Captain Marvel [2019]

[Gallahadd]

If she doesn't need a helmet, what's the point?

She doesn’t need a helmet, but wears one because it’s part of the Uniform, and they wanted to play up the military angle.

As for the Mohawk... the Kree love a Mohawk, fuck knows why though.

[Faroth]

I always kinda thought the mohawk was stupid even in the comics. I men, if she's got a helmet, why doesn't it just cover her head? If it doesn't need to cover her head, why does it cover like half her hair? If she doesn't need a helmet, what's the point?

I'm gonna be honest with you..... I didn't even realize she had the full helmet in her red and blue costume in the comics. I assumed it was more of a throw back that she'd drop for the maskless/helmetless look after the 90s adventure.

- - - Updated - - -

You know the end of that trailer has her in the red/blue suit with the helmet blasting the fuck out of ships, right?

Yeah, looking back I realize that. I was thinking in the comic covers I always see her without helmet. Maybe they'll drop it after the 90s adventure. Or maybe it's easier to computer animate without a full face.

I'm now at a loss and no clue what they'll do in that regard or what the purpose of an open helmet is. XD

[Ausr]

I'm gonna be honest with you..... I didn't even realize she had the full helmet in her red and blue costume in the comics. I assumed it was more of a throw back that she'd drop for the maskless/helmetless look after the 90s adventure.

- - - Updated - - -



Yeah, looking back I realize that. I was thinking in the comic covers I always see her without helmet. Maybe they'll drop it after the 90s adventure. Or maybe it's easier to computer animate without a full face.

I'm now at a loss and no clue what they'll do in that regard or what the purpose of an open helmet is. XD

She really only uses it in space or underwater anyway.

[Faroth]

She really only uses it in space or underwater anyway.

Maybe it's kinda like Quill's space mask rather than a space helmet, then?

[Ausr]

Maybe it's kinda like Quill's space mask rather than a space helmet, then?

Yep. As Captain Marvel, she needs the helmet to survive in space/water. As Binary (if we see it in her movie or A4), she doesn't need it.

[RobertoCarlos]

And its marvel so of course they want her to use magic space helmet while in space, so shes more relatable with the being a human aspect with the flashbacks to falling over alot in training academy because superheroes need to be relatable and all and they cant just be OP death machines.

[Skroe]

Why couldn't they make Marvel a man? wtf

This is MCU canon, not comics canon.

For decades, Marvel had no ideas what to do with the "Captain Marvel" concept and Mar-vell. The most famous and meaningful thing Mar'vell ever did was die. Mostly, he's used as a prop... as a kind of long dead friend to the major heroes. His books were never big sellers.

They tried to reboot the concept around Secret Wars in the 1980s. Didn't work.

They tried against years later in the 1990s with "Legacy" (Mar-vell's son), who was so very 1990s, and was transformed into a better and more interesting character "Genis Vell". Genis used the name "Captain Marvel" in a great series for a bit around the year 2000. But it was never a great seller. I think his sister Phyla-vell also took a spin with the name.

Marvel tried to bring the original Captain Marvel back in Civil War with "the Return" as having been pulled through time, and then retconned him as a Skrull because nobody knew what to do with him. Throughout all this they had Carol Danvers... Ms. Marvel, Warbird, or Binary, floating around. She was an integral part of the New Avengers at one point and started dabbling with the Captain Marvel name way later. After they made a kind of other attempt, with "Marvel Boy" aka the Protector. They clearly were trying to slow burn him into being the next Captain Marvel by earning it from the ground up (after they retconed the Marvel Boy limited series into 616). But then they changed their minds again and started with Danvers.

And you know what? It worked. Carl Danvers as Captain Marvel, despite being about a 10 year old concept in its current form, is the only version of the "Captain Marvel" idea that's proven enduring and popular.

One of the reasons for that is that pre-Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, the comics had kind of a glaring hole for a major female Avenger... a Wonder Woman analogue. Someone who could stand toe to toe in stature of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Wasp despite being a founder, was never that character. Scarlet Witch, despite her long association, didn't work, and was also a mutant and co-owned with Fox for movies. Carol Danvers was the logical choice.

