About the amnesia in Marvel's "Captain Marvel" (Carol Danvers) movie (Part 3 of 4 about the movie)

Having covered the plot of the film and many of its references, symbolisms, and messages, it's time to address just a some specific issues in and about the film.

The Amnesia Thing
From the very beginning of this movie, Vers/Carol Danvers has a memory problem. She cannot remember anything before she was rescued by the Kree from a crash site a few years ago. Overcoming that amnesia was a key plot point, and a motivating factor in her actions the closer she got to her past.

In the comics, Carol Danvers actually had quite a bit of experience with memory failure, so making amnesia a key characteristic of her character in the movie is not completely out of...character.

The Carol/Ms. Marvel Split Personality
The first time she had memory issues was right when Ms. Marvel first appeared in 1977 (Ms. Marvel #1). Here came this new superhero, beating up bank robbers and throwing cars around, but she had no memory of her past or who she was. Then Carol Danvers showed up at the offices of the Daily bugle to start work as the new Editor-in-Chief of Woman magazine. But then at some point she would pass out, and the next thing you knew, Ms. Marvel was beating up the Scorpion or some other super villain was throwing her around by her scarf while she was having existential discussions with that villain about her identity.

It turned out that Carol Danvers had developed a split personality. This was supposed to represent the dichotomy of the female/feminist experience, ad the Modern woman tried to reconcile the desire for equality with the female identity.

But having a super-powerful, schizophrenic, feminist superhero did not go over too well. The letters pages showed a lot of sentiment against this concept. So writer Gerry Conway, despite crediting his wife with a lot of assistance, was replaced by Chris Claremont, who guided the stories to a reconciliation and unification of the two personalities before even the belly cut-out on her costume was patched over (I mean, a feminist icon with her belly button showing? Really?)

There is, then a parallel (if tenuous) between Carol Danvers getting super powers and losing her memory. When she was a Kree hero, "Vers" had no memory of a past life as an Earthling, just like how Ms. Marvel, a product of Kree science and DNA, had no memory of her Earthling self. I wonder if that is where the writers got the idea? I have to track them down and find out.

Rogue
The second time she lost her memory was was when she ran into the mutant Rogue. This was before the character became an X-Man and the action originally happened off-camera (it was later drawn up and seen in a quarterly anthology book and the Ms. Marvel Essential Edition and Mrvel Masterworks Ms. Marvel #2).


Rogue's mutant ability was to absorb people's memories and super powers by physical contact. The trouble is, if she holds the contact too long, the transfer becomes permanent. That's what happened here. This is why in the comics, Rogue can fly, is super-strong, invulnerable, etc.

But this left Carol in a powerless, infantile state. She was rescued by Spider-Woman, who then took her to Professor X (founder of the X-Men) who helped her rebuild her memories. She stayed with the X-Men for a time, joining them in an adventure in outer space, in the course of which, new powers literally exploded out of her.

These powers were drawn from the energy of a "white hole," (a theoretical but thus far undiscovered cosmic thing that is in some way the opposite of a black hole) giving here the ability to use and focus the energy of a star, including space flight and photon blasts. This was much like what we see from Carol Danvers at the climactic space-battle scene in this movie.

These powers were released as a result of experiments done on her by an alien race called the Brood, followed by a moment of extreme physical stress, and thus there is a connection to the movie. We don't know how much was actually done to Carol Danvers when she was picked up by the Kree, but she does have an inhibitor device on her neck and she is told to keep things under control. It is when she gets rid of the inhibitor and is plummeting to the Earth that her full power potential is finally awakened.

The Psyche-Magnitron Tumor
As we should all know by now, the original source of Carol's super powers was Kree DNA m passed from Mar-Vell to her when he tried to protect her from the radiation of an exploding Kree machine known as a psyche-magnitron (this origin story has been retcon-tweaked to add the fact that her mother was Kree, but that was not published until the eve of the movie's release, sand is irrelevant to this point).

Before production started for the movie, there was a storyline in the Captain Marvel comic book in which it was discovered that there was a fragment of the machine in her brain, creating a tumor that grew as she used her powers. Unfortunately, villains from her past kept popping up, forcing her to use her powers more often. It turned out that this was a plot by Yon-Rogg, Mar-Vell's old rival in the Kree military, who had been disgraced and defeated by Mar-Vel in the incident that led to the aforementioned explosion.

In the climax of the story, Captain Marvel saved the day by flying up to stop a Kree city from landing on New York. The effort she expended caused the tumor to rupture, damaging the memory centers of her brain. This gave her complete amnesia again.

By this time, Carol Danvers had gained the friendship of Kit Renner, the daughter of her neighbor, who had the nickname of "Lieutenant Trouble." She helped her gain back her memories by sharing with her the story of her life, which she had written and drawn into a book herself.

