After 11 years, Marvel Studios is finally giving fans a superhero flick centring on a female superhero. Enters Captain Marvel.
“Captain Marvel” is essentially a prequel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, it’s also a crucial piece to the highly-anticipated “Avengers: Endgame” as Captain Marvel is expected to play a crucial role in taking down Thanos. Here are several fun facts fans can expect to see:
1. She’s the strongest superhero.
“We’ve always had powerful female characters in our movies. We’ve had powerful female heroes in our movies, but having Captain Marvel as the title character for the first time feels like it’s overdue. And feels like something that we are excited and can’t wait to deliver onto the world.”
President of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige have stated that Captain Marvel is the most powerful character that the studio has ever introduced. The president even disclosed the studio’s hope of making her the forefront of Marvel’s future. Rumor has it that she is the only force capable of undoing Thano’s damage in Infinity War.
So, what exactly is Captain Marvel really capable of?
In the comics, Captain Marvel demonstrated abilities like superhuman strength and durability, immunity to toxins and poisons, regeneration, manipulation of solar energy, and flight. As for her gift of flight, not only is she capable of flying in the realms of earth, she is also capable of flying to outer space.
In addition, Captain Marvel has cosmic awareness which means she is capable of knowing her opponent’s move in a combat. However, the thing that puts her in a great advantage over the other Avengers is her ability to travel through time.
2. Captain Marvel doesn’t have a love interest. But she’s got something better 😉
Captain Marvel ain’t got time to swoon over some guy. In the movie, she’s got a different kind of love and that’s her female friendship with best friend Maria Rambeau (played by Lashana Lynch).
“What (Carol and Maria have) gone through together — going through military training, being the only women and then using each other to lean on each other through that type of support — and that recognition of their experience is really special,” Brie Larson was quoted as saying.
“This is the great love, this is the love lost, this is the love found again. This is the reason to continue fighting and to go the ends of the earth for the person, the thing that you love. (For Carol), it’s her best friend and her best friend’s daughter. Which to me, that’s so natural. I went and saw the movie with some people and it was like an hour later and they were like ‘Oh, Maria’s the love!’ and I was like ‘Yeah!’” she added.
3. The main villains
The next exciting thing about this movie is the new characters. It was evident from the trailers that there will be new supporting characters and villains. For example, in the trailer, Captain Marvel attacked an elderly women in a public commute. That was actually a Skrull.
For the upcoming superhero flick, Skrulls will act as the main villain. They are basically shape shifters who are capable of imitating any physical appearance of humans, aliens and even objects.
But, wait it gets better!
Some skrulls have also shown the ability to imitate powers. Following the comics, readers were introduced to Warskrulls who battled superheroes like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. During one of their battles, Kl’rt, named the Super-Skrull imitated the abilities of the Fantastic Four, which eventually led to their victory.
Sadly, these following creatures don’t live by Uncle Ben (from Spiderman)’s life motto that is “with great power comes great responsibility”. This is because they intend to rule Earth. Thankfully, the team, Starforce, will do anything to prevent this from happening.
4. Who is Starforce?
According to the comics, Starforce is an elite team that consists of the best genetically modified warriors. The team exist to serve the Supreme Intelligence who runs the Kree empire. Unfortunately, they were used by the Supreme to kickstart a galactic war with their rival, the Shi’ar empire.
The supreme being initiated the war for the fear of the survival of its species. It believed that Kree had stopped evolving and was reaching its extinction. Sadly, the Shi’ar empire won the battle, dropping a genetic bomb on the homeworld of Kree. As a result, it killed millions and forced survivors of the battle to adapt to new circumstances. The Starforce unit was involuntary recruited into the Shi’ar military.
Nevertheless, despite the tragic ending it would be cool to see Starforce come alive on screen. In “Captain Marvel”, the unit that is made up of Yon-Rogg, Minn-Erva, Att-Lass, and Korath.
5. Connecting the dots…
“Infinity War” ended with a cliffhanger, leaving fans devastated. However, according to a fan theory, it was meant to act as a welcoming party to invite Captain America into the franchise. If you can remember, Nick Fury paged for help right before he and half of the universe turned to dust in the ending of “Infinity War”.
Woot_wooten, reddit user has a theory:
“At the end of “Captain Marvel”, Nick Fury and Captain Marvel will be talking, then suddenly someone will call out to them. They’ll turn around and see Dr Strange. He’ll explain to them what’s happening with Thanos in the future and explain that they’ll need Captain Marvel’s help in order to defeat him. Dr Strange will then close his eyes and you’ll hear Stark calling out to him. When he opens them he’ll be back on Titan right after he supposedly viewed all possible outcomes.”
This would explain how Nick fury knew how to contact Captain Marvel in “Infinity War”.
6. Returning characters
Even though, it was revealed that the upcoming superhero flick is not an origin movie, fans can look forward to seeing new sides to existing characters.
For instance, fans will get to witness a different side to Nick Fury. Unlike his previous persona, Nick Fury is younger and way more optimistic. Maybe it has something to do with age, ehh? (We kid.) He is even seen having both of his eyes. This is a big deal because if you remember his past looks, Nick Fury is usually bald and often dressed in black with an eye-patch.
Why the drastic change? Well, according to actor Samuel Jackson, the upcoming story will spill the tea on his family life, past experience in the military and how exactly he lost his eye. His meeting with Carol Danvers will also open him up to the world of superheroes.
Alongside with Nick, the show will also reveal past stories of S.H.I.E.L.D agent Phil Coulson and villain Ronan. As many fans are aware, Phil Coulson was killed by Loki in The Avengers. Nevertheless, fans will get to witness the agent’s younger times with the spy agency and his experience meeting his future mentor.
As for villain Ronan, the show will focus on his younger self when he was a high-ranking and influential member of the Kree Society. With all this revelation, fans can get a clearer picture about the aforementioned characters and comprehend why they turned out the way they did.
Before Korath took sides with Ronan the Accuser in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was working alongside with Captain Marvel and the Starforce team. Perhaps we’ll get to see how he ended up switching sides.
7. Goose is more than just your average cat.
There is a reason why directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck decided to change Carol’s pet cat name Chewie to Goose. It was too similar to Han Solo’s best friend in “Star Wars”, Chewbacca. “You know, when we were kids, Star Wars felt like it was something from the 70s and 80s, and I think that was the spirit of Chewie from the comics but we felt like we wanted to sort of just slide away from that slightly,” Fleck told Collider.
In the comics, Carol assumes that her pet is just a normal cat when it is actually a member of the Flerken (an alien species that look like the cats on earth, and who lay eggs to give birth to their offspring). It was Guardians of the Galaxy’s Rocket Raccoon who discovered the cat’s origins.
8. 2 post-credits scenes confirmed.
As per any other MCU film, the mid-credits scene is usually serious and provides hints of what the next Marvel film might be about. The end-credits tends to be a funny clip to draw laughter.
“Captain Marvel” debuts in cinemas this week.
Article by Justin and John Tan.
