Who is Captain Marvel, and what powers does she have in the MCU?

Brie Larson promises to revitalise long-running franchise with one of comic canon's most conflicted and interesting characters

The trailer for Marvel’s next superhero blockbuster Captain Marvel, starring Brie Larson, has just arrived online.

Narrated by Samuel L Jackson, once more reprising his role as Nick Fury, it shows the “renegade soldier” apparently tumbling to Earth from outer space and crash-landing in a branch of Blockbuster Video, dating the film squarely in the 1990s.

Larson’s Marvel is seen claiming to experience memories of a previous life in our world but unable to trust whether they are real or have been implanted in her mind by unknown forces.

Co-starring Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Djimon Honsou, Lee Pace and Clark Gregg, Captain Marvel hints at the tantalising possibility that its heroine could be crucial to turning the tide against Thanos (Josh Brolin), following the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War earlier this year.

But who is the mysterious entity and what are her powers?

Carol Danvers, known by her alias Captain Marvel, was first introduced in March 1968 as a US Air Force officer in Marvel Super-Heroes #13, which was created by Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan.

Initially a supporting character to Mar-Vell, a superbeing from the planet Kree posing on Earth as Dr Walter Lawson, she was first given superpowers in Ms Marvel #1 in January 1977 when her DNA was fused with the latter’s following an explosion by a device known as the “Psyche-Magnetron”.

As a Kree-human hybrid possessed of superhuman strength, flight and a precognitive “sixth sense”, she subsequently appeared with the Avengers and in instalments of Spider-Man and Iron Man.

The new film from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck appears to take its inspiration from an Avengers story arc from the period just prior to this development, the “Kree-Skrull War” of 1971-72, putting the post-blast incarnation of Ms Marvel at the heart of the war between worlds in place of Captain Mar-Vell, who will nevertheless appear, played by Law.

While Ms Marvel was intended to represent a progressive social force in tune with contemporary feminism, fighting for equal pay at work and in search of a clear sense of identity in a changing world, she attracted controversy in the 1980s when a storyline in The Avengers #200 saw her captured, raped and impregnated by Marcus, an alien from an alternate dimension, seeking to create an all-mighty clone of himself.

She appeared regularly in X-Men comics, fighting mutant terrorist Mystique and giving Rogue her powers – and memories – following a battle in The Avengers Annual #10. Professor X restored her recollections in that storyline but will not be able to do so in the new film because Fox still own the rights to the X-Men characters (for now).

Morphing into a character called Binary – who drew her powers from a white hole in space – in 1982’s Uncanny X-Men #164, she returned to her original state in the Avengers comic Operation Galactic Storm in spring 1992.

Under the name Warbird, she formally joined the Avengers in the 1990s, with writer Kurt Busiek introducing a struggle with alcohol to round out her character.

Although missing from recent team-up movies, she defended London in the 2013 comic that spawned Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) and played a key role in the 2006-07 comic run that inspired Captain America: Civil War (2016) as an advocate of the Superhuman Registration Act supported by Iron Man.

The fall-out from that adventure saw her join the New Avengers rather than work for Norman Osborn, Spider-Man’s nemesis the Green Goblin.

One of the most interesting and troubled characters in the company canon, Larson has an opportunity to become the most influential female presence in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, surpassing loyal franchise players Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow) and Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch) to make the same sort of box office impact Gal Gadot brought to rival DC’s Wonder Woman last year.

If she can imbue her character with the same degree of personality Krysten Ritter brought to Jennifer Jones in the Netflix series of the same name, Captain Marvel could prove a game-changer.