The Marvel Cinematic Universe has created more characters than it could ever hope to use. Even with large-scale projects like Endgame it becomes incredibly hard to include all the characters you do have and in turn, it makes for a very haphazard movie if you do decide to include everyone. Regardless of their reasons, Marvel Studios has abandoned a lot of supporting characters over and years and killed off some of the villains to make sure that they don’t cause trouble again. But what about the misdirections, the ones which we have forgotten but still exist in the MCU canon? I am talking about characters like Emil Blonsky aka The Abomination. We only saw the character once during his outing in The Incredible Hulk and now he has comeback for Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings. But our question is, Why the Abomination Looks Different in the Movie?
You see, in his original appearance, Emil Blonsky transformed into the Abomination after he was given Banner’s blood by Sterns. This made him turn into a hulking beast that rivaled The Hulk in power and speed but was eventually defeated by the hero. Abomination is not exactly a fun character to have on-screen, but it seems that his visual design has been changed to be more in line with the comics than before.
Producer Jonathan Schwartz had this to say to Murphy’s Multiverse:
“It felt time to update him a little bit and give him a refresh. We just like the new design better.”
Seems like Marvel Studios made the decision to update the visuals so as to make the villain more appealing and like always added nods for the comic fans.
The Visual Update
If we compare the visual design of the villain with its previous iteration we will see some glaring differences and some subtle ones. Let us break them down for you one by one. Starting from the face structure of the character we see that the Abomination in Shang-Chi and the 10 Rings has a more human face than the last time the character was on screen. It is obvious why the studio made this choice, it humanities these larger-than-life villains and makes them acceptable. The uncanny valley is a pretty bad place to be, and visuals like this make us accept the character better, psychologically speaking. Even when The Hulk was reintroduced in The Avengers, he received a massive visual treat from how he looked in The Incredible Hulk. Even the promotional content for the movie pointed towards it.
The idea was to bring humanity to these characters and judging by the reaction of the audience, this worked incredibly well. The next main tweak in the visual design of The Abomination is the finned ears and the bone protrusions. It was part of the Lore of the MCU that Abomination was locked up in The Raft along with Captain America’s team from Civil War. When we last saw the character his ears were normal and his bone protrusions were present but not as accentuated. It seems that the character has now mutated in a way that both of these things have changed. The bone protrusions have become longer and more deadly and his ears have really come in with the rest of the design making him look more and more like his comic counterpart.
The Attitude Update
It seems that the creative team of MCU not only updated Abomination’s visual design but also changed the character overall. *SPOILERS FOR SHANG-CHI* Wong fights Abomination in an underground fight but the pair don’t seem to have any animosity towards each other. The reason for this is that they are rumored to be working together come the She-Hulk series. Evidence of it can be seen in the movie as Wong and abomination talk about the training that they need to do together. This might also mean that Abomination is not the main villain of the series as we expected him to be.
Things will be clearer when the show does come out, but it is clear that Abomination will have a recurring role and not explicitly antagonistic one. We do not know how things will progress but I feel they are moving in the right direction. What do you think of this change? Let us know in the comments below and keep watching this space for everything Marcel, DC, and Hollywood.
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