"Captain Marvel" (due in theaters in March 8, 2019) goes back in time to the 1990s to explore the tale of Air Force Captain Carol Danvers, a badass pilot who gains superpowers when she's accidentally infused with alien Kree blood. Marvel just released the first full trailer.
The movie is either a placeholder (since it doesn't follow the current Avengers timeline) or the key to EVERYTHING in next summer's biggest movie. In the post-credits sequence of "Avengers: Infinity War," Sgt. Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) was sending a text message to Captain Marvel when he (SPOILER) dissolved. Fury shows up in the new trailer, looking a whole lot younger and with far more hair than he's sported in any other Marvel movie.
Another way we know we're in the past is that Captain Marvel crashes into a Blockbuster Video store as the credits open. Kids will think this is funny when they realize that everyone used to drive to the store on Friday nights and only get to choose from whatever VHS tapes were available when they were planning their weekend entertainment.
Captain America quickly abandoned his direct connection to the U.S. Army after the his first movie, but that's understandable since he spend decades encased in ice and almost everyone he served with was dead when he woke up. He quickly aligned with S.H.I.E.L.D., an organization whose exact military connections have never quite been clear in all the subsequent Marvel movies and TV series.
Carol Danvers' story may offer some clues. How much has our Air Force been involved with the superhero community over the past few decades? Captain Marvel (a/k/a Ms. Marvel) has been the subject of contradictory story lines over the decades in the comic book universe, so we're waiting for the movie to find out what will become her definitive story.
No matter what, we're sure to see some post-Cold War Air Force planes and technology in action and a bunch of 60-year-old retired pilots will get a chance to complain how a movie about a bunch of imaginary figures in spandex gets everything wrong.
