The first trailer for Captain Marvel is here and it’s worth watching many, many times.
Although the film will be the first step in the last part of Phase 3, we already know that it’s not going to answer too many questions about the end of Infinity War – especially since it’s set at least 20 years earlier. But that’s not going to stop us trying anyway…
If you haven’t already seen the trailer, watch it now:
First impressions?
1.) Wow.
2.) We want more.
3.) Why does she punch an old lady in the face?!
It’s a short teaser but it’s a good’un – with plenty to keep us occupied with until the film arrives next March. Since the ’90s soundtrack has already been bigged up, we were hoping for something with a bit less of a generic Marvel-swell in the background (and we were definitely hoping for more than one tiny shot of young Agent Coulson) but there’s plenty of time for that. Let’s dive in.
The trailer opens with a very brief glimpse of the event that sends Carol Danvers to Earth. We know that the film is partly (if not mostly) set in space, and we see an explosion featuring a spaceship that looks very different to Captain Marvel’s ship in the comics (and the one that we see later in the trailer) – looking more like some kind of escape pod. Either way, she’s out of it in the next shot – already falling straight into the trailer’s first ’90s cliché.
Yep, Blockbuster Video is back – and it doesn’t even really count as product placement since video shops aren’t actually a thing anymore. We were expecting the trailer to lean a lot heavier on the nostalgia side of things (as Wonder Woman 1984 seems to be doing, along with pretty much everyone else these days), but if the teaser is anything to go by, we’re not going to get anything that looks like this:
Still, it’s nice to see a retro-set film that doesn’t feel the need to constantly remind the audience about the time period – and the look and feel of Captain Marvel so far seems to be headed in the right direction, with slightly softer, grungier cinematography than we’re used to seeing in the sci-fi hued MCU.
“War is a universal language,” narrates Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury, “I know a renegade soldier when I see one”. The first time we see Danvers in full, she’s wearing the green and black combat suit that we’ve already seen in the promo images. We already know that she’s going to change into the red, blue and gold version that we’re used to seeing the character wear – but we don’t get a glimpse until the very end of the trailer. Does that mean she “becomes” Captain Marvel properly at the end of the film? Possibly. It certainly looks like most of the action takes place with Danvers in in Starforce mode – which is no bad thing because it looks pretty badass.
After a quick crowd shot (kudos to the costume designer for making everyone look like suitably 90s – complete with one guy wearing a clip-on Walkman), we see Fury at work – supervising an alien autopsy, talking over a mini-space invasion and introducing us to some of the film’s set-pieces – the first of which sees Danvers flip onto a moving LA train. We’ve already heard rumours of the Terminator 2: Judgment Day vibes of the real-world action, and we can sort of see what the’re coming from – with plenty of practical-ish effects and sunny LA car crash shots (although we’re definitely getting more of a Speed feel from that first scene).
We also get our first look at Captain Marvel’s superpowers (unless you count the bit where she survived a fall from space into the roof of Blockbuster Video). The character in the comics has superhuman strength, the power of flight and the ability to project energy – which is presumably what we’re looking at here as Brie Larson does her best Hadouken face.
An even better face is pulled off by Samuel L Jackson, who somehow manages to look 20 years younger. It’s the first time we’re seeing the de-ageing effects that have been mooted for Jackson and Clark Gregg (and presumably also for Lee Pace and Djimon Hounsou). The trailer is likely intentionally a bit blurry at this point – making clear stills really difficult – as the digital effects won’t be finished for months yet, but the first impression is actually pretty amazing. Looking a bit better than he did in The Long Kiss Goodnight, and a bit worse than he did in Die Hard With A Vengeance, we’re guessing the setting for Captain Marvel is exactly February of 1996… The big worry for a film that plans on part-animating the face of one of its lead actors is that the effect is going to be distracting. Based on the trailer, it’s not. Phew.
The other thing that directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck don’t want us to be distracted by is Danvers’ backstory. Scrapping the usual origin formula, the film will jump straight into Captain Marvel’s character – with the story seeing her dragged down to Earth, away from her successful career in Starforce. Still, it looks like the film won’t be ignoring her human origins all together – with several flashbacks to Danvers’ early life (including her job as a USAF pilot and the accident that saw her sucked up into space in the first place) seen in the trailer.
It looks like her forgotten identity will be a big part of the story too, as Danvers’ looks visibly distressed trying to make sense of everything. Will her remembered connection to her home planet play a role in her eventual intervention in the Thanos problem?
Most of the trailer takes place on Earth but we do get a few very quick glimpses of the rest of the universe too. Bron-Char (Rune Temte) and Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan) get a quick background shot – flanking Danvers as members of her Starforce unit, but we also see Jude Law’s Walter Lawson. We all Lawson is actually the alter-ego of Mar-Vell, the original Captain Marvel, but there’s nothing in the trailer to back it up just yet. Officially, Law is still just playing Lawson, Danvers’ boss, but the fact that Larson isn’t seen wearing the proper Cap costume yet suggests there’s still going to be some kind of handover at some point.
Having the word “her” become the word “hero” seems like a slightly unsubtle way of reminding the audience what the stakes are here for Marvel. We all know that DC got there first by actually bothering to make a female-led superhero film (and no, we’re not counting Catwoman or Elektra) and Marvel have been embarrassingly slow off the starting line after twenty other blockbusters.
Things pick up quickly as the trailer draws to a close, and the final images feel like a pick’n’mix of teasers to get us excited. We see some Skrull (a beach invasion?), we see the back of Ronan’s head (looking at Earth from the deck of a spaceship) and we see a glimpse of a young Agent Coulson (just as non-distracting as young Sam Jackson). And then we see this…
We’re not gonna lie, we have no idea what’s going on here. Either Ben Mendelsohn is going a really different way for his portrayal of big bad Talos, someone is using some kind of human cloaking camouflage, or Captain Marvel isn’t quite as heroic as we were hoping.
The trailer continues with some very cool looking underwater Starforce tech (and the Marvel mask), another look at the explosion that gave Danvers her powers – and one tantalising glimpse of the film’s connection to Avengers: Infinity War in the shape of Fury’s pager. “We can’t do this alone,” he narrates, “we need you”. It’s not the exact same pager we see at the end of Infinity War (that one had a nifty Captain Marvel symbol on the screen), but it is a neat reminder that sometime very soon we’re going to see how that film really ends – with Danvers being summoned back to sort out the big, awful, upsetting mess that Thanos made.
Finally, we get to see the Captain Marvel we’ve all been waiting for. Telling us, “I’m not what you think I am”, Danvers is revealed at the very end of the trailer in her full red, gold and blue Captain Marvel outfit – her eyes glowing with unspeakable super power and generally coolness.
It’s been worth the wait. Now we just have another six months to go before we can see the thing…