There’s no questioning that for all of the company’s commitment to diverse characters and stories, Marvel has really been dragging their feat on their first female-lead superhero movie. Sure, they introduced the first female superhero of the genre’s modern era way back in Iron Man 2 with Black Widow, but despite constant and vocal fan demand for a solo movie, she has sadly played second fiddle to her male counterparts on the Avengers.
She was a relatively bit player in Phase 1, a supporting character in Phase 2 and a quickly abandoned love interest going into Phase 3. Scarlett Johansson is a fantastic actress with real acting chops. The character is a rich and nuanced woman with many avenues left to explore. And yet, despite all this, DC beat Marvel to the distinction of the first female-led superhero movie in this decade-long superhero cycle and even Marvel themselves went with someone else for their first.
That someone else is Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel. The company’s namesake character is an understandable place for them to start. After all, her name alone makes her a perfectly on-brand prop for the company. And, additionally, she is just as excellent a character as Black Widow, with her recent books’ writing being some of the best in the business at present. She’s popular, increasing iconic and an all-around great character to diversify the studio’s much more homogenous cinematic universe.
Fans of the character, however, were treated to an unexpected surprise this week when the first tentative set photos of the film’s underway production got loose to the public. Rather than her iconic, modern costume — red and blue, with a flowing red sash and a golden star on her chest — the good captain is sporting a blast from Marvel’s antiquated past.
Originally in the comics, Captain Marvel was an alien soldier named Mar-Vell, whose generic powerset made him basically another Superman clone with a far less appealing aesthetic. Carol Danvers, the woman that people today think of when they think of Captain Marvel, became superhuman when Mar-Vell rescued her from an explosion and the resulting blast transferred some of Mar-Vell’s powers into her Human body. He then left — off to wherever unpopular comic book characters retire to — and Danvers took up the mantle to much greater fanfare.
The thing is, though, that the costume that Carol Danvers wears in the movie is based off of Mar-Vell’s original design: a predominantly green space suit-like getup. And while Captain Marvel will doubtless get her iconic Americana-colored costume before too long (perhaps even by the end of her origin movie), the uniquely old-fashioned costume that she’s wearing in her debut has begged a lot of questions from fans looking for clues about the movie at large.
The most obvious answer is that its an alien military uniform. The Kree — the alien species that Mar-Vell belongs too and who acts as a common space-faring enemy in the comics — have frequently sported similar attire throughout their publication history. And depending on how they decide to tell her origin — either following the traditional Mar-Vell power transfer or updating it to something more fitting a modern audience — that could play a major role in how she became the flagship (or at least titular) character of the comic publisher.
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