Part of this though is because Marvel never really needed to do that. Remember: for most of Marvel's history from the mid 1970s to the mid 2000s, X-Men were its bread and butter. Avengers was never a great seller. It had Captain America sure, but the face of Marvel was Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men. Even Iron Man was kind of a B-level character comparatively and the rest of the Avengers were even worse.

The X-Men got the iconic women characters of this period. Psylocke. Rogue. Phoenix/Jean Grey in all her forms. Carol Danvers also was an X-Men character for a while too.

Marvel only started making "Avengers" character films because other studios owned the rights to all the properties that had value in the 1990s - that is, the X-Men and Spider Man and Hulk. The choice of MCU characters came because it was them or nothing.

The name "Captain Marvel" is more "interesting idea" than "executed well", and has been a decades long mess. The MCU has a long history of taking what works and putting aside or modernizing what didn't (MCU's "Civil War" being infinetly better executed and logical than the terrible comics event, for example). Captain Marvel is just more of that. They went with the Captain Marvel that works, rather than the one that didn't.

[Vargur]

This is MCU canon, not comics canon.

For decades, Marvel had no ideas what to do with the "Captain Marvel" concept and Mar-vell. The most famous and meaningful thing Mar'vell ever did was die. Mostly, he's used as a prop... as a kind of long dead friend to the major heroes. His books were never big sellers.

They tried to reboot the concept around Secret Wars in the 1980s. Didn't work.

They tried against years later in the 1990s with "Legacy" (Mar-vell's son), who was so very 1990s, and was transformed into a better and more interesting character "Genis Vell". Genis used the name "Captain Marvel" in a great series for a bit around the year 2000. But it was never a great seller. I think his sister Phyla-vell also took a spin with the name.

Marvel tried to bring the original Captain Marvel back in Civil War with "the Return" as having been pulled through time, and then retconned him as a Skrull because nobody knew what to do with him. Throughout all this they had Carol Danvers... Ms. Marvel, Warbird, or Binary, floating around. She was an integral part of the New Avengers at one point and started dabbling with the Captain Marvel name way later. After they made a kind of other attempt, with "Marvel Boy" aka the Protector. They clearly were trying to slow burn him into being the next Captain Marvel by earning it from the ground up (after they retconed the Marvel Boy limited series into 616). But then they changed their minds again and started with Danvers.

And you know what? It worked. Carl Danvers as Captain Marvel, despite being about a 10 year old concept in its current form, is the only version of the "Captain Marvel" idea that's proven enduring and popular.

One of the reasons for that is that pre-Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel, the comics had kind of a glaring hole for a major female Avenger... a Wonder Woman analogue. Someone who could stand toe to toe in stature of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Wasp despite being a founder, was never that character. Scarlet Witch, despite her long association, didn't work, and was also a mutant and co-owned with Fox for movies. Carol Danvers was the logical choice.

Part of this though is because Marvel never really needed to do that. Remember: for most of Marvel's history from the mid 1970s to the mid 2000s, X-Men were its bread and butter. Avengers was never a great seller. It had Captain America sure, but the face of Marvel was Spider-Man, Wolverine and the X-Men. Even Iron Man was kind of a B-level character comparatively and the rest of the Avengers were even worse.

The X-Men got the iconic women characters of this period. Psylocke. Rogue. Phoenix/Jean Grey in all her forms. Carol Danvers also was an X-Men character for a while too.

Marvel only started making "Avengers" character films because other studios owned the rights to all the properties that had value in the 1990s - that is, the X-Men and Spider Man and Hulk. The choice of MCU characters came because it was them or nothing.

The name "Captain Marvel" is more "interesting idea" than "executed well", and has been a decades long mess. The MCU has a long history of taking what works and putting aside or modernizing what didn't (MCU's "Civil War" being infinetly better executed and logical than the terrible comics event, for example). Captain Marvel is just more of that. They went with the Captain Marvel that works, rather than the one that didn't.

