The Marvels movie review part 3: COSTUMES AND CHARACTER NAMES!

Here is the third part of my 3-part review of "The Marvels," focusing on the costumes and charcter names, revealing some Easter Eggs and other details that may fascinate you!

THE MARVELS Movie Review Part 1

HEre is a "video preface" to my upcoming review of "The Marvels"

AVENGERS: ENDGAME review: FRACK YOU ALL! (minor spoilers embedded in the text)

Another short break from the ongoing saga of the many Captain Marvels to cover this rather important movie in superhero cinema history...

Frack you all, you anti-SJW push-backers, claiming that the two most recent Marvel movies would be feminist propaganda! Frack you, those complaining that Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel being the strongest hero in the Marvel Universe would turn her into a Mary Sue and disrespected the God of Thunder. Frack you all for making me have that in my mind as I was experiencing the awesomeness that is Avengers: Endgame!

Frack you all, also, who claim the the movie is just a big pile of contrived fan service. I did not go to the movies tonight to NOT see every hero in the MCU get a well-deserved moment on screen!

The message of the movie is what the Avengers movies have all been about: teamwork and sacrifice. It is about working together to succeed at an objective. It is about finding the right place for each member of a team according to their abilities. It is about being willing to sacrifice everything and fight to the end if you believe in the objective for which your team is fighting. That is the awesomeness that is Avengers: Endgame!

Now some elaboration...

For months, now, folks at Marvel were saying that Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel was going to be the most powerful hero in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. "But what about Thor!?! You are disrespecting him!!!" was the plaintive cry of those who are "sick and tired of all this SJW nonsense in comic books." and claim that the push for "diversity" is killing comics; the "Carl Manvers" haters and Brie Larsen detractors who take offense at being told that a certain movie was not made for "40-year-old white dudes" and just can't get enough of that shot of Don Cheadle pulling away from Brie in that TV interview.

Here is a wake up call and analysis of the MCU and this movie and how Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel fits into it:


The MCU needed a Superman. Thor is not a Superman, because he is too flawed. He had been a flawed character from the beginning, and his journey has been one of self-discovery. Growing up he was so strong and so mighty in a culture that valued being strong and mighty that he could do no wrong. But from his very first movie on, the way to make something a challenge for him was to get him to fall victim to his pride and doubt himself. By the time the story truly begins in A:E, he has truly lost all his mojo because he failed, big time. It was perfectly within his character for him to react that way, and that made him more human, more entertaining, and his recovery more heroic. His heroic story arc is about earning his power by learning humility and overcoming depression.

Carol Danvers' story arc is about realizing her power in a culture that does not value women for being strong and mighty, and her independence in a culture that is subservient to the will of an authoritarian dictatorship. Her knock-downs are not blows to her pride, but rather challenges to her might. For dramatic satisfaction, the Superman that this movie needed needed had to be one that was a surprise to Thanos and a surprise to the audience. Who'da thunk that out of nowhere, from the far corner of the universe, would come a woman with the power of a star who can take a punch like no other superhero can?


Now the universe is facing a threat even more challenging than Superman's Doomsday in the DC Universe. Thanos is not only big, strong, and nigh-invulnerable, he is also brilliant, determined and erudite. He also leads a huge army of alien monsters and demons and things. He also has a spaceship capable of raining fire onto the surface of a planet. Even putting every Avenger on the table, along with the combined might of Wakanda, Asgard, and the Masters of the Mystic Arts, is not going to stop that. So they need a game-changing, field-clearing superpower who is super-strong, can fly, and is invulnerable, and does not have the issues of pride and self-doubt that plague Thor whom Thanos has not yet faced and for which he is unprepared.

Besides, we have seen plenty of movies in which Thor gets all thunder-godly and saves the day. It's good to mix it up once in a while. And just because there is a great and powerful female superhero in DC's cinematic universe does not mean that Marvel should not have one. And just because Wonder Woman manages to pull of elegance, style and glamour does not mean that having a butch, kick-ass chick with short hair who wears dress pants to a funeral is a bad thing. My girlfriend loves her, and is making a renaissance outfit styled after her costume. And as a blonde, I like having a superhero with hair like mine.

Having a character with her power-set means that you can have people stranded in space being rescued by a superhero. You can have someone fly through a giant spacecraft to blow it up. You can have someone who Thanos cannot defeat simply by punching in the face.

And she has had powers like that for a long time in the comics. Get over it.

But won't such a character just make the fight too easy? Well, no. Because this character has been off helping the rest of the universe while Earth's Mightiest Heroes have been serving and protecting Earth. Therefore, she is not on the spot when such a character would have solved all their problems lickety-split (which is kind of a shame, because I wanted to see more of her in this movie). Also, Thanos is tough and smart enough to keep it from being too easy for her, even if he is initially taken by surprise.

Furthermore, Thanos and the Infinity Gauntlet are more than just a big, strong alien with a weapon, and she lacks certain attributes and abilities that turn out to be the final gag that saves the day and wraps up the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe Epic up in a perfect full-circle payoff.

And just because there is a moment when all the female heroes in the battle assemble and step up to the plate to advance the task at hand does not make this "feminist propaganda," nor is it a "Mary Sue" moment. Every single one of those characters had been established to have abilities, went through heck to get there, and were indispensable for the task at hand.

