the Marvel Studios logo. And second, his customary
cameo. This time, he plays himself, poring over the
script of Kevin Smith’s Mallrats (in which he played
himself) on a bus. “We were thinking, ‘What would
Stan Lee be doing in 1995?’” says Boden. “‘Wait,
Mallrats came out!’” Carol smiling at the man who
indirectly created her was a late addition. “Stan
passed away while we were in post, and we ended
up going back and shooting the smile,” says Fleck.OW-AP
The same train sequence sees Carol suss out that
an old lady is an evil Skrull — by punching her. “That
was one of the first ideas we had,” says Boden.
“I remember writing, ‘It’s a beautiful, bizarre sight.’”
To make it even more so, the stunt doubles are
sisters the Moneymakers, Heidi and Renae. At one
point, the directing duo mused on revealing that the
Skrull was actually Stan Lee. “That might have been
too big a role for him to play,” admits Boden.FICTION PULPED
A movie set in the mid-’90s. Two guys are in a car.
Both wearing black suits, white shirts, black ties.Samuel L. Jackson is driving. You’d be forgiven
for thinking that is the MCU’s most overt nod to
Pulp Fiction since Nick Fury’s fake grave bore
the Ezekiel 25:17 quote in Captain America: The
Winter Soldier. You’d also be wrong. “That never
occurred to us,” laughs Ryan Fleck. “Maybe,
subconsciously; I saw that movie so many times.”HIGHER, FURTHER, FASTER
Not many catchphrases are uttered just once.
But Carol’s “higher, further, faster, baby”, said
to her BFF Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) as
they walk towards their planes, has caught on,
forming the basis of one of the taglines. It comes
from the Kelly Sue DeConnick run of the comics,
key to the movie. “I think we added ‘baby’,”
laughs Fleck. “But we latched onto that when
reading the comics. For us, it was like in Top Gun.
‘I feel the need. The need for speed.’”TALOS DRINKS YOUR MILKSHAKE
For much of the movie, Ben Mendelsohn’s Skrull
leader, Talos, has been framed as the villain of
the piece. Then he turns up slurping a milkshakeCaptain
Marvel
DIRECTORS ANNA BODEN and Ryan Fleck weren’t
kidding when they used the phrase “higher,
further, faster, baby” for Captain Marvel. The first
Marvel Studios movie to feature a solo female
(Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers) in the lead role may
have taken its sweet time to get here, but it made
a huge impact, taking in over $1 billion. Here,
Boden and Fleck talk us through its key moments.
STANNING LEE
The first MCU movie to come out after Stan Lee’s
death pays tribute to Marvel’s founding father in
two delightful ways. First, the Stan-centric tweak to
A deep dive into the
must-see moments from
the month’s big releaseTHE
VIEWING
GUIDE
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SPOILER
WARNING