Oh hey, thanks for the history lesson. That was unexpected.
I have nothing against women in MCU, and although I was also aiming to trigger some reactions, I also said that they don't have to (and didn't do it anyway) respect the canon in the movies.
I just feel like a man would have been better suited for this role, given that Marvel is basically Superman's counterpart.

[Skroe]

Oh hey, thanks for the history lesson. That was unexpected.
I have nothing against women in MCU, and although I was also aiming to trigger some reactions, I also said that they don't have to (and didn't do it anyway) respect the canon in the movies.
I just feel like a man would have been better suited for this role, given that Marvel is basically Superman's counterpart.

No, Superman's counterpart would be Hyperion (part of the Squadron Supreme or Squadron Sinister), or the Sentry. The Sentry would be a great character for a different type of film. The Sentry is basically Superman with his Silver Age level of powers, but his alter ego Robert Reynolds is agoraphobic, schizophrenic and depressed. Robert's other personality is the Void, which is the Sentry's greatest enemy.

The Sentry was retconned in his 1990s creation as one of the first Marvel characters, and one of the nobelest heroes on the world and best friends with Reed Richards. However he and Richards created a device that mind wiped the entire world (including Reynolds) of his existence as the Sentry, when the Void attacked and basically destroyed New York City. Since they could not destroy the Sentry or the Void, the solution was to erase knowledge of him. It eventually failed, and the Sentry came back, though he was easily manipulated by modern marvel villains. Eventually the Void took control, and destroyed Asgard before Thor and the Avengers put down The Sentry/Void. Eventually he came back though. He tried to kill himself before (by throwing himself into a star) and it didn't work. The Sentry is easily the most powerful superhero in the Marvel world. He might be on the level of Galactus or a Celestial.

But at his core he is not a well man.






Anyway that's how Marvel does "Superman".

Captain Marvel's powers are traditionally quite different from what they're being portrayed in the movie. Mar-Vell and Genis-Vell derived their powers from the Nega-bands. Rick Jones (a Hulk character, and kind of the Avengers' sidekick) wore the Nega-Bands and when the 'Vells nunited them, they swapped places with him from the Negative Zone. The Nega-Bands allowed a bunch of generic abilities like ENergy Blasts, flight, strength, telekensis. Additionally and apart, they were also Omniscient, through getting Cosmic Awareness. Crucially to the character, Mar-Vell and Jones are different people... just physically swapping places in the universe.

Captain Marvel's abilities in the movie seem to be basically those of her comic's "Binary" iteration, but of somewhat lesser degree and not tied to the Negi-bands.

And that;s actually an important distinction. Mar-Vell was a Captain in the Kree Imperial Armada who betrayed his people when he saw the potential in the human race to surpass the Kree, the Shiar, the Skrulls and everyone else. This made him a hero to humanity, but an outcast to the Kree, who spit his name. But he was a normal kree and his truly super-human abilities (beyond just those of a normal Kree) came from the Nega-Bands.

So this MCU Captain Marvel... it would be an entirely different type of story they were trying to tell if they were going to use the Mar-Vell character. The protaganist wouldn't even be close to human. To give him any powers, they'd either have to rip from Carol Danvers's history, or introduce the Negi-Bands, Rick Jones and just tell an entirelyt different type of film.

This is why, going from my prior post, Marvel making Carol Danvers their definitive, modern Captain Marvel in the comic books make so much sense, and utilizing her for the film rather than the alternative approaches was the right approach. The Captain Marvel name and history has so much gunk that the "simplified' film version just gets around by keeping it Danvers, on top of adding an additional high profile female character to a roster that generally has been male (again, because the Avengers were the shitty property compared to the X-Men for about 25 years).

That final point there is pretty important too. Because ever since the Marvel movies started in earnest, in the comics, Marvel has been pushing the Avengers hard, and has done some of the best Avengers fiction ever. A lot of good characters and concepts. But comparatively the X-Men pretty much went to hell about 10 years ago and are just recovering now. There was even a directive for a while there: "No new major mutant characters. They can be inhuman or super-human, but not mutants", just so Fox didn't own them. This led to a bunch of weird and terrible shit in X-Men, kind of like Avengers atrophied for years.