And is that moment, and every Carol Danvers moment, contrived fan service targeted at the feminist market? Well sure! And why the frack should that not be part of a movie in which every element of every Marvel movie up 'till now gets a moment to be noticed, recognized, and advance the story? There are fans of Marvel movies, of superheroes, of comic books, who like seeing females save the day. There are girls and women who want their heroes to have chromosomes like them, who want to see that women can also have superpowers, that they can play with the big boys if they really want to. Just about every other fan demographic was served in this movie, why not this one?

And besides, only one of these fan-service moments could be the one that saves the day. But even that one could not have happened were it not for every other one making it happen. I am talking now both in terms of story-writing and plotting. The situation was set up so that there was no other way for the heroes to win other than with that one hero doing what he did, and there was no way that hero could have done what he did if the rest of the heroes did not do what they did to enable that moment. Remember, it has been established that there were over 14 million possible outomes, and in only one of them would the heroes win. It only makes sense that it would have to be the one in which every  hero (almost) gets their moment to ante up and pitch in, in which every villain (almost) gets involved in the story to some degree, and we have to revisit every step (almost) that we have taken on this journey with the heroes that got us to this moment.


I m just going to take a moment to digress here...

We are fans of these heroes, much like sports fans are of their favorite teams. We live and die with these heroes, and laugh and cry as they go through their ups and downs. It is fiction, of course, but when the projector is running, and the pages are turning, the "It's still real to me" pro wrestling dynamic.

I am a big sports fan, particularly of my NY Teams, the Yankees, Giants, Rangers, Knicks, and whatever is the NYC team of whatever short-lived alternate sports league happens to be open this week. In 1986, the NY Giants had a dramatic, near-perfect season that took them all the way to the Super Bowl, where they won their first NFL championship  in over two decades.

That Super bowl was an almost perfect game for a Giants fan. It started out pretty even, going back and forth between them and their opponents, the Denver Broncos (with future Hall of Famer John Elway). But Phil Sims had the game of his life,  and everyone on the team had a moment to pitch in and shine. Running backs Joe Morris, Maurice Carthon, Ottis Anderson, and Lee Rouson, tight ends Mark Bavaro and Zeke Mowatt, linebackers Lawrence Taylor and Carl Banks, defensive end Harry Carson, wide receiver/kick returner Phil McConkey, nose tackle Jim Burt, offensive lineman Brad Benson, even the punter Sean Landeta and kicker Raoul Allegre (one of three kickers they had that season) and late-season addition safety Tom Flynn got in on the action either in the Big Game or the playoffs. I got total fan service for all my favorite players that day!

Not to mention, of course, that I got the ultimate in fan service: A Super Bowl victory that paid off a decade and a half of disappointments as they went from hapless to hopeful and back again year after year.

This movie is the Super Bowl of superhero movies. It is the championship game, the big kahuna, an all-the-marbles, blow the works, shoot the moon, no-tomorrow, apocalyptic blowout in this ever-gun-brought-to-bear, every-trick-in-the-book-played, nothing-left-on-the-table-or-in-the-gas-tank, finale, and only after every possible option is explored and every opportunity taken, do we finally get to the one last, best, but only hope, and that could only be the most perfect conclusion that the past 12 years of movies have set us up for.

It would have been interesting to see more of how society was adapting to the sudden drop in population. The bar for how to do multi-character superhero battles in terms of clarity, drama, and pace was set in Captain America: Civil War, and for all the epic scope and fan service, it is not matched here, though it is still exciting and awesome and not to be  missed. Some of the CGI is a little distracting, looking a little unreal, as if they needed to take another few passes with it to look real next to real-life actors. I do want to mention that it was great to see that Jim Starlin, who created Thanos, get a little cameo, that Stan Lee's cameo is awesome, and that it was interesting seeing which characters had their creators acknowledged and which did not in the credits.

So, in sum, frack the critics and haters, if you want to see the championship game of superhero movies, go see this!

Oh, and for those who are counting, here is a breakdown of screentime for most of the major characters from https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/films/1119712/Avengers-4-Endgame-okoye-screentime-poster-danai-gurira-black-panther-2:

Iron Man: 1hr 2mins

Captain America: 1hr 6mins

Thor: 45mins

Hulk: 40mins

Black Widow: 33mins

Hawkeye: 37mins

War Machine: 35mins

Ant-Man 38mins

Nebula: 41mins

Rocket: 36mins

Captain Marvel: 15mins

Valkyrie: 8mins

Wong: 6mins

Okoye: 6mins

Marvel's "Captain Marvel" Carol Danvers movie review (Part 2)

           

You can find Part 1 of this review at http://captainmarvelculture.blogspot.com/2019/03/marvels-captain-marvel-carol-danvers.html

Let's see, where were we...Oh yes, talking about the gender-switch of Mar-Vell.

There is a very important message in the film that the gender-switch enables, but there was another, non-gender-specific change to the character. I will cover later these later, as they are important factors in evaluating the film as a whole.

Vers breaks free from her imprisonment and proves to be a kick-ass badass. Though her hands are encased in giant cuffs that are blocking her photon blasts, she used the cuffs themselves as weapons, punching and kicking her way through a platoon of Skrulls.

In the course of her escape she crashes to Earth, landing through the roof of a Blockbister video, and the 1990's nostalgia and Easter Eggs begin. The very name of the store, of course, evokes what this movie will be once it goes to video. In the store she happens to pick up a box for the movie The Right Stuff obviously evoking her space travelling personae, referencing her Air Force test pilot past, and suggesting that she has the...you know...to be a hero. But behind her right shoulder we see the movies First Knight (which must be a reference to her leading position in StarForce) and Hook (which might be a reference to her forgetting, and later remembering, who she was when she was younger).

