The spectacular trailer for Marvel’s first female-fronted superhero movie, Captain Marvel, premiered this week, showcasing the titular character (Brie Larson) in a range of insane situations often involving extremely colourful lighting.
Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan, Ms Marvel aka Carol Danvers first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1977.
Her character is a former colonel in the US Air Force, who developed a suite of supernatural powers after her DNA was fused with alien DNA. These include super strength, the ability to fly and the ability to absorb any kind of energy and release it as blasts from her hands.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film is set in the 1990s and involves Marvel being caught in an intergalactic battle between two alien worlds.
It also, the trailer revealed, involves a kind of amnesia-like subplot whereby the protagonist isn’t certain of her memories or who she is.
The trailer contains a number of scenes that have got the superhero world talking. Here are three big moments from it.
1) Captain Marvel falls through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store
A significant chunk of the audience hankering to see Captain Marvel might not even know what Blockbuster Video is. So gather around the camp fire kids, and we’ll tell you a tale of ancient times. Of a crazy world without Netflix, where you had to actually leave the house to rent a movie.
We see Captain Marvel plummeting through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store, and onto the floor inside after falling from an exploding escape pod. Nice entrance! It is fair to assume the film will contain other references to the 90s. Will these include Reebok Pumps and Street Fight II? Only time will tell.
2) Captain Marvel punches an old lady in the face
OK so this probably should have been number one, but we didn’t want to start with the best and have nowhere to go. In what is easily the most showstopping moment in the trailer, Captain Marvel walks up to a kind-looking old lady and totally decks her.
It’s pretty funny, but we can safely assume she is doing this for a good reason. The old lady is a Skrull. They belong to an alien race with the power to shapeshift.
3) The mysterious villain possibly revealed in the final few seconds
“Revealed” might be too strong a word given the trailer doesn’t reveal the identity of the person whose hand is shown in one of the final shots. But it does reveal that there is a reveal yet to be revealed. Keeping up?
In the most puzzling part of the trailer, we see Carol preparing to face off against a person wearing a red glove and blue uniform. We don’t see her or his face and nobody seems to know where that uniform might be from.
4) The sensationally bright and trippy money shot right at the end
Any description we write of this isn’t going to do it justice. So let us all pause for a moment and bask in the awesomeness of the trailer’s final shot, which shows Carol powering up and her eyes turning into glowing golden lights.
Captain Marvel will arrive in cinemas in March 2019.
