Last night, the second trailer for Captain Marvel dropped. You know what that means: it’s time for rampant speculation! Let’s dive in, shall we?
Captain Marvel: Hero of the 90s
Breaking it Down
The trailer begins with Nick Fury, played by Samuel L Jackson, laying out the threat immediately: “The Skrulls are the bad guys.” What makes them a threat? They can change their appearance to look like anybody, as illustrated by Captain Marvel sucker-punching a (not so nice) old lady on the train.
After a quick fight scene, we learn that our hero, Captain Marvel, or Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson, is a Kree. This is an interesting wrinkle since Danvers is not the first Kree we’ve seen. Ronan the Accuser, the baddie of Guardians of the Galaxy was also a Kree. Does this mean Danvers is working side by side with the enemy? Not from her perspective. Danvers describes herself as a member of noble warrior heroes, and struts her stuff with her Kree team, including Djimon Honsou (also from Guardians) as Korath, the first of several callbacks to come.
After a near-lethal plane crash, Danvers was discovered by Annette Bening, whose role has not yet been disclosed. Bening says they found Danvers without memories and made her into one of them, presumably a Kree, and in doing so, made her a super human with a crazy mohawk.
However, something is not right. Danvers keeps having flashbacks to a time she can’t recall. A time when she was apparently Maverick from Top Gun, an ace pilot and go-kart enthusiast. She even names her cat ‘Goose.’ Not a good sign for the cat.
Rounding out the cast is Jude Law and perpetual baddie, Ben Mendelsohn, as a Skrull leader who seems to hold the key to understanding Danver’s past.
What is Danvers doing on earth? We know from the last trailer that she crash lands in a Blockbuster video and that Fury, sporting two eyes this time, is going to help her discover who she really is and just maybe unlock her true potential.
It looks like she’s going to turn on the Kree and, with the help of S.H.I.E.L.D., put an end to the cosmic war between the Skrull and the Kree. That’s going to be fun!
Last Word On Captain Marvel
Its hard to gage the quality of the movie based on this trailer, because it’s basically the first trailer all over again. Danvers is a pilot but that past is lost to her. She gets knocked down, but she gets up again. We know she’s up against the Skrulls, who are shape shifters, and we know that Fury (and maybe Agent Coulson) will be her closest allies. We know she goes from a Kree uniform (green) to her own uniform (red) and we know she can harness energy.
This leads me to the conclusion that Marvel is holding something back, some crazy truth in the third act that will shatter preconceived notions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it.
It’s going to be fun getting to know Danvers. We know she will play a pivotal role in Avengers 4, which has a trailer dropping sometime soon. There have been rumors that A4 will focus on time-travel, combining Danvers’s ability to absorb and manipulate energy with Ant-Man’s knowledge of the Quantum Realm. And if that is the case, a lot rides on this movie.
Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck say that Danvers is “funny, but doesn’t always tell good jokes. And she can be headstrong and reckless.” I do find it distressing that almost none of that has been seen on the screen yet, but again, I think Marvel is holding something back.
More than anything, I just want to know where Danvers has been all this time? Was she just chilling out with her cat while the Chitauri attacked New York? Has she been frozen in time Austin Powers style?
We’ll find out on March 8th.
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