The loudest symbolic metaphorical element of the scene, however, is her blasting the head off of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a True Lies standee display. As we find out by the end of the movie, there are several layers of deception going on, and Vers has to peel them back, one by one, to find out who she is.

BTW, feel free to take a break from reading and enjoy this awesome little video that helped me remember which videos were in the store :)

Once outside the store, Vers meets with a local security guard, where we find out she has a "universal translator" and that she does not yet know that Earth (referred to by an alpha-numeric code designation) does not know that the Kree or the Skrulls exist. Moments later, we find out that she can use items found in a Radio Shack to turn a pay phone into an interstellar communications device, just like the extra-terrestrial in E.T. (which is technically a 1980's reference, but we still remembered it in the '90's).

Enter Samuel L. Fury.

Many reviews call this a "buddy cop" movie. There are actually quite a few "buddy" teams in this movie, each with a slightly different dynamic. It is almost as if this entire movie is about "buddies." These two-fers include:

Vers/Yon-Rogg
Carol Danvers/Wendy Lawson
Carol Danvers/Maria Rambeau
Carol Danvers/Monica Rambeau
Nick Fury/Goose the Flerkin
Talos/"Science Guy"

But the characters that spend the most "buddy" time together are Vers and Fury. They seem to have a sort of professional connection, being as they both have military experience and are employed in a combination military/law-enforcement capacity. This has to go a long way in explaining why they stick together for the rest of the film, otherwise, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they do.

But then, there are a few bunches of things that don't quite make sense in this movie. Or do they? In the course of the film, Vers rides a motorcycle, finds an internet cafe and uses Alta Vista to search for something, reads road maps and secret government reports, looks up files, and does other things that you would not expect someone who needs a "universal translator" to be able to do on Earth. But then, we haven't gotten to the big reveal yet, have we?

Vers, having landed on Earth in her Kree Battlesuit, swaps it out for a leather jacket/jeans/Nine Inch Nails T-shirt ensemble (I am sure someone more familiar with that band can share the symbolic significance of that shirt). She and Fury hit the road, have a bunch of exposition in which we learn a whole lot of backstory (that we might not have expected unless Wonder Woman had her lasso of truth around him) and wind up sneaking around an underground S.H.I.E.L.D. base finding secret reports that show that "Dr. Wendy Lawson" was working on a special space-plane and died in a crash. They also find that Maria Rambeau, whom Vers had been seeing in her dreams, was involved in the project, and that Vers herself had been there, too.

This gives us the plot turn that gets us to the biggest "fan service" that is unique to Marvel's Captain marvel in their cinematic universe: Monica Rambeau.

In the comics, Mar-Vell dies of cancer in a graphic novel published in 1982 some years after exposure to a toxic gas. This meant that the "Captain Marvel" trademark now had no character to hold it.

By this time in America, if any group of five or so portrayed in the media did not include least one woman and one black person it was extremely behind the times. Marvel did not have many female superheros and even fewer black ones, and only one who was both, and she wasn't even American. So it was decided to make the new Captain Marvel an American black female.

This is Monica Rambeau's place in the Captain Marvel history. The fourth superhero of the name, the second one in the third company to publish a Captain Marvel. She was a strong, smart, beautiful black woman whom even Captain America trusted enough to make leader of the Avengers. She kind of got screwed over later, being replaced as leader of the Avengers and essentially forgotten as the name passed to another character and she changed her superhero name to "Photon."

Lashana Lynch's connection to Monica Rambeau had been made apparent from promotional photos showing her in the cockpit of a jet fighter displaying the name and callsign Maria "Photon." Rambeau. The assumption that she was Monica's mother was quickly and correctly made by the fan community, and speculation arose as to where Monica would fit in.

After a fun chase-and-fight scene that revealed that Fury's boss (Ben Mendelsohn) is really a shape-shifting Skrull, and that Vers can fly a "quad-jet" (presumably a precursor to the Avengers' Quinjet), Fury and Vers make their way to the home of Maria Rambeau and her daughter, Monica. It is in this act of the movie that Vers gets to deal emotionally with the issue of having been Carol Danvers and having had a life on Earth. Maria was a very close friend, and Carol even used to call her daughter "Lieutenant trouble," (a not to a character in the recent Captain Marvel comics written by Kelly Sue Deconnick in which there as a young girl given that nickname by Carol).

It is also in this act in which we get to know the Skrulls as surprisingly human and vulnerable people. Talos and his "Science Guy" show themselves as a flawed team of semi-competents and that there is a boatload of Skrull refugees hiding out somewhere, trying to get to a safe planet.

Oh, and BTW, Fury met a cat named "Goose" at the S.H.I.E.L.D. base who tags along with them, and the Skrulls call it a "Flerken," a thing of danger.

After a little bit of 90's nostalgia of waiting for a CD-ROM file to load, Carol finds out that Mar-Vell's research was in part to help those Skrull refugees and overall to make a new lightspeed engine out of the power of the teseract that could end the war between the Kree and the Skrulls. Vers has the necessary flashbacks to remember her life before she was a test pilot, that an explosion of Mar-Vell's experimental engine had bathed her in radiation that gave her super powers, and that Mar-Vell was shot by Yon-Rogg.

This reveal both pays tribute and turns on its head the comic book origins of Marvel's Captain Marvel and Carol Danvers as a superhero. It also finally gives Yon-Rogg what he always wanted but never achieved in the comics.