In the Captain Marvel movie, "Lieutenant Trouble" was Monica Rambeau, the young daughter of Maria "Photon" Rambeau, Carol Danver's best friend and fellow fighter pilot. She had been very close with Carol before the event in which she lost her memory and was taken in by the Kree, and helped her in accomplishing the mission she set for herself to climax the movie. this is consistent with the relationship between Carol and "Lt. Trouble" in the comics.



Coming soon:
Thoughts on the character of MAr-Vell in the Comics and the movie, and about the female and feminist issues.
ALSO: we will resume our Blog History of the many Captain Marvels with SHAZAM! The New Beginning!

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...

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 in ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY! (real news, part 1)

Work referenced in this post can be found here...

      

Once again, we interrupt the "Blog History of the many Captain Marvels" to cover some big Captain Marvel news that just dropped.

On September 4-5, there were some kernels of hints that there would be something major regarding Marvel's Captain Marvel (see how I did that? Kernel, major, captain?) released. Many people speculated that, after DC put out their SHAZAM! trailer, then for a Captain Marvel thing from Marvel we would see a big, glorious, exciting Captain Marvel trailer. And we all woke up the next day to find out that this big, glorious, exciting trailer...

...was NOT released! There was so much disappointment on the Interwebs that I could make a whole "clickbait roundup"(TM) about it. But I would rather not waste my valuable writing time on that.

Instead, let's talk about what was released:

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."

I am so certain that the clickbait network has been working overtime on this. ScreenRant alone has over a half-dozen articles about the movie pop up just since the EW reveal, and I am not going to spend my time logging them all. Instead, here are my thoughts:

1. THE COSTUME
From the moment the movie was announced and "casting rumors" started flying fan art was showing interpretations of the current Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel outfit in faked pictures of potential actresses like Katie Sackoff, Emily Blunt,  and Ronda Rousey. Once Brie Larsen was announced, there were bunches of pictures of her in versions of the suit, some of which got repeated over and over in article and post after clickbait article and post whenever there was an announcement about the movie.

 That suit, in the comics, is blue and red. When the first set pictures of Brie Larsen in costume came out, she was wearing a suit of black and green. The location and design of the colors were pretty close to what we see in the comics (black for blue, green for red), but speculation abounded as to why this was what we were seeing.

"It's going to be colored in post!" was one cry. "That's the green of a greenscreen!" Others with more knowledge of the comics pointed out that Captain Mar-Vell, Marvel Comics' first Captain Marvel and the one through whom Carol Danvers got her powers, originally had a white and green suit with a similar color distribution. this may have been a tribute to that, some said. At least one person pointed out that the uniform of S.W.O.R.D., an international anti-alien threat defense organization, uses black, white, and green.

The truth is out now. This is the uniform of "Starforce," a Kree strike team, of which Carol Danvers is a leading member, as is the character played by Jude Law (more on that later). But Danvers will also be seen in a blue and red version of the costume. This may have something to do with something that happens in the story (more on that later, also). In any event, the green on the shoulders, gloves, boots, and belt are in keeping with Roy Thomas' color scheme of Gene Colan's original design. We may see a "battle helmet" also, if Samuel L. Jackson's T-shirt is to be believed.

It does seem, however, that they are dispensing with the rank-specific colors and insignia as established in the comics.

2. JUDE LAW'S CHARACTER
Well, everyone from IMDB on down was convinced that Jude Law would be playing Captain Mar-Vell/Walter Lawson. I even wrote a blog post about this. It turns  out that, according to this EW exclusive, what we know is that he will be a commander, and he and Carol Danvers will be working together in the Kree Starforce. The term "mentor" has been bandied about to describe his relationship with Danvers ever since the original "in talks with..." announcements were made regarding Law's casting in the movie. We see pictures of him both in what I presume is a Kree battlesuit or something (the black and green suit we have seen on Brie Larsen) and in a more casual, short-sleeved affair. We also see him with short black hair and his characteristic, pronounced, widow's peak.

In the comics, Mar-Vell did not work with Carol Danvers much after she became the superhero Ms. Marvel, and Danvers never, ever worked for the Kree. Mar-Vell started with white hair, which turned blonde later (when he gained "cosmic awareness"). His rank in the Kree military in the original Marvel Comics was "captain," not "commander. All these things are different from what we are seeing in the movie so far.

However...

We have been told that Carol Danvers' origin as Captain Marvel will be different from the comics (more on that later). Furthermore, in Marvel's "Ultimates" universe, the corresponding character to Mar-Vell - whose name is spelled Mahr Vehl - has black hair, and his rank in the Kree military is "Pluskommander," which he describes as equivalent to a captain. In addition, his human disguise/alter ego is named Phillip Lawson.

