The question everybody’s asking after last year’s Avengers: Infinity War and this weekend’s Captain Marvel is one I’ve already been fielding for months: “Why hasn’t Nick Fury summoned Captain Marvel before?” That’s what happens when it’s revealed Fury has an intergalactic Skypager that can summon the universe’s most powerful hero in a moment’s notice. Couldn’t he have called her to say…battle Ultron, maybe? Or put a stop to Thanos before he killed half the universe’s population? What up with that?
Marvel’s Kevin Feige got asked that question by Slashfilm, and I think he gives exactly the right answer…
“Well, I’d say two things. One, she does say it’s gotta be a real emergency, right? Yeah,” answered the Marvel Studios president. “The other thing I’d say is how do you know he never hit it? How do we know he never pushed it before? We’ve never seen him push it before. That doesn’t mean he never did.”
Let’s assume that there’s a lot of shit that goes down in-between movies. The stuff we see on the big screen isn’t the only time these heroes are in world-threatening situations, and in the case of Fury and Captain Marvel there is literally decades of time before Iron Man is ever introduced. So it stands to reason that Fury may have called for her help before. Or perhaps he didn’t, and Thanos’ attack is the first time he felt it was absolutely necessary. I think it qualifies as a “real emergency”, don’t you?
Captain Marvel is in theaters now, and is already doing very well at the box office. You should probably see it.