Yon-Rogg's jealousy of Mar-Vell was the guiding motivation in all his actions while Mar-Vell was under his command as a spy on Earth. He tried to kill him, either directly or by proxy, on a regular basis. It was practically the plot device of default for the first year of the character's existence. But he never succeeded, eventually sabotaging his own career. In an issue of Marvel's What If...? Yon-Rogg not only threw away his career, but his life as well trying to do away with his rival for Medic Una's attention and and honor and recognition from the Supreme Intelligence. But in this movie he managed to get the upper hand on Mar-Vell, both by killing her and by stealing her friend/protege and making that person a Kree soldier/weapon.

The explosion in question, in the comics, was of a Kree device activated by Yon-Rogg called a "psyce-magnitron." Mar-Vell rescued her from that explosion, protecting her with his body, a move that was later retroactively explained as allowing Kree DNA to be absorbed into her body (This is called "retroactive continuity" or a "retcon" in comic book fan/historian parlance). It was a secret device, retconned into having the power to enable people to realize their desires. In the movie the explosion was of a cosmic power source harnessed into an engine by Mar-Vell, activated by Carol Danvers shooting it to prevent Yon-Rogg from getting his hands on it t Mar-Vell's urging.

This places the event that gave Carol her powers the result of her own action and an act for which only she can take responsibility. It was not an accidental incident. Though she had no way of knowing what would happen, she could have chosen not to pull the trigger on her gun. She could have run and tried to not get killed or captured by the approaching alien (Yon-Rogg, whom she had not yet met). She could have chosen not to take Mar-Vell (whom she only knew as Wendy Lawson at the time) up on the irregular, unauthorized test flight. She could have chosen to give up the Air Force Academy when it looked like she couldn't take the training. She could have chosen not to join the academy, not get up when brushed back by that pitch in Little League, not driven the kiddie go-kart so fast. But that is not her. She gets up, she fights back.

This is consistent with her character in the comics. The reason she still exists as a superhero, and what makes her important and a good choice for a character to lead the surviving Avengers in the battle against Thanos, why she is (finally) a good female role model, is that no matter how bleak things have looked for her (and things have been pretty darn bleak, believe me), she somehow, eventually, came back took responsibility, and did something about it.

I don't have time to go point-by-point on the many setbacks of her life and career, but believe me, you would be hard pressed to find someone who has taken the type of risks and come back from as many and as deep personal low points as Carol Danvers. So maverick-ly helping a ground-breaking scientist and blowing up a secret energy source are not the toughest things she has ever done.

But it does take Mar-Vell out of the equation as a direct source of her powers. She is an indirect source, as Carol would not have been in that predicament without her, but she does not protect her from the explosion, rather drives her to the act that causes it. Yon-Rogg gives her more than that, directly. A transfusion of his blood was given that may have saved her life (hence the blue blood she bleeds through the movie). The Kree soldier becomes the mentor/trainer/superior officer to the young female amnesiac he "rescues" from that explosion, in the process becoming a big, fat, liar. He used her to try to find what Mar-Vell was hiding, what she was doing on Earth. It was definitely a long-term game (taking 6 years of Earth time) but in the end, in the movie, as in the comics, his plot backfired. "Vers" (the name given to her because that part of her name was all that was visible on the fragment of her Air Force dog tag that the Yon-Rogg found) became a super-powered, highly trained warrior who decided to defend the Earth and help the Skrull refugees.

The rest of the movie is a series of reveals, including the location of the Skrull refugees (in a hideout that had a remarkably, ironically, symbolically metaphorical collection of American pass-time devices, from pinball machines to jukeboxes to super-soakers) collection, the plots and plans of Yon-Rogg and Ronan the Accuser, The truth behind the Flerken, how Nick Fury lost his eye, the origin of the Avengers Initiative, the fact that the device on Carol's neck was an inhibitor, not an enabler, and the full extent of Carol's powers.

The emotional payoffs to all the setups is worth it. Maria and Monica and Carol have an emotional reunion of sorts when Carol's memory returns, Maria gets to go into battle with her old, returned friend. Monica gets to help Carol decide on the colors for her Kree Battlesuit (paying fan service to other Captain Marvel costumes in the process), and Yon-Rogg gets his comeuppance from the final final defiance of him by Carol.

A few final thoughts about this movie will come in the next post...

For those of you who want to see a whole bunch of Easter Eggs and references in once convenient, fast-paced video, check this out...

ScreenJunkies News breaks down "Captain Marvel" box office conspiracy theories!

I am going to go there right now and say that I believe that the world will not end because Marvel's Captain Marvel" happens to send a positive feminist message. I believe that the folks who are screaming from their YouTube channels about how Marvel is "forcing a feminist agenda" down our throats with this "SJW feminist propaganda" are betraying a reactionary agenda and bias.

Apparently, many of these people have been saying that the movie would bomb, then that the great opening weekend was rigged, then that the downturn on Monday, and then the following weekend, proved that the movie and its message was not popular.

ScreenJunkies (who did not give the movie a stellar review) decided to do the research and figure out if there was any truth to these report of Disney doing things like buying out theaters and scheduling the release to maximize ticket sales to make it look like a successful movie when it would not be, among other things.

Without further ado, let's hear what he has to say...

...and on a note relevant to this blog, this is just one more piece of evidence that there is a Captain Marvel connected to EVERYTHING!

Marvel's "Captain Marvel" Carol Danvers movie review (Part 1)

After all the fuss and sturm und drang regarding this movie, let me say: This movie was not what you feared. It is a good, exciting, superhero movie/'90's nostalgia film that you can enjoy without even having read any of the comics or seeing any of the other Marvel movies.

