Kevin Feige has revealed the first details about Captain Marvel so let's theorize.
Warning, if you may not want to know too much about the Captain Marvel movie before seeing it, or you don’t want to speculate about phase 4, now is your chance to turn back. Also, spoilers for Secret Invasion and Dark Reign comic book plots.
Still here? Let’s go.
Let’s face it, even until today, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is MCU’s best movie and we all know it. They tried to recreate some of success with Captain America: Civil War, but it only partially worked. Even at the box office, the movie had all of the Avengers in it, but it didn’t make Avengers money.
I am not saying that Captain Marvel will replace Captain America in the MCU, it is very likely that Falcon or Winter Soldier will pick up his mantel if he dies in Infinity War. I am saying that the MCU has another chance of telling a political story, this time, spiced up with aliens, and maybe spread across several movies.
Captain Marvel the Movie
The script for Captain Marvel is still being written. We know that it is being written by Meg LeFauve (Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur) and Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy), and that Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck will be directing. Kevin Feige also confirmed that the movie will have two eyed Nick Fury and the Skrulls.
The Skrulls are a bit of a surprise as it was believed that Marvel doesn’t own the rights to them, but James Gunn clarified on Twitter that “Some specific Skrulls are at Fox. But the Skrulls as a whole are co-owned”. I guess that Marvel negotiated Skrulls just as Fox negotiated X-Men TV shows.
Now, Captain Marvel will be an ordinary origin movie for Carol Danvers, in which we’ll probably get to see the Kree-Skrull war in the background. She will probably get a relatively straight forward adaptation for one of her origin stories, her strict father, going to college and the army, and the air force, probably minus the original Kree Captain Marvel (or I really hope so). The air force and S.H.I.E.L.D will somehow get involved in the Kree-Srull war and will be forced to cooperate. I am really hoping to see Black Widow in this movie, I know that in terms of comic books plots it doesn’t make too much sense, but the Marvel movie lover in me wants to see this happen. I guess that Carol Danvers will get her powers by accident in a similar and yet different way than she did in the comics. As she has Kree powers, she and earth will take their side and that will leave the Skrulls very unhappy with earth. I am not sure that the MCU is ready to describe the destruction of an entire planet. So they will probably leave it at unhappy.
Everyone are Talking About Secret Invasion and No one is Talking about Dark Reign
The Skrulls are a race of shape shifting aliens, as you can imagine, that can cause a lot of problems. But, they also managed to replicate some superpowers, though not exactly. Now, the MCU does everything differently than the comics. But, I assume that in one of Captain Marvel’s post credit scenes we will finding out that one of the most important characters in MCU is a Skrull, some like Nick Fury or even Iron Man himself (or a different character at a different stage of the MCU). Captain Marvel is set in the 90s, before even the first Iron Man movie, the implications of the Captain Marvel movie can be very extensive. Then one of the phase 4 movies can be a version of Secret Invasion, heck even the untitled Avengers 4 can be Secret Invasion for all I care, even though we all know that’s not going to happen. It can take the MCU in an interesting direction. Who can you trust? Half of the Avengers can be Skrulls, half of the government, the F.B.I., even the president.
So many interesting possibilities for MCU to explore in a movie or more than one movie. Skrulls can be like Hydra, but with aliens instead of people. You see my point. Aliens have always been a metaphor and this one can be a priceless one.
Then you can do and entire movie or have Easter Eggs for Dark Reign. Dark Reign was the aftermath of Secret Invasion as Norman Osborn killed the Skrull Queen live on national television and was considered a hero, even though he was not. I know there are a few problems with that. S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t really exists in the MCU anymore and Norman Osborn, hasn’t been introduced in the Spider-Man movie (plus the new Spider-Man isn't doing so great). But you can do someone worse, you can introduce some new villain, or take an old one and make him the president of the United States instead of the head of S.H.I.E.L.D., after he will be the one to kill the Skrull Queen for malicious reasons, live on national television. Obviously MCU are kings of simplifying things for the big screen, but it will still be something interesting.
Our superheroes have defeated a lot generic alien races across the galaxies and on earth, but the Skrulls are the MCU’s opportunity to do something interesting and tell an interesting story.
I am aware that this is the short version of the comic book plots, I wanted to keep it short and simple. And of course, this is all just fun speculations based on very little information that we have about the movie.
Comments will be highly appreciated.