Set in the 1990s, this all-new adventure follows the journey of Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes. While a galactic war between two alien races reaches Earth, Danvers finds herself and a small cadre of allies—including a young Nick Fury—at the center of the maelstrom, leading her to uncover secrets about her past and her true identity.
Information |
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Language |
English |
Country |
United States |
Premiere date |
March 8, 2019 |
Running time |
124 minutes |
Genre |
Action Adventure Sci-Fi |
Budget |
$160,000,000 |
Box Office |
$1,131,416,446 |
Crew |
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Directed by |
Anna Boden Ryan Fleck |
Produced by |
Kevin Feige |
Written by |
Anna Boden Ryan Fleck Geneva Robertson-Dworet |
Music by |
Pinar Toprak |
Cinematography |
Ben Davis |
Edited by |
Elliot Graham Debbie Berman |
Production Co. |
Marvel Studios |
Distributed by |
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures |
Top Cast |
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Official Trailer |
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Movie Collection |
Movie Order: #01 in Captain Marvel Collection
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The Plot
The War for Supremacy and the Nightmares of Vers
For a long period of time, the galaxy has been torn asunder by a brutal, constant war between two alien races: the technologically advanced Kree and the shapeshifting Skrulls. Because the Kree possess ultimately superior weaponry and biological enhancements, they have decimated the Skrull population, driving them to the brink of extinction. Despite this imbalance, the Kree Empire remains relentless in its campaign to wipe every last Skrull from the face of the galaxy.
In the year 1995, at the height of this interstellar conflict, a Kree warrior named Vers resides on the capital planet of Hala. She is plagued by fragmented, recurring nightmares that haunt her sleep. In these visions, she sees herself amidst the wreckage of an aircraft crash on a strange, foreign peninsula. The most traumatic fragment involves watching a woman being murdered in front of her by an unknown Skrull assailant. These nightmares double as her earliest memories, marking the moment she believes she gained her extraordinary abilities—powers that allow her to project devastating photon blasts from her fists. Vers trains rigorously with her commander, Yon-Rogg, aiming to join the elite tactical unit known as Starforce. While Yon-Rogg believes she is physically ready, the Supreme Intelligence—the artificial intelligence that rules the Kree Empire—figures otherwise, sensing an emotional volatility in her. Nonetheless, the Supreme Intelligence authorizes her entry into the team. Vers joins the ranks of Starforce alongside Minn-Erva, Korath, Bron-Char, and Att-Lass.
The Ambush on Torfa
Shortly after her induction, Yon-Rogg gathers the Starforce for a critical mission briefing. Their objective is to rescue a Kree operative named Soh-Larr, who has been compromised and captured on the border planet of Torfa. Yon-Rogg instructs the team to perform a stealth incursion; Vers and the rest of the Starforce deploy from their ship, landing underwater to avoid detection. Using their advanced suits, they navigate the murky depths to breach the surface and infiltrate the extraction zone.
However, the mission quickly unravels. As the team moves inland, they realize that the locals, the Torfan natives, are actually Skrulls in disguise. The distress signal was a trap. In the ensuing chaos of the ambush, Vers is separated from her unit. She is confronted by the Skrull General Talos, who has disguised himself as the operative Soh-Larr. Talos abducts Vers, dragging her onto a Skrull spacecraft, forcing the remaining members of Starforce to retreat without her.
Memories Unlocked and the Crash to Earth
Aboard the enemy vessel, Talos subjects Vers to a mind-probe device, gaining unauthorized access to her memories from various points in her life. Vers drifts through a surreal montage of her past, hearing voices and seeing faces she doesn't fully recognize. She awakens just as Talos succeeds in unlocking a specific set of repressed memories, revealing that he is hunting for information regarding a Light-Speed Engine. Realizing she is being used for data, Vers fights back. She orchestrates a violent escape, blasting her way through the ship's bulkheads. Talos, his second-in-command Norex, and two other Skrulls pursue her into the escape pods. During the struggle, the pod is damaged, and Vers crash-lands onto Planet C-53—known locally as Earth.