That being said let's get into this. SPOILER ALERT! This is going to be a full-service review/analysis, so if you are one of those "Don't tell me! The introductory paragraph to this post was too much already!" people, stop now and read my "Spoiler Free" review at http://captainmarvelculture.blogspot.com/2019/03/spoiler-free-marvels-captain-marvel.html

Captain Marvel follows the story of an alien Kree warrior named Vers (pronounced "veers") as she discovers her true origin and power when she spends time on Earth.

If you knew nothing about the character, and that this movie was part of the Great Marvel Cinematic Universe, that would actually make for a pretty good movie. A few little things could have been left out, but they were mostly amusing in context.

But such is the way with Marvel superhero movies, and part of the fun of them is to see them in context and get all those little references. But even so, even with those little things, there should be a good movie behind it, and this is a good movie. It is even a good superhero movie, and it has an important, if not unfamiliar message. But this message has not been spelled out quite this obviously and relateably as in other superhero movies yet.

But aside from being a superhero movie, the other big, important characteristic of this movie is that it is a 1990's nostalgia piece. As such there are many 1990's references made, but to the movie's credit, those references (for the most part) enhance the themes, plot, mood, and characters of the movie. There are a few throw-away jokes as well, but at least they fit within the scope and parameters of the film-making.

The story begins with us getting to know Vers (Brie Larsen). She is a warrior with a strike team of the Kree intergalactic empire who has mysterious dreams that are probably about her past, which she can't remember. The Kree have a thing called "The Supreme Intelligence," which seems to be the consciousness of the ruling faction of the empire. It might be some sort of psychic artificial intelligence, because one communes with it by being connected to blue organic wires that tap into your body, and you speak to an avatar that is supposed to be someone you feel you can trust, or something.

She is being trained and led by an officer named Yon-Rogg (Jude Law. The character's name is not mentioned until well past the halfway mark of the movie). He keeps on telling her to control her emotions in many different ways as it seems she has some kind of superpower of "photon blasts" she can shoot with her fists. They appear to be enabled by a gadget stuck to the back of her neck.

In the course of a military extraction operation gone bad against their mortal enemies, the shape-shifting Skrulls, she gets captured and her memories are tapped, revealing a life growing up on Earth, constantly being told that she cannot do things, from kiddie go-kart races to obstacle courses in Air Force training. But these dreams also reveal who Mar-Vell (Marvel Comics' first Captain Marvel) is: a Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Benning), a Kree in disguise on Earth as a jet plane researcher/designer for the US Air Force and/or S.H.I.E.L.D.

At this point it is important to start pointing out the differences between the movie and the comics.

Movie adaptations of comic books and comic book superheroes always have to make changes because the media won't tell the same story to the same effect. Some such movies are direct adaptations of specific book (like Watchmen, 400, and Sin City), and others are stories of characters that have had a long history in the comics (Superman, Batman, the X-Men, Etc). This is one in the former group. In such stories, their origins have probably been told multiple times in the comics by different writers and artists and with different focii, emphasis, dialogue, and sometimes even with details being changed. They have had years of adventures, battling against a variety of adversaries, with an ever-changing and evolving cast of background characters. Even their costumes/uniforms have doubtless changed over time.

This means the the producer/director/writer team has to decide what the essence of the character is, how best to portray that on the screen, and how to make the hero relevant for today to draw an audience of both the loyal fans and those in the mainstream who are unfamiliar. This may mean changing elements of the origin story, combining, changing, or replacing certain background characters, changing the superpowers, even adjusting the costume.

Sometimes these changes work, even brilliantly. Making Rogue be the introductory character of the first X-Men movie, for instance, gave the audience a hero whose very power (the uncontrollable ability to absorb someone's memories and  superpowers, if they have any) drove her away from her loved ones, a perfect metaphorical parallel for the experience of homosexuals and other outcasts for which the X-men served as identifiable characters.

Sometimes these changes don't work, or are simply irrelevant, like making Red Skull Italian in the 1989 Captain America movie. I mean, come on, the greatest foe of Captain America in WWII, Italian?

In the comics, Mar-Vell was male, and Yon-Rogg was his superior officer. Yon-Rogg sent him to Earth to spy on humans to determine if they should be wiped out. While it may yet be revealed in a future movie that this was the true reason Mar-Vell was on Earth, there was another aspect to his character that making her female completely swept away: Romance.

Captain Mar-Vell's girlfriend on the Kree ship orbiting Earth was Medic Una, and Colonel Yon-Rogg had eyes for Una. He was also jealous of Mar-Vell for his popularity and success. Thus he wanted to get rid of him. And when Mar-Vell was on Earth, he won the heart of Carol Danvers for rescuing her from various monstrous threats. They made out numerous times, and each time Yon-Rogg would make sure Medic Una saw it, in the hopes that she would forsake him.

Much as I can only imagine someone in the world might want to see Annette Benning as a lesbian cougar getting it on with Brie Larsen, and Jude Law as some sort of jerk who gets turned on by lesbians, or perhaps that the Kree are not so hung up on gender preference as us humans, making Mar-Vell female and eliminating Una in a Marvel superhero movie totally eliminates any romantic angle in the relationship between these three characters. On the other hand, it does serve a certain message of this movie that I will get to later.

TO BE CONTINUED...

SPOILER FREE Marvel's "Captain Marvel" movie review (Carol Danvers)

I enjoyed it.

