Captain Marvel could have been a better prequel

Captain Marvel is very funny. Carol Danvers seamlessly integrates into the Marvel film universe as a playful and awesome superhero with whom it's good to have a good time while battling the bad guys – and all on a retro soundtrack of 1990s.

If anything bothers me, however, it's that the movie does not do enough with the fact that it's a prequel. The context of the 90s, well before the events that are currently taking place in the Marvel film universe, makes things difficult for filmmakers because, as with all previous films, we know roughly how things will unfold. .

But at the same time, it gives filmmakers an extra exciting dimension to play: the audience's expectations. We know or some characters end – but we do not know How they end there. We know Nick Fury from previous movies as a tough guy with a cache for the eyes. Enter the 1990s and it is completely intact eyes. So how did he lose that eye? Captain Marvel answers this question in a fun and extremely unexpected way.

Unfortunately, that's about it all. Apart from the question of Fury's Eye, the nineties decor is essentially a nostalgic setting that consists of making jokes about Blockbuster and classic hymns of girls' power like Hole's Celebrity Skin and No Doubt's Just A Girl. Which is great, especially for viewers of a certain age.

As for the characters and continuity of the Marvel Universe, Captain Marvel's previous setting looks like a missed opportunity.

I've already explained that prequels are inherently garbage, unless they follow a golden rule: they must tell us something we do not already know. A really effective prequel should change our perception of the movies, books or television series that precede (or follow). If that does not give a new twist to the familiar, what's the point?

Captain Marvel, unfortunately, just gives us a lot of things we already know.

Take Nick Fury, as played by Samuel L Jackson, with the help of some really great digital splitting effects. There are decades of background in the comics about Fury's adventures as a soldier and spy, but we have not seen anything like it on the big screen. How did he become a member of the super espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D. What sacrifice did it form in the tough guy we know?

Captain Marvel does not tell us.

When he first rode on Carol, I thought, woah, is he a cop? For a moment, I was really intrigued. But no – at the beginning of the film, Fury is an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. At the end of the film, he is still a SHIELD agent. Yes, there is an interesting little detail related to Avengers movies, but a guy who writes a memo is not a character bow. Nothing about Fury changes during the movie.

Except perhaps his perception of depth.

Imagine if the filmmakers had applied the same mischievous subversion of expectations to the Fury character as in their eyes. And if he was still a soldier when we meet him? And if he was a warmongering warmonger, whose meeting with Carol Danvers helped him understand that life does not boil down to earthly quarrels? It would have been interesting.

There is a nice use of the background in the movie. Instead of a story of linear origin, Carol's bow recalls past events that shaped it, what you expect from a precedent. We see her become a pilot, make a difficult jump in training in the air force, crush a kart. Fly, jump and run – it literally goes higher, farther and faster.

It's not just Fury that's basically the same we already know. The Tessaract, Korath, Agent Coulson and Ronan the accuser of Guardians of the Galaxy show, and nothing changes for any of them either. It's just a cute reference for fans, so it could have been so satisfying to see their encounter with Carol Danvers change their lives.

And if the defeat of Ronan had put him on the path of his ugly GotG? What if filmmakers put as much effort into Coulson's characters as his CG de-age? And if it had been, I do not know, a corrupt alcoholic LA policeman reluctantly investigating a burglary in a blockbuster, to be profoundly transformed by the Coulson experiment that we know of?

Reading in progress:
Look at this:

Powerful women of the Marvel Universe

3:04

Or if – go with me on this – and if, when Coulson was replaced by a Skrull, no one noticed? And if the agent Coulson that we have seen through all the Marvel Movies and agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show, the guy we know and love for 10 years, was a Skrull all along?

Mind. Breath.

OK, it's a pretty lonely idea. But you see what I say. The pre-setting of Captain Marvel has created an opportunity to hit us with wild and unexpected twists, like Tony Stark who dropped his secret identity in the very first Iron Man movie, the Mandarin's identity in Iron Man 3 , or even the big rebound in Captain Marvel reworking decades of comic continuity.

Maybe Fury and Coulson's bows of character could undermine the attention to Carol's trip, which I greatly appreciated. But I always feel that the opportunity here was to show another aspect of the Marvel Universe. I love Elastica and Garbage as much as the next child of the 90s, but a prequel should be more than an excuse for retro tunes.