A Captain Marvel origin movie is uniquely suited for providing some Thanos backstory, so why does the movie instead pretend that conflict doesn’t exist?
(Be warned that there are major spoilers ahead for the plot of “Captain Marvel.”)
It’s been a long and torturous wait for “Captain Marvel” — the longest gap between entries in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in years. And we were particularly excited for this movie because “Avenger: Endgame” is coming up so soon, with Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) set to play an important role in what is shaping up to be one of the most heavily anticipated movies of all time, thanks to the shocking ending of “Avengers: Infinity War.”
So last summer, we here at TheWrap wrote a bunch of speculative pieces in response to that insane “Avengers: Infinity War” cliffhanger. The most popular of those — and by far the longest at 2200 words — was about how “Captain Marvel,” hitting theaters less than two months before the then-unnamed “Avengers: Endgame,” would likely have some deep ties to the Avengers’ battle against Thanos.
And yet, somehow, it just doesn’t. “Captain Marvel” has absolutely no apparent relevance to the current greater plot of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And that is extremely weird.
It was tough, last year, to imagine that “Captain Marvel” wouldn’t be hugely relevant to “Infinity War” and “Endgame” beyond just introducing us to Carol Danvers. Thanos in the comics, after all, was a longtime enemy for Mar-Vell — you know, the person from whom Carol takes the Captain Marvel moniker. This movie could naturally work not just as a prequel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in general, but also specifically to Thanos’ crusade.
Also Read:’Captain Marvel’: What It Could Mean for ‘Avengers: Endgame’ That Carol Has Tesseract Powers
And there were a few tangible reasons from the movies themselves to think that “Captain Marvel” would function that way. In “Infinity War,” Thanos indicates his crusade began about two decades prior, making the mid-90s setting for “Captain Marvel” very conspicuous. In another scene he says “I ignored my destiny once,” a comment you could interpret as referring to the fall of Titan. But I don’t buy that interpretation, because that sentiment doesn’t quite jive with how he described that situation. What would his destiny have been in that situation? To institute his death lottery by force? No, the vibe there is that the fall of Titan turned him from someone who tries to convince into someone who imposes his will. If that line was referring to the fall of Titan, then it did so clumsily.