The Ultimates universe has been used as source for parts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe already, most notably, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury). Bizarrely, Mahr Vehl/Philip Lawson was the Captain Marvel that appeared in the animated series Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, while Carol Danvers became Ms. Marvel with the 1970's red & blue costume and scarf, and Phyla-Vell (Mar-Vell's cloned daughter from the main Marvel universe, whose origin is tied in with the destruction and re-creation of the universe with the help of Genis-Vell, Mar-Vell's post-mortem cloned son) even makes an appearance, wearing quantum bands (I don't have time to explain all that).

So it is not impossible that Jude Law is portraying Mahr Vehl rather than Mar-Vell. Of course, we don't see any pictures of him disguised as an Earth person, so we don't know if Walter or Philip Lawson will be making an appearance.

Another theory about Jude Law's character is that he will be playing Colonel Yon-Rogg. This is an interesting idea.

Yon-Rogg was Captain Mar-Vell's superior. He was jealous of Mar-Vell's standing as a loyal, reliable soldier who had a great future ahead of him, and despised his kind-heartedness. He was also in  love with Medic Una, Mar-Vell's girlfriend (who does not yet seem to be appearing in this movie). So he sent Mar-Vell alone on the  highly dangerous mission of spying on humanity to determine if they should be wiped out. He would repeatedly put perils in front of Mar-Vell that he thought would either make the captain look bad or kill him, and hated him even more every time Mar-Vell came out smelling like a rose.

In the end Yon-Rogg's jealousy made him self-destructive. He destroyed his career and nearly killed himself in his single-mind pursuit of Mar-Vell's destruction. The climax of his pursuit was the explosion of the Kree psyche-magnitron machine which led to Carol Danvers getting superpowers (that emerged eight years later, real-time when she became Ms. Marvel. In a recent Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers) comic he resurfaced and nearly succeeded in capturing the Earth to give it to the Kree Empire, but by this time the Kree had no more interest in Earth, and besides, Yon-Rogg's authorization had long since expired. He was cut off by the Kree and defeated by Danvers/Marvel and her superhero friends.

Yon-Rogg had been drawn several different ways by several different artists. Sometimes he had brown hair, sometimes black, and Gil Kane even gave him a little villain's mustache! Sometimes he had a widow's peak. This all makes Jude Law look  like he might be a fit for that role. Though -Rogg and Danvers  only interacted once in the comics, since we are already breaking away from the comic continuity with Danvers being part of Starforce, why can't Yon-Rogg be the commander that eventually turns against her?

  So is the hair the over/under on which character Jude Law is playing? Remember, there has been some "blackening " of characters in superhero movies and TV shows lately. Aquaman and the Flash, you may recall, each have black hair in the latest movies, but in the comics were notably, and vibrantly, blonde! Could this be the latest example of this dark trend?

There is a lot more to talk about of what Entertainment Weekly has shared with us. What do you think of what's been mentioned so far?

TO BE CONTINUED...

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Complete, Up-To-Date cast list for Marvel's "Captain Marvel" movie

As my busy life and propensity for verbosity does not allow me to be Johnny-on-the-spot with these posts about late-breaking developments, I am just going to throw this one up here now with minimal commentary and ...maybe...get back to it later.

But for the record, CinemaBlend has collected all the confirmed "heroes and villains" for the upcoming "Captain Marvel" movie from Marvel Studios.

A quick scan confirms the usual, Carol Danvers, Mar-Vell, Nick Fury. It does add a wrinkle I had not considered, the black female character played by Lashana Lynch may be a mother, and her daughter may turn out to be Monica Rambeau, which I think would be a nice touch.

Ben Mendelsohn may or may not be playing Yon-Rogg, and though that character has been drawn several different ways, I think his face would fit. I also think his performance in "Star Wars: Rogue One" had a bit of what I imagine the Kree colonel's character to be.

Flashback to Carol Danvers' youth might reveal McKenna Grace as her young self, which could be nice. CArol Danvers' character is no Superman (at least in the classic, Silver-to-modern age,  Christopher Reeve version). Rather than being a person grown up with a wholesome, supportive family and easily ensconced in a respectable, journalism job, she rebelled against her MCP father and joined the Air Force. Her job in journalism was stormy and tempestuous, as her boss objected to her vision of the magazine for which she was hired as editor in chief, and she is constantly striving to push beyond her abilities as a superhero, and what people expect of her as a person, and as a female person. Showing some of that backstory could set up some interesting, non-traditional struggles for a superhero.

I like that Minn-Erva (being played by Gemma Chan), Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace), and Mar-Vell (Jude Law) are all in the movie. That indicates we are going to have some real Kree intrigue, and that is what the first couple of years of Marvel's first Captain Marvel was all about.

I suppose I can go into  more detail later about what all this means, but I do want to point out this picture which I presume is from that recent gorilla movie, that illustrated Brie Larsen's entry in the article:

Note the shirt, open but knotted, indicating a casual sexiness, yet practicality. Carol Danvers wore a shirt like that once. I will scan some pictures from that issue, post it, and talk about it later.

