Back in May of 2018, a group of reporters visited the set of Captain Marvel on the Sony lot in Los Angeles to experience Marvel’s newest superhero in person. Although we have not been officially introduced to the feminist hero yet in the MCU, we were given signs of her arrival at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.
As we have seen in the trailers and released photos, we are introduced to Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers (Brie Lawson), in the 1990s. This isn’t an origin story. From her first introduction, she already has her powers and is part of the elite military force on the Kree planet Hala. Her Starforce teammates include Korath (Djimon Hounsou) and Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan). There are flashbacks to Danvers’ life as she embarks on her adventure on Earth and meets a young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Together, they must work to stop the Skrulls, led by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), from completing an evil plot.
Want to know more?
Be warned. Below are spoilers.
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick | © Marvel Studios 2019
Captain Marvel feels like a ’90s action thriller
The film is said to have a ’90s action vibe, similar to Total Recall, Robocop, and Terminator 2.
We meet a whole other side to Nick Fury
Jackson revealed a lot about Fury’s life before the first Iron Man and how ’90s Fury was not as cynical as he is now.
“Things are changing, the world is changing for him, how he views it in terms of who we are and [in] respect to the rest of the Galaxy and that there is a much greater thing out there than who we are and what we are,” said Jackson. “And, that they pose a greater threat than anyone even knows, and that we literally have no defenses against them.”
Jackson revealed that you’ll learn the origin of what happened to his eye and his possible family life. We will also see Fury react with actual fear and awe, instead of the normal stoicism he has now that he is used to alien life. Jackson shared that you’ll see Fury turn into the man we meet in the rest of the Marvel films.
Jackson also shared that he found out that everyone calls Fury by his last name, including his mother.
Fury and Carol meet when she first arrives on Earth
Jackson revealed the dynamic between Carol and Fury and how they first met. Fury goes to the Blockbuster where we see her crash into in the trailer.
“Well, when they first cross paths, she’s just a crazy lady that broke into Blockbuster,” says Jackson. “She’s standing there telling me that she came from some planet and she’s got on strange clothes and she’s saying that there are these shapeshifting people that have infiltrated Earth and we’re kind of looking at her like a normal person would look at a person who tells you something like that, yeah right. Then she runs away and later on, I discover, OK, she might have been telling the truth. So that changes that dynamic til the next time we see each other.”
The cat we see is a Flerken, and we are reintroduced to the Tesseract
During the visit, we were treated with a scene in what looks to be the middle of the film, because Carol and Fury seem to already have a rapport. In the scene, which we will describe in full below, we learn that the cat in the promos is named Goose (named after the character in Top Gun) and is definitely a Flerken.
Fans of the Marvel Comics will remember that Carol has a pet cat named Chewie, who is actually a Flerken, an alien species that resemble cats, but can lay eggs and have a bunch of tentacles that can extend from their mouths. Also, their bodies hold pocket realities that can store many different things in them, including a possible Tesseract.
Yes, the same Tesseract that our Avengers had to deal with in the very first Avengers film and in Captain America: The First Avenger.
Read about the scene we watched below:
The scene shows a young eye-patchless Fury on a Kree spaceship, which Jackson reveals belonged to a Kree doctor. He is on the floor with a cat that is wearing a muzzle. Fury notices that Carol is glowing and tells her, “You do know that you’re glowing?”
Carol is holding what looks to be a Happy Days lunch box and tells him, “I’ll explain later. Take the Tesseract. Leave the lunchbox.”
Fury looks shocked, “Me?”
Carol opens the lunchbox to reveal the glowing Tesseract, “Yeah.”
Fury responds, “Oh, you giving me orders now?”
Carol replies back, “Yeah.”
Fury responds, “I’m not touching that.”
Carol says sarcastically, “Oh, you want me to get you an oven mitt?”
The cat/Flerken then reacts to the Tesseract. Carol closes the lunch box.
Carol proceeds to tell Fury, “Get the scrolls in the quad adjacent. Take the Flerken with you.”
Fury replies, “What about you?”
Carol tells him as she leaves, “I’m going to the control deck. I’ll buy you some time.”
Fury then looks at Goose and tells him, “I’m going to pick you up. I’m trusting you not to eat me.”
End Scene.
We will see a young Monica Rambeau in the film
We already know that Maria Rambeau (played by Lashana Lynch) is in the film as Carol’s best friend in the Air Force. We also know that in Marvel Comics history, Maria’s daughter Monica becomes a superhero in her own right: Captain Marvel, which she later changes to Photon, Pulsar, and Spectrum.
Lynch reveals that we will see an eleven-year-old Monica during this time period and that Carol practically raised Monica with Maria.
