Captain Marvel Makes HUGE Changes to Mar-Vell’s Character
**Warning Spoilers for Captain Marvel Below**
Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson makes a number of significant changes to Mar-Vell’s character in the feature film as compared to the comics.
In the comics, Mar-Vell was the original Captain Marvel. The Kree soldier was originally ordered to infiltrate and monitor Earth’s advancement in missile and space technology by Colonel Yon-Rogg after the Fantastic Four defeated both a Kree Sentry and Ronan the Accuser. During his mission, Yon-Rogg attempted to assassinate Mar-Vell, but ended up killing Dr. Walter Lawson instead. Mar-Vell would go on to take on the identity of Lawson which gave him the ability to further infiltrate the United States’ highly secretive military base known as The Cape. Yon-Rogg would continue his assassinations attempt and even activated a Kree Sentry in order to kill him. Mar-Vell gained the name Captain Marvel when a bystander thought he heard Mar-Vell call himself Captain Marvel.
Captain Marvel would go on to become a major hero fighting off both Earthly threats as well as cosmic. In fact, he plays a pivotal role in how Carol Danvers obtains her powers. In the comics, Captain Marvel uses his body to shield Carol from an explosion. What ends up happening is that part of Mar-Vell’s DNA fuses with Carol’s granting her superhuman powers. She would eventually take on the identity of Ms. Marvel before becoming Captain Marvel.
However, much of this is thrown out the window in Captain Marvel. Instead of Mar-Vell being a male Kree hero, the character is a female Kree scientist. Given the character is a female, Mar-Vell does not take on the name of Dr. Walter Lawson, instead her name is Dr. Wendy Lawson.
Mar-Vell still plays a significant role in Captain Marvel’s origin story. She is researching advanced technology using the Tesseract in order to put an end to all wars. However, the Kree catch on to Mar-Vell’s plans and Yon-Rogg is dispatched to acquire the Tesseract.
Danvers who is tasked with flying Mar-Vell to her laboratory, which is actually a cloaked space ship docked in the atmosphere, is attacked by Yon-Rogg and Minn-Erva. Yon-Rogg kills Mar-Vell. However, before he is able to kill Carol Danvers, she shoots the engine of her own plane which had been equipped with Tesseract technology. The engine explodes and the Tesseract’s energy bonds with Carol Danvers. Despite, Yon-Rogg standing next to the plane as well, the blast does not seem to bond with him.
The film also reveals that Mar-Vell wasn’t actually working to end all wars with the Tesseract technology, but was actually working on a Lightspeed engine that would allow the Skrulls to escape the grip of the Kree empire and find a new homeworld. Mar-Vell was actually hiding Skrull refugees on her ship.
In a little bit of a twist, Annette Bening who plays Mar-Vell actually plays the Kree Supreme Intelligence as well. This is explained by the fact that the Kree Supreme Intelligence takes on the form of the person you most admire. We only see the Kree Supreme Intelligence when Carol is interacting with her. Thus Bening plays Mar-Vell and the Kree Supreme Intelligence.
What do you think about these radical changes to Mar-Vell and Carol Danvers’ origin story?
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