Captain Marvel Trailer

Entry posted by Ta-metru_defender September 23, 2018

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Essays, Not Rants! 339: Captain Marvel Trailer

It’s happening.

It’s finally freaking happening.

On Tuesday we finally got a

for Captain Marvel, a movie I’ve been looking forwards to quite incessantly since it was announced way back in 2014. And now, at long last, we’re getting a glimpse of the movie itself and what all it’s gonna be.

Needless to say, I’m somehow even more excited.

Trailers are tricky beasts. Sometimes they give away the entire darn plot. Sometimes they misdirect you all over the place. Sometimes they’re better than the actual movie (hello, Man of Steel). A lot of the time, though, they give you an idea of the theme of the movie. You’re not gonna be given a plot breakdown, but rather the Central Question of the movie gets raised — or at least hinted at — within the trailer. Trailers for the original Avengers asked if they would be able to work together as a team, the trailer for Sorry To Bother You immediately brought to the forefront questions of race and class that the movie went on to tackle.

The trailer for Captain Marvel hints at what the movie’s gonna be about: identity. It’s heavily implied in the trailer that Carol’s an amnesiac, who doesn’t remember growing up on Earth before becoming a part of Starforce. She crash lands (in a Blockbuster of all places) and, presumably, plot happens. Given the flashbacks in the trailer, it stands to reason that a major part of the movie is Carol rediscovering her roots and coming to terms with the earthling side of her.

In the movie — and this is all speculation — we might end up seeing Carol, a renegade soldier as Nick Fury calls her, creating an identity for herself outside of the one she’s had in Starforce. Take the whole space ranger thing away from her; what’s left? Who is Carol Danvers? If Captain Marvel is gonna be an origins story (and it might have to be), a far more refreshing narrative is how Carol became Captain Marvel, rather than how she got her powers. As the trailer asks "what makes a(her)o."

A Carol who doesn’t remember her past is an interesting starting point. In the comics, Carol sacrificed much of her memory to defeat Yon-Rogg as part of “The Enemy Within.” She pushes herself further than she’s ever gone before in an effort to sever the psychic connection between them and, in doing so, defeat the villain. Much of Captain Marvel’s adventures after that involves a lot of her trying to figure out who she is, some of it through friends helping her rediscover her identity, some of it through her friends, some of it through her own self-determination.

I realize so much of this blog post is pure conjecture. All we’ve gotten has been this two minute trailer that’s been precious light on our details. Sure, there’s been vague hints about the movie’s story in the press and all, but there’s some room for guesses about the theming for narrative. And if it’s a story about identity, which it sure seems like, they made a really good choice. Because at the end of the day, Carol is the sort of person who keeps picking herself up again and again. Can’t wait to watch her discover she is and has always been that person.