By Andrew Shaw

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) started roughly ten years ago with a controversial decision surrounding it, the casting of Robert Downey JR as the main character in their first film, Iron Man. The decision, to everyone’s surprise, paid off and Iron Man was a big hit. The hits kept coming, leading eventually to the film Black Panther.

Black Panther was a film set around a black superhero, the first black superhero in comics, directed and in part written by an African American director, Ryan Coogler. The film, as with most of Coogler’s films, was highly political, with a clear message about Black rights being present throughout the film. The film was highly successful, making over 1billion dollars worldwide coming in first, as of its opening week, as the highest grossing superhero film in America.

So where is this all leading to? To one of Marvel’s newest films, Captain Marvel.

Captain Marvel Stars Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, the main character of the film, and Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, a prominent character in previous Marvel films.

The plot centres around the character of Carol Danvers, who becomes one of the universes’ most powerful heroes after earth is caught in the crossfires of a galaxy wide war.

In an interview with my media teacher, Mr Murray, I asked if the choice to make a film with a female lead was due to the success of Black Panther. In response he said “Probably, and it is probably long overdue, not just in the MCU but in modern film making in general”.

I asked him if he thought that the political subtext of the film could cause a loss of financial profit for Marvel. He responded with “There were rumours that people were going to boycott the film; however, it does have the largest presales of tickets out of any of the MCU’s films”

Lastly, I asked what kind of impact a successful Captain Marvel would have on the MCU. He replied “There will probably be more opportunity of for a wider range of actors and characters. Up until Black Panther the main characters of Marvel films were largely strong white male characters, there wasn’t huge diversity”.

So, does Captain Marvel spell the end of the MCU? It looks highly unlikely that the film will be a failure – let alone the cinematic universe that is a part of.