Vers crashes violently through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store in Los Angeles, landing in the middle of a shopping plaza. Unfamiliar with the primitive technology and culture, she eventually establishes a brief communication link with Yon-Rogg. He informs her that she is stranded and that it will take him and the Starforce 22 hours to reach her position. Meanwhile, Talos and the surviving Skrulls also land, cleverly assuming the roles of surfers on a nearby beach to blend in.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
The disturbance at the Blockbuster attracts the attention of the authorities after a night-shift officer from the Los Angeles Police Department reports the intruder. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, operating under the leadership of R. Keller, arrive on the scene to interrogate the strange woman in the green rubber suit. Vers is dismissive of their authority, identifying herself as a Kree warrior and warning them that shapeshifting alien infiltrators—Skrulls—have arrived on their planet. Fury and Coulson are skeptical of her fantastical claims until the interrogation is abruptly interrupted.
One of the Skrulls, having tracked Vers, initiates an attack. Vers instantly gives chase, pursuing the alien onto a subway train. The Skrull uses his shapeshifting abilities to blend into the commuters, eventually evading her and escaping amid the chaotic crowd at the next train station. Fury and Coulson attempt to pursue Vers by car, but Fury makes a startling realization: the man sitting in the passenger seat next to him is not his partner. The real Coulson had been abandoned back at the shopping complex. Realizing he is sitting next to a Skrull impostor, a scuffle ensues inside the vehicle. The struggle ends when their car crashes into oncoming traffic, killing the Skrull impostor.
Pancho's Bar and the Autopsy
Vers recovers a Skrull crystal from the encounter, which contains a recording of the memories Talos extracted from her. Seeking answers, she steals a civilian outfit from a display mannequin and commandeers a motorcycle, riding out to the desert town of Rosamond. Her destination is Pancho's Bar, a location referenced in her fragmented memories. Back in Los Angeles, Fury and Director Keller examine the corpse of the Skrull from the car crash. Unknown to Fury, the real Keller has already been compromised and replaced by Talos. While performing the autopsy on the alien anatomy, "Keller" authorizes Fury to work with Vers, with the ulterior motive of eventually bringing her into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody—or rather, Skrull custody.
Fury tracks Vers to Pancho's Bar. Having seen the alien corpse firsthand, he is now fully convinced that the Skrulls are a legitimate threat. However, trust is scarce; the two engage in a tense questioning session, trading personal details to verify that neither of them is a Skrull impostor.
Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.
Seeking to validate Vers' claims about her origins, Fury takes her to the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility in Nevada. Digging through restricted archives, they uncover startling truths: Vers was not born on Hala. She was a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force, flying alongside a comrade named Maria Rambeau. Both pilots served under the tutelage of Dr. Wendy Lawson for an initiative called Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.. Vers instantly recognizes a photograph of Lawson—she is the woman from her nightmares who was murdered. Contacting Yon-Rogg again, Vers demands answers, and he reveals that Lawson was actually a Kree scientist named Mar-Vell living on Earth in disguise.
Fury calls in their location to Keller, but when a posse of agents led by Keller—and the real Coulson—arrives, Fury realizes something is wrong. He deduces that Keller has been compromised by Talos the entire time. Fury decides to go rogue to protect Vers. In a moment of silent solidarity, Coulson allows the two to escape the facility. Motivated to find the remaining link to her past, Fury and Vers hijack a Quadjet. They are accompanied by Goose, a ginger cat they encountered wandering the facility who seems to have taken a liking to Fury. They set a course for the Rambeau Residence in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Black Box Revelation
At the residence, Maria Rambeau and her daughter, Monica, are stunned to see Vers alive. They identify her as Carol Danvers, a pilot who was presumed dead six years ago in a test flight that went tragically awry, killing both her and Dr. Lawson. They also identify the cat, Goose, as having belonged to Lawson and Danvers. The emotional reunion is interrupted when Talos and Norex arrive at the house. However, instead of attacking, Talos begs for a parley. He reveals he managed to recover the black box recording from the crash site of the test flight.
Talos proposes a temporary alliance and makes a shocking claim: Carol has been deceived by the Kree. The Skrulls are not conquerors, but homeless refugees on the brink of extinction, constantly hunted by Kree death squads. Carol agrees to listen to the black box audio. The recording triggers a full recollection of the traumatic event. The assassination of Dr. Lawson was not committed by a Skrull, but by Yon-Rogg himself, who had discovered Mar-Vell was a traitor to the Kree Empire.
The memory plays out clearly: Mar-Vell instructed Carol to destroy the energy core powering the experimental light-speed engine to keep it out of Kree hands. Carol shot the engine, triggering a massive explosion. Instead of dying, her body absorbed the raw energy, granting her cosmic abilities. Yon-Rogg, finding her alive but with total amnesia, kidnapped her. He took her to Hala, where the Supreme Intelligence authorized him to brainwash and train her as a Kree weapon.
