Beta Ray Greg Presents : Marvel Studios Captain Marvel Prelude #1

We open up with the (floating) city of Sokovia. The city is rising up and it opens with a quote by Ultron. We see the conversation between Cap and Black Widow about not leaving any civilian behind, but they don’t have a plan for getting out either. Iron Man is calculating a plan for destroying the city that’ll keep it from, you know, killing all life on Earth on impact. Of course, we know Cap’s refusal of such a plan. Boom, Fury, Hill, and a Helicarrier. A character named Klein sends out life boats to the city for evacuation. Now I don’t know if I’ve ever noticed but I think he’s unnamed in the movie if he even has a spoken line. He seems important. An Ultron bot flies through a window. Hill and Fury dispose of the bot.Next scene says ‘New Avengers facility, upstate New York, later.’ We see Fury and Romanoff talking about Hill settling in ‘bossing people around.’ This is post Banner taking the Quinjet out to space. They don’t know what happened to him. Fury speaks of something that was tracked splashing down around in the Banda Sea. Interesting. Fury knows he put together a great team. Natasha says nothing lasts forever, and Fury counters with “trouble does Ms. Romanoff…”

Scene now is from Captain America: Civil War during the airport battle. Fury and Maria Hill are watching the airport footage on security camera in an undisclosed location. Fury asks the Avengers current status. Hill says that she can’t pinpoint where Cap and Bucky took the commandeered Quinjet. Prince T’Challa’s a ghost and Stark is MIA as ‘usual.’ She mentions his last stop was to The Raft and that’s where Ross has the others holed up. Fury is not surprised. Now this is where Klein is brought back up. Fury asks if Klein is still running Transpo. Hill says yes and Fury responds with “good – we need someone we trust covering our tracks.”

WHO IS THIS PERSON?

Fury discusses his dislike for this infighting with Stark and Rogers and seemingly makes it his mission to make sure they fix it. Now this is where it gets fun kids. I literately got chills reading this. Fury and Hill are going into the shadows. Hill says “never meet them (heroes). They’ll always let you down.” “Not all of them” Fury responds. Um what? Maria wants to know if he has a back up plan. He says “Nah. If we do our job right, we’ll never be in a position of having to call her.” whhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaat. He tells Hill to make sure their boys have a back way into The Raft. Then they vanish into the night.

Next, we find the scene is Syria (months later). We have Steve Rogers, Falcon, and Black Widow on a mission. So this is filling in for us for where they were this whole time. Secret missions. They’re recovering a dirty bomb from a group of insurgents. They recover the bomb and get it back to the Quinjet where Nick Fury is waiting inside. Rogers doesn’t seem thrilled that Fury is there. They’re having a real gritty conversation. Fury doesn’t think they need to be doing these menial tasks like the dirty bomb. Rogers knows what’s he’s getting at and says “look, I gave Tony a way to reach me…” That damn flip phone.

Scene, Avengers Compound, R&D. No specified date. Tony Stark and Friday are running tests on a nanotechnology suit that we see in competition in Infinity War some time later. Maria Hill comes to see Tony. Clearly Tony is thrilled. Hill mentions to Tony that the topic she came to discuss is Vision shutting off his transponder more and more lately. This is something, again, we see in Infinity War. Tony says he trusts Vision more than he trusts her. Maria mentions she wasn’t the one who made an almost world dominating super-robot. He proceeds to ask her if he can fire her.

Scene says months later. Hill and Fury are in his SUV. Clearly we know what this is. After credits scene of Infinity War. Fury says this is what he was afraid of, the Earth’s ability to not go five minutes without an issue. Hill says she’s coordinating with Rhodes and there’s been no signs of Iron Man. An alarm goes off. Bogeys over Wakanda, ten times bigger than what was over New York. Fury says for her to tell Klein to meet them…there’s that name again. Cars start crashing. Hill says there’s no one driving. She panics. Fury says call control, CODE RED. He turns and Hill is fading. Fury turns on a dime and runs to the SUV. He grabs his bag and says “IT’S TIME.” He presses a key and starts to fade. The beeper falls. Captain Marvel’s symbol is on the faded screen.

So this is so cool. Things you wish you saw on film. The things that you just had to assume happened. All here. Now you know they truly didn’t know Fury was coming to the rescue or what had happened to Banner. What fell into the ocean? Why did they think it was Banner? Now we know there’s a guy cleaning up after Hill and Fury, Klein. Who is he? Where is he?

Now we know Fury has had this ultimate plan of the heroes for a long time and his big hitter is her. We finally get to see what the heck Cap has been up to and how he got into The Raft to begin with. Tony has clearly been working on a nano suit for a while. Vision has been going rogue for quite a while. What the heck is a CODE RED? WHO IN ALL THAT IS HOLY IS KLEIN?!! Fury has been carrying an intergalactic beeper with him for what, thirty years?

So many answers, but so many questions. Fantastic.

10/10 baby. I can’t wait for this movie.

BRG

Beta Ray Greg is the Comic Critic for SoBros Network, the ‘Fangtastic 5K 2018 Mr. Irrelevant.’ The man has the single most impressive spreadsheet in existence that is used to document his historic collection. He’s a big time Spider-Verse guy. Follow on Twitter: @BetaRayGreg.

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