Marvel's First Marvel

History is undecided on what happened next. In Les Daniels' official history of the Marvel Universe, Stan Lee says that he looked around, decided that it would be only right for Marvel Comics to have a Captain Marvel, and engaged in complex legal negotiations to get the name. Roy Thomas, who was assigned writing duties for the character after Stan Lee's first story, states both in articles in Alter Ego magazine and the Marvel Masterworks edition reprinting the first Marvel Comics Captain Marvel stories that it was Martin Goodman's idea, that he had to “protect his investment in the name”...Marvel. One thing is for sure, it was a perfectly reasonable business decision to grab a hold of the name Captain Marvel when your company is called Marvel Comics. There is no end of stories of people assuming that Captain Marvel was a product of Marvel Comics simply by word association alone. In any event, in 1967, Stan the Man created a new Captain Marvel. This one was an alien from the intergalactic Kree empire. He was a Captain in the military and his name was Mar-Vell. He was assigned to spy on Earth and determine if the human race was a threat to the Kree, and thus should be wiped out.

He took the guise of a mild-mannered yet mysterious rocket scientist named Walter Lawson and infiltrated the Cape, a US military space exploration base (they never actually called it Cape Kennedy, which was the name of the US space base at the time, but some years later, in flashbacks, it was referred to as Cape Canaveral). There he earned the suspicions of Carol Danvers, the beautiful female head of security. As he worked with and observed the humans, he began to feel sympathy for them and resisted opportunities to kill them, even fighting to defend them from various threats such as robots and monsters from various sources that seemed to make a habit of attacking the base (using the superior strength of his alien physiology and the superior technology and weaponry of his Kree space suit). In the course of saving the base from these threats, his name, Captain Mar-Vell, came to be pronounced by humans as “Captain Marvel.”

There was also a complex romantic polyhedron going on. Mar-Vell was in love with a medic, Una, on board the Kree ship that was orbiting Earth. She loved him too, but Colonel Yon-Rogg had lustful designs on her, and had a seething hatred for Mar-Vell as a result. Meanwhile on Earth, Carol Danvers was falling for Captain Marvel, who was beginning to develop affection for her, while she was ever suspicious of Walter Lawson, who kept on disappearing at remarkably convenient moments and around whom strange, unexplainable things happened.

Put all this together, and you had a character who was in many ways, more like Superman than the original Captain Marvel. An alien from outer space with powers and abilities beyond those of mortal men, who disguises himself as a mild-mannered person, then slips away to change into his heroic costume and save the world. He had a hyphenated name that ended with “el.” He even had a Lois Lane parallel in Carol Danvers, who incidentally has the same last name as Superman's cousin, Linda Danvers, Supergirl (Roy Thomas, who created her, insists was an accident).

Stan Lee likes to justifiably boast about the seemingly magical success about every one of his creations from the 1960's. However, in his autobiography, there is not a single mention of Captain Marvel. Whether he forgot, or was embarrassed, the fact is that his Captain Marvel did not sell as well as most everything else he created in the 1960's. Gene Colan, who designed the uniform and drew the first few issues, said it was the worst superhero costume ever.

Captain Mar-Vell first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics' compendium book, Marvel Super-Heroes, and after two issues, he got his own book. However, after a year of repetitive stories, there began a series of plot devices and shark-jumping changes galore. Unfortunately, none of these changes really were able to grab a loyal audience.

Both his love-interest, Una, and rival, Yon-Rogg were killed, he was used as a pawn in Kree politics, got swept up in racial conflict within the Kree Empire, then ultimately was given new powers, a new costume, and then unceremoniously dumped into the Negative Zone. Then Rick Jones, Marvel Comics' official all-purpose sidekick (yes the kid who got Bruce Banner turned into the Hulk), found a pair of golden bracelets called “nega-bands,” and by banging them together, found he could trade places with Captain Mar-Vell in the Negative Zone. This was a new take on the Billy Batson/Captain Marvel transformation. This time, instead of it being a strict transformation, where the alter-ego was subsumed by the superhero and vice versa, the alter egos were actually able to communicate with each other, essentially living in each other's heads.

But the biggest change for Captain Mar-Vell was when, in 1973, Jim Starlin wrote and drew a storyline that had Mar-Vell being chosen by the cosmic entity Eon to be the Protector of the Universe and granted Cosmic Awareness (the ability to be aware of absolutely everything in the universe, past, present, and future. A handy ability, and one that can give great serenity to one who has the mental and emotional stability to handle it). This turned the alien warrior into a cosmic space hippie, very much a product of his times.

Despite this, and a very concerted effort by Marvel Comics to identify this Captain Marvel as one of the front-line heroes in its universe, the title was eventually canceled in 1979.

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