After months of waiting, Captain Marvel has finally joined the MCU! Fans eagerly flocked to theatres, and according to deadline.com, “Disney is calling the opening weekend of Captain Marvel at $153M, which is the third-best debut in March (after Disney’s Beauty and the Beast at $174.7M and Warner’s Batman v. Superman at $166m), and the seventh-best stateside launch for an MCU title.” So, not bad for Marvel’s first solo female superhero movie! But how was the story and how did it match up to the comics?

Captain Marvel in the comics (depending on the arc) is a former Air Force pilot named Carol Danvers who got into a tangle with an alien race called the Kree. After being exposed to a Kree energy core, Carol was thought to have become half-Kree and gained some of their powers. The accident made her forget her memories on Earth until she was assigned a mission there, and afterword, remembered her past. She also came to realize how militant of a race the Kree were, and soon was being hunted by her own people. Mar-Vell, the Kree warrior who discovered her initially, tries to guilt trip her by saying she owes them a debt for her powers, but it is discovered that Carol was half-Kree from the beginning because her mother came to Earth as well and hid her identity. Together, they both defeat Mar-Vell and turn the Kree away from Earth.

The movie was very similar, but completely ignored the entire plot of Carol’s parents. Also, Carol’s Kree name in the movie is “Veers”, which is derived from a piece of the dog tag she was found with, which only had the last few letters of her last name remaining. In the comics, her mother gives her a name that sounds the same in human and Kree language, “Kar-Ell” or Carol. Also, Maria Rambeau (Carol’s best friend from the movie) has a completely different role in the movie than she does in the comics, where she is less of a priority character. Another change has to do with Carol’s cat- Chewie in the comics, Goose in the movie. (The name change was due to a Star Wars copyright on the name Chewie.) In the comics, Carol’s cat is just a childhood pet, but in the movies the cat turns out to be an alien monster called a Flerkin which is extremely dangerous.

In the movie arc, Carol takes her mission to Earth and meets a younger Nick Fury (future director of S.H.I.E.L.D and the creator of the Avengers Initiative.) It also takes place decades before the first Avengers movie, set in 1995. Together, the two research Carol’s background while dodging attacks from the Kree’s rival race, the Skrulls. As Carol pieces together her past, it becomes more and more apparent to her that the Kree are not who she thinks they are. After meeting up with Maria and her daughter Monica, Carol discovers that the Kree lied to her and they persecuted the Skrulls, who were just looking for a new home planet. Together with Fury and Maria, Carol reunites a group of Skrulls that were stuck on Earth and gives them a head start into regrouping with other Skrulls to find a new home. Fury also ends up stealing the energy “core” that helped Carol get her powers, refusing to let the Kree take it back. As it turns out, the core is the Tesseract- a future Infinity Stone. After battling the Kree and fending off an invasion, defeating Mar-Vell (who is Carol’s controlling mentor in the movie), and discovering her powers (photon energy blasts), Carol goes on to help the Skrulls search for a new home.

Meanwhile, Fury who was changed by the imminent danger of aliens (and now blind in one eye after Goose the cat scratches him from playing too rough) decides that the only way to protect Earth from future attacks is to create a team of “Avengers” (the name he takes off of Carol’s fighter plane from before she became a Kree). The Avengers, he tells a younger Agent Coulson (his partner in the movies), will have to be a unique team of people with special abilities that will be able to defend the human race from aliens. It also believed that he stores the Tesseract, which makes its next appearance in the timeline in the first Avengers movie (the Tesseract is currently in possession of Thanos after Avengers: Infinity War).

The mid-credits scene for Captain Marvel turned out to be a clip from the next and final Avengers movie: Endgame which debuts in April. Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner, and Colonel James Rhodes gather around as Nick Fury’s beeper device is hooked up to a machine. Little do they know, this device will summon Carol if activated- and that it does! The camera quickly pans over to review Carol entering the room behind the group before fading out.

What a thrilling conclusion! It seems Marvel Studios is finally putting the pieces together for how things will play out in Endgame. Fans are very excited to see how the end will play out, and it will be much more interesting with the extremely powerful Captain Marvel on the side of the Avengers. Does Thanos stand a chance?  Only time will tell, but for now, seeing Captain Marvel would be a good idea for Marvel fans to catch up on the storyline. It isn’t as life-changing as many of the other movies in the MCU, but is definitely worth the watch for huge Captain Marvel fans, and I would give it a 7.5/10.