TWO NEW TRAILERS! ONE FOR SHAZAM! ONE FOR CAPTAIN MARVEL!

So MovieAccessTrailers seems to like to put together videos of "coming attractions," book-ended by recent trailers. This is great because it gives us the opportunity to see a whole bunch of footage of the movies in one convenient video. So without further ado, here is the one for DC's upcoming "SHAZAM!" movie:

In it we see Sivana shooting lightning from his fingers, money flying out of an ATM into the hands of the hero and Freddy Freeman, a new member of the "Shazam Kids," and repeated viewings of what is possibly the coolest shot in any Superhero movie, Billy Batson jumping off a building, saying the word, and, in a flash of lightning, transforming into the hero.

Here is the one for Marvel's "Captain Marvel" movie:

The heading is a bit misleading. We don't see any Minerva-Ronan fight, What we do get is Annette Benning as a maternal figure, a brief look at Korath with laser wings, more Brie Larsen/Samuel L. Jackson banter, a Jude Law/Brie Larsen fight/training sequence, some air force buddy-banter between Lashana Lynch (Monica Rambeau's mom) and Brie Larsen, and footage of Brie Larsen jumping on a train and crashing a plane.

I am going to update this post with some analysis later.

Marvel's Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) Third Trailer review!

Once again, we interrupt the "Blog History of Captain Marvel (all of them!)" to bring you the latest news about an upcoming Captain Marvel movie.

          

So, here is the third (and allegedly final) trailer for Marvel's Captain Marvel movie, a.k.a. "Special Look":

This one fleshes out a bit more of Carol Danvers' relationship with Nick Fury and the background and plot of the movie.

Combined with other evidence, it has been figured out that the leather biker jacket Carol is wearing (and presumable the helmet and motorcycle) were taken from Rob Kozinsky's character. This is clearly a Terminator 2 reference.

Skrulls are eclearly established as shape-shifters, and no doubt is left as to the race of the old lady on the subway.

Carol Danvers can shoot photon blasts out of her hands! (Reference to Monica Rambeau, Marvel's first female and only black Captain Marvel, whose mother appears in the film as a fellow air force jet pilot to Carol Danvers?)

Nick Fury tends bar in a dive in the middle of a western US desert. And what is it about Fury's left eye? We know he loses it later, but here he gets a serious cut over it. Perhaps he should learn to protect it better? Maybe not drop his left when he throws a punch?

That injury apparently happened after he first met her, as that shot of him knocking on the window nd removing his glasses did not include the eyebrow injury.

Jude Law's character (whom I am assuming is Yon-Rogg because the Funko Pop character with the same Kree-Starforce uniform, who happens to be the only male Kree in Starforce with a Caucasian face, is named so) is Carol Danvers' trainer, but there is some tension, as he warns her of reaching beyond her grasp.

Vers (as the Funko Pops reveal will be Carol Danvers' Kree name) has no memory of her past. While this might have been a reference to her split personality in the original comics (Carol Danvers wooed have memory blackouts and Ms. Marvel would not know who she was), but the YouTube breakdowners are all saying that there may well be some sort of false memories planted in her head.

Brie Larsen's performance is given more screen time than the two lines she gat in the first trailer. She has goen from deadpan to deadpan snarky.

One consistent thread through all of these trailers has been Carol Danvers falling and then getting back u p. It is my expectation that this will be the dominant theme of the picture. Carol stumbles. Carol makes mistakes. Carol bites off more than she can shew and fails, fall, collapses. But shew gets back up. Each and every time she rises up again, stronger, wiser, and more determined than ever to lick that challenge.

This is what makes HER a HERO.

Here are some easter egg/breakdown/commentary videos:

...and here are some "reaction" videos:

...and we finish it up with a couple of "reaction mashup" videos...

      

NEW "CAPTAIN MARVEL" TRAILER REVEALS PLOT DETAILS!

So, on Monday Night Football last week, Marvel dropped their new trailer for their movie about Carol Danvers as a superhero, "Captain Marvel." And it is a doozy...for a few reasons.

First off, it shows some pretty impressive special effects. Not just that they are convincing, but they show that some pretty impressive things are happening. There are lightning bolts going into a girl's brain, energy blasts coming out of the hero's hands, explosions, etc. It could be pretty impressive.

But this trailer also reveals what may be the crux of the entire plot (or at least the character arc).

When we last saw Our Hero, she was crash-landing through the roof of a Blockbuster video store in the 1990's, punching out an old lady on a public transit conveyance, having flashbacks to herself in the US Air Force and as a small girl falling down and getting up a lot, getting zapped in the head by energy, shooting energy bolts from her hands on the top of a commuter train, and sharing enigmatic one-liners with Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D...with two whole eyes).

This debunked the fan theory that Carol Danvers was the 22-year-old schizophrenic referred to in the beginning of Dr. Strange (Why a schizophrenic? Because Carol Danvers and Ms. Marvel were a split personality in her the first year or so of the hero's presence in Marvel Comics). But it did seem to confirm that Carol Danvers is going to have been an Air Force pilot, just like she was in the comics.

There were also snatches of shots of Danvers in a helmet and some other alien sets and characters that, combined with a bunch of photographs released to Entertainment Weekly, revealed that she would be part of a Kree superhero commando team called Starforce. Jude Law's character appeared but was unnamed, and IMDB persisted in saying that he would be Captain Mar-Vell/Walter Lawson. Ben Mendelssohn was revealed as playing a Skrull named Talos.

This time, we learned more of her story.

