Marvel Studios has released the first trailer for the upcoming Captain Marvel film. The preview is filled with exciting action and tantalizing hints of the superhero’s alien origins, previous life on Earth, mysterious mission, and the malevolent forces she will battle.
Brie Larson co-stars in Captain Marvel, the 21st film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), along with Jude Law, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, and Mckenna Grace.
The trailer opens with Captain Marvel crashing from space to Earth. She falls and smashes through the roof of a 1990s Blockbuster video rental store. This is apparently a way of hinting to viewers that the movie is set in the 1990s.
Older fans will recall that Blockbuster was the home movie and video games rental service provider popular in the 90s. Older fans will also recall that the original 1967 comic character, the alien Kree Mar-Vell, was sent to Earth to spy on human technological progress.
The Captain Marvel portrayed in the movie is the female version, aka Carol Danvers, formerly Ms. Marvel.
After Captain Marvel crashes through the roof into the Blockbuster store, she walks out unhurt and wanders into an L.A. subway station.
A subsequent scene in the trailer appears to show glimpses of her life on planet Hala, the home planet of the alien Kree race. We also catch a glimpse of what could be her life as a member of the intergalactic Starforce.
The trailer then appears to hint that Danvers might well not be an alien from outer space. She is shown in the trailer experiencing flashbacks about her previous life on Earth as a little girl, and later as a young woman training at a flight school. The flashbacks suggest she was originally from Earth, but ended up among the alien Kree, and lost memories of her previous life as an earthling.
In the comics, Danvers got her powers after she was caught in the explosion of a “psyche-magnetron” device that fused her DNA with Mar-Vell’s. The fusion turned her into a human-Kree hybrid. There is a hint of a similar incident in the trailer, which could explain how she got shipped off to Hala.
LARSON INDUSTRIES R&D DEPT. ?: @ALECKSU pic.twitter.com/e2BiLuovGh
— Brie Larson (@brielarson) August 6, 2016
We also catch a glimpse of Jude Law’s character, believed to be the original Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell).
Next we see Danvers with a younger version of Nick Fury (Samuel Jackson), without his familiar eyepatch. He meets Larson after a “big car chase” and gets acquainted with her. But the younger Fury seems unable to wrap his head around the suggestion that Danvers might be a visitor from space.
“I know a renegade soldier when I see one,” Fury says. “It never occurred to me that one might come from above.”
Danvers first appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #13 (March 1968), alongside the alien Kree superhero Mar-Vell, who debuted in Marvel Super-Heroes #12.
Danvers was the USAF officer who later became Ms. Marvel (Ms. Marvel #1, January 1977). She first assumed the title of Captain Marvel in the 2012 comic series by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Dexter Soy.
The trailer suggests that the threat Captain Marvel faces on Earth comes from the shape-shifting alien Skrull, who are the main antagonists of the Kree in the comics.
The Skrull were able to secretly infiltrate the ranks of Earth’s superheroes by using their shape-shifting powers to disguise themselves. The shape-shifting powers of the Skrulls probably explains the scene in which Captain Marvel appears to punch an elderly woman in the face.
The woman is likely a Skrull in disguise.
“She (Captain Marvel) can be aggressive and she can have a temper and she can be a little invasive and in your face,” Larson said in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, “[but] she is also quick to jump to things, which makers her amazing in battle because she’s the first one out there and doesn’t always wait for orders. But the [not] waiting for orders is, to some, a character flaw.”
We later see Captain Marvel, flanked by two other Kree fighters: Att-Lass (Captain Atlas), played by Algenis Perez Soto, and Minn-Erva (Doctor Minerva), played by Gemma Chan. Another scene shows their foes, a group of Skrulls, landing on a beach.
The leader of the villainous Skrulls, Talos, will be played by Ben Mendelsohn. Clark Gregg plays SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson.
McKenna Grace appears as young Carol Danvers, Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser, Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, Djimon Honsous as the Kree mercenary Korath, and Rune Temte as Bron-Char, another member of Starforce.
Captain Marvel is produced by Kevin Feige and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Boden and Fleck also co-wrote the script with Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch.
Captain Marvel is set to hit theaters on March 6, 2019.