Let’s be the only people online to break down the "Captain Marvel" trailer

With Tuesday's release of the trailer for Captain Marvel, we finally have a look at a post-Thanos universe, and by that I mean we have a look at a pre-Thanos universe, unless everybody has fallen into the Soulstone or Quantum Realm, which would obviously scramble up time even more, and you know what, this is confusing, let’s just watch Brie Larson being badass.

Set way back in the ‘90s, Captain Marvel is the first Marvel film with a female lead since the series began with Iron Man more than a decade ago. Less importantly, it’s also the first crucial post-snap movie to emerge from the Marvel universe (Ant-Man and the Wasp, as a comedy set on the West Coast, only counts in the credits) and promises to somehow merge a story that’s set 25 years ago into a present that’s still waiting to figure out why purple Josh Brolin murdered so much lucrative intellectual property. (Fans whose children made them stick around for the end credits will remember that Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury paged Captain Marvel before fluttering away into Thanos snap-dust.)

Here are 9 ½ things we learned from watching the trailer repeatedly. Captain Marvel drops March 8, scant weeks before Avengers 4 on May 3.

1.) In the first six seconds, Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers, on her driver’s license), plummets out of the sky and crash-lands right into a…Blockbuster Video, because, again, ‘90s. Frankly if this movie is two hours of video rental and Candlebox and Super NES nostalgia, those of us who are aging out of the superhero demographic will be VERY HAPPY. (Incidentally, in Marvel lore Danvers hails from space, which gives her an extra leg up if she has to, hypothetically, bend the rules of space and time to save an entire Christmas list’s worth of superheroes.)

2.) Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury has two eyes, which indicates that there is very probably a Thor-style ocular tragedy coming in the third act. Fury, you will remember, is sporting a badass patch when Tony Stark first encounters him in the first of Marvel’s 900 post-credit scenes. It’s also said that Jackson has been digitally de-aged in the movie, which is both logical and pointless: SAM JACKSON DOES NOT AGE LIKE THE REST OF US. The man is 69 years old and looks like he could bench-press my minivan.

3.) Speaking of things that are back, Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson hasn’t been Loki-stabbed yet, so he is free to pull off at least one David Caruso shades-removal.

4.) The typography trick turning “HER” into “A HERO” is damn fantastic.

5.) The whole trailer hinges on Danvers trying to marry her heritage as a member of an alien race called the Kree with some dark history on Earth (“I think I had a life here,” she says midway through the trailer), lending even more weight to the theory that there’s some wacky Doctor Strange/Quantum Realm time-travel about to happen in Avengers 4. Long story short, her Kree heritage is why she has all the cool powers, but the trailer doesn’t do much to tell us why she needs to come back to Earth.

6.) Marvel is so big and so powerful that they can get away with having their titular character punch an old lady on a bus.

6 ½.) This is because Captain Marvel’s primary antagonists are the Skrulls, a noted race of Marvel aliens that can shapeshift into anything they want, even grandmothers, because they’re super jerks. The main bad guy is Ben Mendelsohn, who is spending an awful lot of time playing corporate villains from the future and/or space. Not pictured is Lee Pace’s Ronan the Accuser, the large blue enemy from Guardians of the Galaxy who appears in Captain Marvel for nerd-continuity purposes.

7.) Her allies are the Starforce, which feature Jude Law and his green glowing Voldemort eyes. Also, congrats to Jude Law on cashing Marvel and Harry Potter checks these days.

8.) The movie world’s most famous pager debuts at 1:34.

9.) Brie Larson is gonna be amazing in this.