Captain Marvel
Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated of all the upcoming MCU movies, Captain Marvel’s big screen debut is due to arrive on March 8th, 2019. Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck – from a script they worked on that was written by Meg LeFauve, Nicole Perlman, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch – the film represents a number of ‘firsts’ for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
It’s the first woman-led superhero movie for the decade-old franchise, it’s the first film in the series to feature the work of a director who’s also a woman, and it’s the first MCU movie to have a writing team that’s majority female. All of these elements combine to make Captain Marvel a very important story indeed – not least because it’s perhaps the one that will prove to be the lynchpin for a point of wholesale transition for this gigantic cinematic endeavor.
We know that the film is set in the 1990s, and will essentially be an origin story for this vital superhero. It’ll cover her own transition from US Air Force pilot to super-powered individual, by way of an accident that fuses her DNA with that of an alien. It’ll also depict the way in which she’s called to heroism when the Earth is suddenly caught up in a conflict between two alien civilizations. But, and perhaps most importantly, it’s also the interim story that most directly links Avengers: Infinity War with its currently untitled sequel.
The third and fourth installments of the Avengers story are designed to flow directly into one another – but in terms of release, they’re separated by two films. Captain Marvel sews the two together, though, as she’s already been identified as being a big part of the solution to the unresolved issues resulting from Infinity War. Her insignia is the very last image we see onscreen – the final beat in a post-credits scene – as Nick Fury manages to send a distress signal to her before…well, you know.
This is one of the most impressive things about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that it can bring us to the point of despair in an epic showstopper, and then essentially take a breath with two Avengers prequels that form part of other characters’ series, before tying a new one in to that central arc with a single shot. It works because of the level of excitement that exists around the Captain Marvel movie and, in that sense, makes it the perfect segue into the resolution of Infinity War.