“So they were best friends in the beginning — absolute best friends,” says Lynch regarding Maria’s relationship with Carol. “They were in and out of each other’s houses. Carol was very close with Monica. She almost, I would say, helped raise her, and in the fact that I’m [Maria] a single mother, and she was just in her house a lot, and I would take much out of work whenever I could.”
We do get to see a little bit of Monica’s home life with Maria too, but with the Skrulls taking over and Maria coming to Carol’s aid, there is a bit of an interruption to their lives. Lynch hints that you will see Monica’s strength when dealing with trouble. Lynch couldn’t give us any plot details, but you could tell that Monica will probably be dealing with some alien lifeforms.
Mar-Vell is in the movie, but tweaked
There have been numerous reports regarding Jude Law’s character in the film and whether he is playing the Starforce hero Mar-Vell or the Kree traitor Yon-Rogg. We still don’t know the answer for sure. We have been told that Mar-Vell is in the story because he is important to Carol’s origin story. Executive producer Jonathan Schwartz did reveal that the Mar-Vell origin story did get updated for a modern audience.
The Skrulls do have shape-shifting abilities, including Talos
According to Marvel Comics, Talos the Untamed is a Skrull with no shape-shifting abilities, who still becomes one of the most powerful of the Skrull leaders. In Captain Marvel, however, Talos does have the ability to shape-shift.
“We’re going to pull a lot from the comic book mythology about the Skrulls in general, Ben [Mendelsohn]’s character in specific is something that’s been more or less invented for the movie but will make a lot of sense in the context of the Kree-Skrull war,” said Schwartz. “And, part of the fun of being able to hire an actor like Ben Mendelsohn to play this character is, you’ll get to meet him in his Skrull form and then also get to meet him having shape-shifted. So, Ben sort of gets to play a couple of different parts [during] the course of the movie that utilize all of Ben’s acting skills and chameleon-ness to adequately portray what these Skrulls are capable of doing.”
We were able to watch another scene with Mendelsohn, in full Skrull makeup, being led into a jail on the Kree ship along with other Skrull refugees. He enters the jail and comforts a Skrull child. He then turns around facing his target and begins gurgling, which we were told is how they begin the shape-shifting process.
Mendelsohn shared that Talos has a sense of community and family within his own people — the Skrulls, so we will see a bit of humanity and depth from the Skrull villain.
“I think, ultimately they are, you know, they behave very differently towards their own than they do towards what you might call the good guys in this,” says Mendelsohn. “So yeah, they’ve got some [humanity], they’ve got a sense of family and community and stuff like that, but you know, they’re out to do what they got to do.”
There will be a bunch of ’90s Easter Eggs
Based on the trailer and photos released, we already know there will be tons of ’90s callbacks, including an existing Blockbuster and Carol wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt during her time on Earth. But, according to Schwartz, there will be much more.
“I mean, it’s not like there’s going to be some ’90s mixtape that you carry, or I guess, it would be a CD,” says Schwartz. “There’s not a ’90s mix CD that she carries with her through the movie, like Guardians might have. But I think part of the fun of the movie is all the ’90s music cues and having fun with the ’90s period element.”
The return of our favorites
Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) is back, but this time he’s younger, has more hair, and is just a rookie within S.H.I.E.L.D. Of course, Coulson will try to work with Fury, but Fury wants nothing to do with Coulson and even forgets his name sometimes.
We will also see the return of Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), who is a high-ranking member of the Kree society. This is before his interaction with the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick | © Marvel Studios 2019
The film showcases the Kree-Skrull War and how the Earth deals with it
The story of Captain Marvel takes place in the middle of the Kree-Skrull War, based on the 1970s Marvel comic book story, and somehow Earth gets involved. Schwartz reveals that the war also affects Fury in a way.
Photo: Chuck Zlotnick | © Marvel Studios 2019
Maria, Fury, Carol, and Goose will deal with Talos on the Kree ship
In another short scene we witnessed, which was revealed to us to be near the end of the film, Talos leads the four down a hallway. Talos picks something off the ground, which we see is a baseball, but will probably be CGI-ed into something. Talos then places it in his coat without the others behind him seeing.
Schwartz tells us more about the scene, “Captain Marvel, Maria Rambeau and Nick Fury are kind of teaming up and will soon need to fight their way off this alien spaceship. And they’re kind of reconvening after having been separated for a little bit and having their own separate adventures. An hour kind of forming a plan that’s going to carry us into a lot of fighting.”
There will be hints of Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.
Around the Kree ship, there were containers with a Pegasus on them with the words P.E.G.A.S.U.S. Fans of Marvel will remember that is the name of the secret operation to study the Tesseract as well as a secret operation in the Mojave Desert to study alternative forms of energy.
This is some of the stuff we learned from the set of Captain Marvel. Stay tuned for more news from Captain Marvel soon.
Check out the new Captain Marvel featurette below:
Captain Marvel opens in theaters on March 8, 2019.