[tyrlaan]

<lots of good stuff>

That final point there is pretty important too. Because ever since the Marvel movies started in earnest, in the comics, Marvel has been pushing the Avengers hard, and has done some of the best Avengers fiction ever. A lot of good characters and concepts. But comparatively the X-Men pretty much went to hell about 10 years ago and are just recovering now. There was even a directive for a while there: "No new major mutant characters. They can be inhuman or super-human, but not mutants", just so Fox didn't own them. This led to a bunch of weird and terrible shit in X-Men, kind of like Avengers atrophied for years.

A bit off topic, but I personally think you're being generous to the X-Titles; I'd say they went to hell all the way back when they let Grant Morrison have a go at them, with Whedon's run being the only exception since.

Agree with everything else and great write up!

[Faroth]

A bit off topic, but I personally think you're being generous to the X-Titles; I'd say they went to hell all the way back when they let Grant Morrison have a go at them, with Whedon's run being the only exception since.

Agree with everything else and great write up!

Some people think Morrison was the second Claremont in terms of X-Men writing. I'm with you, though. Everything he introduced was garbage to me. The only thing during his run that I felt was a major impact was the final pages of the Sentinel attack on Genosha where the panels just had the decreasing population count.

However, I'd say that the Second Coming arc was pretty good and bolstered by some of the best art the titles have had possibly since Jim Lee.

[Shadowferal]

A bit off topic, but I personally think you're being generous to the X-Titles; I'd say they went to hell all the way back when they let Grant Morrison have a go at them, with Whedon's run being the only exception since. Agree with everything else and great write up!

Yeah, Marvel pretty much went to hell when they fired Jim Shooter in the late 80s
And in the 90s...what a stench! A horrid ratio that was booming then. For every character created that was good (say, Bishop) they had several that were shitty (such as Strong Guy, Fitzroy, Random)

[tyrlaan]

Wow, no one linked this yet?

[Ivanstone]

The name "Captain Marvel" is more "interesting idea" than "executed well", and has been a decades long mess. The MCU has a long history of taking what works and putting aside or modernizing what didn't (MCU's "Civil War" being infinetly better executed and logical than the terrible comics event, for example). Captain Marvel is just more of that. They went with the Captain Marvel that works, rather than the one that didn't.

After reading all of this I have come to one conclusion:

I feel bad for Monica Rambeau.

She was the Captain Marvel I grew up reading in comics.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, Marvel pretty much went to hell when they fired Jim Shooter in the late 80s
And in the 90s...what a stench! A horrid ratio that was booming then. For every character created that was good (say, Bishop) they had several that were shitty (such as Strong Guy, Fitzroy, Random)

Bishop was one of the reasons I stopped reading X-men. Gambit was the main reason though. At least Bishop is funny in Marvel Puzzle Quest.

Strong Guy is the man! He's so adorably top-heavy.

[Svifnymr]

Wow, no one linked this yet?

Amusingly (well, to me), I saw there was a new trailer out on a newsfeed while I was at work, but didn't care enough to look for it. So I was waiting for someone to link it here. :-p

I wonder if they'll even toss AoS enough of a bone to leave a dead blue kree somewhere for them.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

"With Her" Yikes they're not even trying to hide it.

[Orby]

"With Her" Yikes they're not even trying to hide it.

That bit is for the PR and media to drool over, I wouldn't take too much stock in it.

[Pebrocks The Warlock]

Hide what? That the lead character is a female?

Google "With Her" and you'll understand what I'm saying.

[Ausr]

Wow, no one linked this yet?

I liked this trailer a bit more because it's finally a first trailer where she doesn't seem emotionless.

[tyrlaan]

Google "With Her" and you'll understand what I'm saying.

Yeah googling "with her" gets me a total of zero Captain Marvel related hits. Not sure what you're on about.