SEPTEMBER 14, 2018 EW.COM 31story—until Captain Marvel, the part-Kree,
part-human pilot who made her comics
debut back in 1968.
Film fans know her only as the mysterious
person paged by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jack-
son) in the last scene ofAvengers: Infinity War,
and she’ll appear in the still-untitledAvengers
4, presumably to help beat up Thanos. But
before that, she’s got her own story to tell.
And she’s ready to step through that door.
Multiple heroes have held the moni-
ker over the years, but Carol Danvers is
easily the most beloved Captain Marvel,
thanks to her unparalleled abilities and pen-
chant for sarcasm. She’s strong, of course,
but she can also fly and shoot energy blasts
from her hands. In the comics, she took the
name Ms. Marvel after a violent explosion
gave her powers and spliced her DNA with
the original Captain Marvel, the Kree alien
Mar-Vell. Over the years, Ms. Marvel was
written as both an early feminist pioneer
and problematic damsel in distress, but in
2012 she assumed the captain title for good
in a series by writer Kelly Sue DeConnick.
Under DeConnick, Carol grappled with
both her Kree perfectionism and her human
flaws, and it’s that quest for identity that
drew directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
to the character and the film.
“This is not a superhero who’s perfect or
otherworldly or has some godlike connec-
tion,” says Boden, who’s the MCU’s first
female director. “But what makes her special
is just how human she is. She’s funny, but
doesn’t always tell good jokes. And she can be
headstrong and reckless and doesn’t always
make the perfect decisions for herself. But at
her core, she has so much heart and so much
humanity—and all of its messiness.”
To play that messiness, Marvel turned to a
star with a history of heroics both on screen
and off: Larson, who won a Best Actress
Oscar for 2015’sRoom and has emerged as a
feminist advocate and voice during the
#MeToo movement. Marvel first approached( Clockwise from far left )Jude
Law and Larson in training;
Starforce members approach
Ronan the Accuser; Samuel
L. Jackson as young Nick Furythe 28-year-old actress several years ago, and
she was intrigued but hesitant to come
aboard. “I never saw myself doing something
like this, mostly because I like being anony-
mous,” she says. “I like disappearing into
characters, and I always felt like if I was out
in the public eye too much, it potentially lim-
its you in the future.” But ultimately Larson
was swayed to say yes, especially for the
chance to bring such a complex, dramatic
character into a blockbuster franchise.
The role requires emotional heavy lifting,
but there’s physical heavy lifting, too. Marvel
Studios president Kevin Feige confirms that
Captain Marvel is the most powerful hero in
the MCU, and Larson started training nine
months before filming. “I was an introvert
with asthma before this movie,” she says
with a laugh. “I really thought when they
hired me, ‘I am the worst choice for an
action movie.’ And I didn’t know that I had a
little Keanu Reeves in me! Who knew?”The film sidesteps the traditional
origin-story template, and when it begins,
Carol already has her powers. She’s left her
earthly life behind to join Starforce—which
Boden and Fleck describe as the SEAL Team
Six of space—on the Kree planet of Hala. But
she soon finds herself back on Earth with
new questions about her past. Audiences
have met the Kree alien race before, in
Guardians of the Galaxy, and two familiar