we love Boden and Fleck’s response even more. It’s a beautiful thing to see when a work of art can become something more than its creators necessarily intended it to be.