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Carol Danvers has never had the purest story of comics – even the last retcon is still a little complicated. It is therefore not surprising that Captain MarvelThe attempt to give him a new one is also a little muddy. But the way he honors an aspect of comic strip history is one of the best choices in the film.
The act of opening of Captain Marvel is as fragmented as the memory of our titular hero. When we go through the current events between the stars and in Carol's mind, we have the impression of seeing a life she does not remember having lived. A full of Street Fighter II matches, karaoke nights and a mysterious female scientist played by Annette Bening – a face that will matter most to Carol, because it's the one that was worn when she psychically connects to the Kree's Supreme Intelligence on Hala.
Bening's character is revealed twice as the film advances – first as Dr. Wendy Lawson, senior scientist on a variable speed motor tested by Carol and Maria Rambeau, real identity. She is not a human scientist, but a Kree.
And she's calling Mar-Vell.
In comics, this is of course the true name of the original Marvel captain, the soldier sent to spy on the Earth before he finally decides to defend her from his own people. The film also does him honor in another moment. When, asking Monica Rambeau (who was in fact the direct replacement of Mar-Vell in the comics after her death), Carol puts on the costume briefly. the green and white of the very first Mar-Vell costume.
But it is in the character of Bening that Captain Marvel best tribute, honoring a heritage inherited from Carol's long history in comics over the years and multiple heroic coats, while updating her in an intelligent and clean manner. And that's not to change Mar-Vell from man to woman, but that's the important thing – even if it at least removes the idea that Carol inherits her powers from the man who interested her with love – it's really to make Mar-Vell a scientist rather than a soldier obeying orders.
In the movie, Mar-Vell is on Earth not in the name of his own people, but the survivors of the Skrull race; she is studying ways to help them find a new home away from the threat of the Kree themselves. It is a mission of mercy, a mission to end the war rather than perpetuate it. In comics, Mar-Vell is initially on Earth as an antagonistic force, a playground in the larger conflicts of his home world.
Carol, acting as protector of Dr. Lawson when the Kree call to arrest one of their own, inherits this mission of mercy to the death of Mar-Vell. But it's not the mission that makes her a heroine, and in the film, it's not Mar-Vell who gives Carol her power – it's a destiny that She claims to be drawn from a heroic action, choosing to run the Mar-Vell engine before Yon-Rogg steals it. do not really an accident such as it was originally with the Magnetron Psyche in comics (Carol thought presumably that she would die and take Yon-Rogg with her, without turning into a flying cosmic nuke that sometimes has a fakehawk), or the awakening of a lineage she had never known before, as is the case now.
Carol is at the center of her own story – and it's the one that really works through the way that Captain Marvel re-imagine Mar-Vell and his role in this legacy. That it also gives us the joy of Annette Bening dancing in a jacket is an added bonus.
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