SPOILER ALERT! I AM GOING TO GUESS THE PLOT OF THE MOVIE...OR AT LEAST CAROL DANVERS' CHARACTER ARC!

[UPDATE]
Since I started writing this article, news has reached me that two Funko Pop figures have revealed two character names. A character that appears to be Brie Larsen in the green-and-black uniform and helmet of Carol Danvers is named "Vers" and a white, male, helmeted character in green-and-black (and only Jude Law fits that description so far), is "Yon-Rogg."

Carol Danvers grows up as a tomboy and speed freak, playing baseball and racing go-karts. She joins the US Air Force and becomes friends with a woman who would become the mother of Monica Rambeau. She becomes a test pilot and, somehow, she crash-lands on a planet or a deserted part of Earth and bleeds blue blood through the nose. She also has lost her memory. The Skrull warrior Talos tries to kill or kidnap her, but she is rescued by Kree. They find a fragment of her Air Force dogtag that includes part of her last name, "...vers," and use that as her name. They put her through a Kree "Six Million Kree Imperial Monetary Units Woman" procedure and make her into a leader of their super-powered enforcement squad, Starforce. Yon-Rogg is her mentor, and Ronan is some sort of supreme commander-type.

In the course of an adventure (possibly being pursued by Skrulls), her ship blows up and she crashes to Earth into a Blockbuster Video store in Los Angeles in the mid-1990's. She explores the subway, then starts to head out to the western US desert, where she blows up a storefront and meets Samuel Jacks...I mean S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (who has two eyes). The two of them go to a S.H.I.E.L.D base hidden in a mountain, where Danvers' thumb accesses a room in which are files about her military career (so she must have been a S.H.I.E.L.D agent somewhere in there).

The Kree come to get her and she finds out more about her past. Yon-Rogg reveals the true depth, meaning, and motivation of the Kree imperium. She decides to reject the Kree and fight for Earth.

Some things that I don't know and wonder about are as follows:

Is she a Skrull? The answer is not as obvious as I first thought. The first thought is, of course, "no." But then I got to thinking...you know, we got Skrulls here, and Skrulls are shapeshifters.. and then I thought of a recent Marvel Comics epic crossover storyline...

Secret Invasion was Marvel's big epic company-wide crossover event for 2008. In it, it was revealed that many, many people on Earth were Skrull agents. More than that, many of them were disguised as superheroes, and that they had been altered by Skrull science to be completely undetectable and not even know that they were Skrulls...until they either died, or a certain triggering mechanism was activated (usually a phrase or image).

The one who was disguised as Mar-Vell, however, was a special case. He was one of the first subjects of this process, and they went a little too far on him. The Mar-Vell memories and personality they had imprinted on him were too strong. The triggering mechanism did not work, and even when faced with a Skrull who told him exactly who and what he was, he rejected it. Instead, he embraced his Mar-Vall persona and fought against the Skrulls in space until he died in battle.

Well, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has already adapted the Captain America - Iron Man Civil War epic, company-wide crossover event, why not Secret Invasion, which followed hard upon it?

Where is Mar-Vell? Marvel Comics' first Captain Marvel (as regular readers of this blog should well know) was Captain Mar-Vell of the Kree. His superior officer was Yon-Rogg, who kept on trying to screw him over so he would have a shot at his girlfriend, Medic Una. He was sent to spy on Earth, disguised himself as rocket scientist Dr. Walter Lawson, and became close with Carol Danvers, who was then security chief at Cape Kennedy. Later, an explosion of a Kree device during battle with Yon-Rogg sent Mar-Vell's Kree DNA mingling with Danvers' which later turned her into the superhero Ms. Marvel. Mar-Vell later died of cancer, but returned years later to help save the universe (long story. In fact, much of this is a long story), but he died again, after which Danvers took on the mantle of Captain Marvel herself.

Somehow, this origin story was said to be too much like Green Lantern's. Let's see, what is similar about this? In GL, an alien cop crash lands on Earth, seeks a man without fear, who turns out to be a test pilot. He passes a magical ring to the test pilot before dying, and the test pilot replaces him as space-cop for that section of the galaxy.

So...we have an alien coming to Earth, we have some power being passed to a human with some relation to airplanes, and we have the human becoming a superhero (who, in the case of Carol Danvers, was created to be a feminist icon). That's the depth of the connection I see. Not a lot. In fact, when a human test pilot becomes an enforcement agent for an intergalactic empire and a mentor figure turns out to be a bad guy, I am seeing more Green Lantern, not less.

So, was it decided for Mar-Vell to not exist in the MCU? Then from where does Carol Danvers get the name "Captain Marvel"?

What's with the cat? Well, that's not a cat. In the comics, anyway, it's a flerken, an alien race that looks like cats. They lay eggs. They contain "pocket dimensions" within themselves. And they also can release an amazing set of teeth and tentacles to devour adversaries, should they feel a need to do so.

So why is there one named "Goose" in this trailer?

Well, in the comics, there was this orange cat that Carol Danvers, as Captain Marvel, threw at a magical supervillain named Warren Traveller. But this wasn't as the Captain Marvel we know now, but one in an alternate reality created by Scarlet Witch in the 2005 epic Marvel Comics company-wide crossover event called House of M. The relevant part of this alternate reality is that Carol Danvers, as Captain Marvel, was the greatest superhero in the world.