The Laboratory in Orbit
Talos confides that Mar-Vell was a Kree double-agent trying to help the Skrulls escape Kree occupation forever using the light-speed engine. He explains that the coordinates to Mar-Vell's laboratory are hidden within Carol’s recovered memories. This cloaked laboratory, orbiting Earth, houses the energy core and the last survivors of the Skrull refugees.
The following day, Yon-Rogg arrives on Earth to confront his wayward student. He meets "Danvers," but quickly realizes he is speaking to the shapeshifter Norex. Yon-Rogg swiftly executes Norex. Having deduced the existence of the orbital laboratory and realizing the energy source is the Tesseract, Yon-Rogg prepares his forces. Meanwhile, the real Carol Danvers—now embracing her identity—along with Fury, Talos, Maria, and Goose, take the Quadjet into orbit. They successfully locate the cloaked laboratory. Inside, Talos shares a tearful reunion with his wife and daughter, who have been hiding there for years.
Unleashing the Power
Danvers locates the Tesseract, the source of the engine's power. However, the Starforce arrives and ambushes the group. Danvers is captured and placed in stasis, forcing her into a mental confrontation with the Supreme Intelligence. In this psychic realm, the Intelligence attempts to subdue her, but Danvers realizes her strength comes from her humanity, not the Kree. She forcibly removes the inhibitor chip on her neck that has been dampening her full potential. Breaking free from the stasis, she engages the Starforce in an all-out battle.
Chaos erupts in the lab. Fury discovers that Goose is not a cat, but a Flerken—a dangerous alien creature with tentacled horrors inside its mouth. He witnesses this firsthand when Goose swallows the Tesseract whole for safekeeping and then devours several Kree soldiers, echoing Talos’s earlier terror of the "cat." In the struggle for the Tesseract, Danvers overpowers her former teammates Korath, Bron-Char, and Att-Lass. The Skrulls, along with Rambeau and Fury, manage to escape on the Quadjet, but not before Talos is shot by Yon-Rogg, leaving him critically injured.
The Guardian of Earth
Enraged by the resistance, Yon-Rogg contacts Ronan the Accuser, authorizing him to dispatch Kree ballistic missiles to destroy the laboratory and scour Earth. Danvers flies into space, intercepting the missiles. glowing with binary power, she destroys the armaments effortlessly and then tears through one of the Kree warships. Witnessing this raw power, the Accusers retreat. Meanwhile, Minn-Erva, the last active Starforce member, pursues the escaping Quadjet into the Mojave Desert in a dogfight. Maria Rambeau outmaneuvers the Kree elite and shoots Minn-Erva down.
Yon-Rogg crashes on Earth and challenges Danvers to a hand-to-hand duel, relying on his training to beat her. Danvers refuses to play by his rules. She instantly incapacitates him with a massive photon blast. Standing over him, she drags him back to his ship and sends him back to Hala with a message for the Supreme Intelligence: the war is coming to them.
The Avengers Initiative
In the aftermath of the battle, the heroes regroup at the Rambeau residence. While Fury is playing with Goose, the Flerken unexpectedly claws him, permanently blinding his left eye. The Skrulls take temporary shelter with Maria while Talos recovers from his wounds. Before Danvers departs Earth to guide the Skrulls to a new home deep in the cosmos, she gives Fury a modified Transmitter Pager. She instructs him to use it only for a dire emergency, as it will signal her across the galaxy.
Back at his office, Fury drafts a proposal for a team of enhanced individuals to protect Earth. He initially titles it the "Protector Initiative." However, while looking through Carol's old Air Force dossier, he notices her call sign was "Avenger." Inspired, he renames the file: The Avengers Initiative.
The Call Answered
In a mid-credits scene set in 2018, following the catastrophic events of Thanos's "Snap" and the death of Nick Fury, the remaining Avengers—Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Bruce Banner, and James Rhodes—are gathered at the Avengers Compound. They have retrieved Fury's pager, which has been sending a signal for weeks, but it suddenly shuts down. As the group anxiously discusses how to bypass the battery to find who was on the other end, Captain Marvel herself suddenly appears behind them, asking a single, urgent question: "Where is Fury?"
In a final post-credits scene, back in 1995, Goose the Flerken jumps onto Nick Fury's empty desk. He begins to heave before regurgitating the slime-covered Tesseract onto the desk.
