Captain Marvel trailer decoded: Brie Larson's superhero powers up

There’s a powerful new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Marvel dropped the first Captain Marvel trailer Tuesday, giving us our first look at Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers. It’s an action-packed teaser, filled with all sorts of explosive scenes and intriguing reveals — Blockbuster Video! Young Phil Coulson! Carol punching an old lady! — but most of all, it’s an introduction to Marvel’s first solo female hero. 

When we first meet Carol, she’s crashing. Specifically, she’s crashing into a Blockbuster Video, sometime around 1995. Captain Marvel is set in the mid-’90s, and when our heroine falls from space onto Earth, she lands smack in the middle of the once-ubiquitous video store. 

The trailer introduces Carol not as a human but as a part-human, part-alien warrior who falls to Earth. She’s a member of the elite Kree military team Starforce (as evidenced by her green uniform), and she’s crash landed in Los Angeles. This is the first time she’s been back on Earth in a very, very long time, and she’s not sure what to make of it.

Crash landing aside, she’s still extraordinarly powerful, and we get our first glimpse of Carol using her abilities. Not only does she have super strength, but she also has the power to absorb and manipulate energy — making her someone you don’t want to mess with.

Once she’s landed on Earth, Carol quickly crosses paths with a familiar face: Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. He’s not yet the grizzled, eye-patch-wearing leader we’ve met in past Marvel movies. Here, he’s just an everyday S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. Carol is his first exposure to another world, and it seems like she’s the career revitalization he’s been looking for.

“Space invasion. Big car chase,” he tells her. “Truth be told, I was ready to hang it up ’til I met you today.”

We soon see flashes of Carol’s life in space: She’s been living with the Kree as a member of Starforce, and here, we see what looks like a skyline on Hala, the Kree home planet. Audiences have met the Kree before in Guardians of the Galaxy — both Lee Pace’s Ronan and Djimon Hounsou’s Korath are Kree — but Captain Marvel is a deeper dive into their alien world. 

On Hala, Carol is a soldier, serving alongside the Kree. On her right, that’s Gemma Chan as the blue-skinned sniper Minn-Erva. 

Jude Law plays the leader of Starforce, and he has a mentor-mentee relationship with Carol. He views her and her powers as a key asset to the Kree cause.

But despite her life in the stars, Carol has a connection to Earth that she just can’t shake. “I keep having these memories,” she says. “I see flashes. I think I had a life here. But I can’t tell if it’s real.” Among those flashes are shots of her life as an Air Force pilot, and here, we see her remembering her training. 

There’s also a shot of her in her Air Force days, flying alongside Lashana Lynch’s Maria Rambeau. Maria and Carol came up in the Air Force together as two of the only female pilots, and they forged a deep friendship.

And then there are the Skrulls. The green aliens are the Kree’s greatest nemesis, and Captain Marvel finds them setting their sights on Earth. They’re led by Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, and they’re made all the more dangerous by their ability to shape shift into any person or thing.

At one point, we see a shot of what looks like a medical operating table. Nick Fury appears to be on the left, and the guy overseeing everything looks a lot like Ben Mendelsohn. Could that be Talos, disguising himself as a human?

See, the problem with fighting an army of shape-shifting aliens is that they could take the form of anyone. They might even be posing as an old lady on the bus, who Carol lays out with one punch. (Here’s hoping that’s actually a Skrull, and not just some nice grandmother who Carol just knocked out.) 

From here, the trailer moves into a series of rapid images and shots — like this scene of Carol imprisoned in some sort of alien machine. Whatever’s happening here, it doesn’t look pleasant.

Coulson lives! The trailer also gives us a brief shot of a de-aged Clark Gregg, making his big-screen return as S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Phil Coulson. At this point, he’s still fairly new to S.H.I.E.L.D. and has a long way to go before meeting up with Captain America and Iron Man.

We also get a good luck at the return of Ronan. Lee Pace’s blue-skinned baddie was the chief villain in Guardians of the Galaxy, where he met his untimely end, but here, he’s still a respected member of Kree society. Here, we see him overlooking a planet from space. Is that Hala? Or does he have his eye on Earth? 

There’s even a shot of Fury using a very familiar-looking pager, although it hasn’t yet been decked out with the advanced tech we saw at the end of Infinity War. 

Comics fans should also be excited to see the debut of Carol’s helmet. 

Throughout the trailer, we see flashes of Carol’s life as she tries to remember who she is and where she came from. There’s a particularly powerful shot of her at different points throughout her life: as a little girl, as an Air Force recruit, and as an alien warrior. She always gets back up after being knocked down, and she’s always ready for a fight.

And we end with Carol fully embracing her powers. Marvel has said that she’s the most powerful hero the franchise has ever introduced, and the trailer sure looks to be proof of that. 

Captain Marvel will hit theaters March 8, 2019. Watch the full trailer here.