When she threw the cat at Traveller (a villain who did not exist in the regular Marvel Universe) he tried to escape by casting a time travel spell. He did disappear, but the cat went with him. A few days later, after the the world went back to normal, the cat showed up in Carol's apartment. Traveler materialized seconds later, and chaos ensued. Long story short, Traveler was (eventually) defeated, but Danvers kept the cat and named it "Chewie," short for "Chewbacca," the wookie from Star Wars.

A couple of years later, Carol Danvers, now Captain Marvel again, but this time in the "regular" Marvel Universe, was traveling though space , and met up with the Guardians of the Galaxy (the version on which the recent movies were based). When Rocket Racoon saw the cat, he went apeshit, calling it a "flerken" and screaming "Kill it with fire!" while pursuing it with deadly abandon.

Chewie hid in a closet, and when she was found, she was surrounded by over 100 purple eggs. The eggs soon started to hatch kittens. then it revealed the aforementioned teeth and tentacles, ridding the space ship of a particular menace. Rocket then fell in love with the flerken.

And none of that really answers what this cat named "Goose" is doing in this movie.

(Yes, "Goose" is probably a Top Gun reference, but that movie was about Navy flyers and this one is about Air Force flyers, I just wanted to end this post with the above sentence, because even that bit of info does not fully answer the question. And it is probably not a reference to the motorcycle cop in Mad Max).


Here are some videos that attempt to identify "Easter Eggs" and other clues from this trailer:

CAROL DANVERS/CAPTAIN MARVEL MOVIE REVEALS! Part 2

Some of the things mentioned in this post can be found in these items:
     
Just a quick reminder, this is Part 2 of a blog post based on the following:

First, EW hits us with a brief but juicy cover story

But even more interesting is this: ten photos from the movie

And ScreenRant listed all the "reveals."


In my previous post I talked about how the current Entertainment Weekly article about Brie Larsen and Marvel's upcoming Captain Marvel has revealed, and not revealed, certain key details about Carol Danvers' costume and Jude Law's character.

I don't need to go over every detail of the movie that is revealed by the article and pictures, but I do find certain things particularly interesting....

3. Ben Mendelsohn's role
Pretty much all the initial speculation about the role to be played by Ben Mendelsohn was that he would play Yon-Rogg, Mar-Vell's initial adversary in Marvel Comics. This article, however, reveals that he will be playing a Skrull villain named Talos who disguises himself (through the physical morphing ability shared by all Skrulls) as a supervisory S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. EW released an interveiw with the actor on September 7th in which he waxed enthusiastic about the movie and his delight in playing villainous roles. He also explained why the Skrulls speak Australian. It's amusing. Go read it. I'll wait.

But for those of you who stuck around, I will continue.

I thought Mendelsohn would have made a good choice of Yon-Rogg. Not only does he have a lean, angular, middle-aged face that is within acceptable esthetic parameters of the character as drawn by at least two artists (even if not so much as drawn by two others, and you can see pictures of him here), he has already played a similar role.

I am not too familiar with Mendelsohn's body of work, but I have seen Star Wars: Rogue One more than once. In it Ben plays an imperial fleet officer with a cold heart, an ulterior motive, and a mean streak that can be self destructive when he does not get his way. Sound familiar? Well, if you read the first year or three of Marvel's Captain Marvel starting in 1967 it would. That is pretty much describes Yon-Rogg to a T.

But now it is revealed that he will not be Yon-Rogg, and all the click-baiters who bit on that are going to have to eat their digital hats. Besides, the plot is going to be different that Carol Danvers' origin in the comics, but more on that later.

4. Lashana Lynch's role
A while back I wrote a list of things that ought to be in Marvel's Captain Marvel movie on one of those write-your-own-article quasi-clickbait sites (I have forgotten the name of it and can't find a link to it, dammit!). In it I said that one of those things should be something relating to Monica Rambeau.

For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Rambeau, she was the black, female Captain Marvel. After Mar-Vell died in 1982 graphic novel The Death of Captain Marvel, Marvel Comics needed a new character to keep the "Captain Marvel" trademark alive. Being as the name is not gender-specific, and there weren't many black character around, a black female character was created.

She was originally a New Orleans Harbor Patrol officer facing the "glass ceiling" at her job. An explosion of inter-dimensional energy (of course) gave her the ability to transform into electro-magnetic energy ie: light. She got the name because someone had been calling her "Mon Capitan" (though she was a lieutenant) and after she survived the explosion, a Mexican security guard who had both heard this and witnessed the explosion passed into unconsciousness mumbling "El Capitan es un maravilla..."

She wound up being a strong, smart, courageous, and resourceful superhero, leading the Avengers through many challenging conflicts. In many ways I consider her a better "feminist role model" than Ms. Marvel/Carol Danvers. She carried the mantle of Captain Marvel from 1982-1994.

It would be a crying shame if Marvel did not acknowledge this history and at least do some fan service here, and it looks like they are doing it. One of these ten pictures is Lashana Lynch in the cockpit of a jet fighter plane with her name and "handle" clearly visible. It is Maria "Photon" Rambeau.

"Photon" was the name that Rambeau picked for herself after giving "Captain Marvel" up to Genis-Vell, Mar-Vell's cloned son. This movie is said to be set in the 1990's. If we assume this Maria Rambeau is in her 20's, she would be in her 40's today. It is quite possible that there is a 20-something Monica Rambeau just waiting to make her appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe! It is therefore not too far-fetched to think that  Lahsana Lynch may be playing the mother of another Captain Marvel!

I had more things to say about this article, but the news is starting to get away from, as I have had limited InterWeb time these past few weeks. The Trailer has finally been released and you betchum that I am gonna talk about it!