‘Captain Marvel’: Directors Reveal Why They Changed Mar-Vell

Captain Marvel directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made a few tweaks to Carol’s origin, her supporting cast, and her history, but one of the biggest ways they did that was to change her relationship with Mar-Vell. Not only did they change the nature of their relationship, but they also tied the portrayal of the A.I. known as the Supreme Intelligence in along with it, allowing for the same actor play both roles. As for why they chose to make those rather significant changes to the character of Mar-Vell, it comes down to just making sense.

Boden and Fleck recently broke down many facets of Captain Marvel in a new interview, and that definitely included the surprising twist that Annette Bening was actually Mar-Vell, though appeared as the Supreme Intelligence to Carol since it takes on the likeness of someone the user respects and trusts. That meant they could use Bening to play both characters and tie it into Carol’s origin, but that idea wasn’t there at the beginning of development.

“No that was another late-breaking idea from Ms. Anna Boden here,” Fleck told the Empire Podcast.

“I think that we initially had a separate figure being the Supreme Intelligence and then it just felt like to bring it together, somebody from her past that she knew and she admired but she didn’t know who it was because she had that part of her self missing,” Boden said. “To have it be connected to her origin and have it be connected to her hero felt like an obvious idea that should’ve been in there from the very beginning, so it was just one of those things where all of a sudden like I woke up from a nap and I was like ‘what the hell are we doing? Why are these two separate people?’ I called Ryan. I’m like ‘am I crazy to think that we should make them the same actor?’ and he’s like ‘no, that seems like why didn’t we think of that four months ago.’ And there we go.”

It ended up working out extremely well in the end, and we’re glad they decided to shake some things up and still give Carol a streamlined origin in the process.

Captain Marvel stars Academy Award® winner Brie Larson (Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou (Korath), Lee Pace (Ronan), Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan (Minn-Erva), Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, McKenna Grace, Kenneth Mitchell (Joseph Danvers), with Clark Gregg (Phil Coulson), and Jude Law.

Captain Marvel is in theaters now.

Did you like the Mar-Vell twist? Make sure to let us know what you think in the comments, and hit me up @MattMuellerCB on Twitter for all things Captain Marvel!

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