CAPTAIN MARVEL

Brie Larson is going intergalactic

Directors Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou

If you thought your excitement levels for Marvel movies had peaked with Black Panther or Avengers: Infinity War, just wait. “This one is very different and very exciting,” enthuses Marvel boss Kevin Feige of Captain Marvel, the studio’s first ever female-titled superhero movie (after 2018’s gender-split Ant-Man And The Wasp), and the first female-titled superhero movie period since 2017’s Wonder Woman. “While it is an origin story of our hero,” Feige elaborates of the film, which arrives one month ahead of Avengers 4, “it is a very different type of origin story.” Ain’t that the truth. For a start, it has Brie Larson (Short Term 12) making her MCU debut as Air Force pilot Carol Danvers who, after an accident, acquires alien abilities that whisk her into space before she crash-lands back on Earth, right through the roof of a Blockbuster Video. Oh, did we neglect to mention it’s also set in 1995?

Yep, Captain Marvel will wind back the clock, set long before Tony Stark proclaimed “I am Iron Man” and before the snap – before, even, Nick Fury got that eyepatch. “Sam Jackson is a very different version of Nick Fury,” teases Feige of the long-serving MCU-er. “[He] does an amazing job.” And Jackson isn’t the only one getting digitally de-aged for the film, with Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson also growing a youthful barnet.

As for Captain Marvel herself? Larson was apparently cast for her ability to bring depth and humanity to a character with awesome cosmic powers (well, she is an Oscar-winner for Room), and she was put through her paces in preparation for her tête-à-tête with Ben Mendelsohn’s shape-shifting Skrull, training for nine months in judo, boxing and wrestling. “That is something that is really exciting to me about this film,” Larson says. “When it’s funny, it’s funny, but also when there’s deep emotional things happening, it’s real.” Excitement levels: stratospheric. JW captain Marvel opens on 8 March.