**Warning Spoiler for Captain Marvel Below**
Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige revealed the idea to retcon Mar-Vell into a female in the Captain Marvel movie originated from co-director Anna Boden.
For those who haven’t seen the film, Annette Bening’s character is actually Mar-Vell who has been posing as a scientist named Wendy Lawson. Lawson and Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers are shot down on Earth by Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg and Gemma Chan’s Minn-Erva. Lawson was attempting to reach her cloaked spaceship that is harboring a number of Kree refugees and the Tesseract that Mar-Vell has been manipulating to create lightspeed travel.
Feige spoke to ET Online confirming it was Boden’s idea even mentioning they had originally been looking for a male to play Mar-Vell. He also admits that having the Supreme Intelligence take on the look of Mar-Vell was her idea too.
“It was late in the development of the movie. Frankly, as we were approaching shooting, we were casting male — We were looking for a male Mar-Vell and developing the script at the same time, as we often do. We spoke to a few people, but as you’ve now seen in the movie, it’s a limited role, because of the nature of the structure of the story. It was, I believe, Anna who came up with the suggestion in a script meeting that, “Why don’t make the S.I., the vision that she sees, Mar-Vell?”
The idea was just before we brought Annette on. So, it was relatively late in the development process and one of a handful of things that happened as the script was taking on its final form, that was an epiphany that Anna had, and it was like, “Oh, of course! That’s perfect!” And we stopped looking for another actor.”
Feige then makes sure the credit goes to Anna Boden saying, “Exactly right. There were a number of those by a number of different people, but that one, let’s credit Anna, a hundred percent.”
What did you think of the decision to retcon Mar-Vell and turn the character into a woman? What about the idea of making the Supreme Intelligence look differently to whoever is interacting with it?