There was a lot going on in the latest trailer for Captain Marvel, which aired during the championship game of the College Football Playoff. There were 45s of Elastica. There was a photon gun. There was a lot more of Jude Law’s Starforce mentorship. There were freakin’ space battles. You may have even missed one detail that Clark Gregg already revealed would be on the way — a look at his S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Phil Coulson, during his younger years.
Granted, we’ve already seen him in prior trailers, but this is a slightly extended look. If you didn’t catch him on first glance — and full disclosure: We didn’t, though The Verge did — there’s a good reason for that. Captain Marvel is set in the ’90s, meaning certain cast members had to be de-aged. Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury not only has both eyes intact; he’s been digitally youthenized some 25 years, like Jeff Bridges in TRON: Legacy and Sean Young in Blade Runner 2049.
Coulson made his debut in the first official MCU film, Iron Man, all the way back in 2008. He was a high-ranking member of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was cucumber cool, and he said things like, “This is not my first rodeo.” He appeared to die in the Avengers, though he kept appearing on the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He looks particularly un-Gregg-like in Captain Marvel. He simply looks like some random young government agent. Which he is, as this will presumably be the “first rodeo” Coulson alluded to back in the original Iron Man. Surely we can all look forward to a frightening future in which every actor can be made decades younger than they really are, aging turned into a mere illusion.
Meanwhile, you can watch the new trailer again below:
(Via The Verge)