Marvel Studios and Disney are incredibly tight-lipped when it comes to revealing plot details about their comic book tentpoles, but Annette Bening isn’t so secretive. The Oscar-nominee is officially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the upcoming “Captain Marvel,” but she admitted to Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” that she had a hard time understanding the screenplay written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Jac Schaeffer, and directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.
Bening said she has been a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and therefore she didn’t want to turn down “Captain Marvel” simply because she couldn’t figure out what was going on in the story. Bening decided to spoil the movie for her children so that they could help her make sense of plot.
“I had some basic knowledge, having watched the movies and enjoyed them,” Bening says. “However, when I read the script I did find it slightly confusing. I took into my confidence—and the confidence of the entire Disney corporation—two of my kids, who I then told the story to and asked them to please explain to me what the hell was going on. Which they then did.”
Bening stars in “Captain Marvel” as Supreme Intelligence. As Bening describes it, the character is “a godlike entity” and “the leader of the Kree people, the artificial intelligence which consists of the greatest intellects of the Kree people for the last million years.” The Kree is a militaristic alien race, and Captain Marvel herself is half-human, half-Kree. Bening joins Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendehlson, Clark Gregg, Gemma Chan, and Jude Law in the film’s ensemble cast.
Disney is opening “Captain Marvel” in theaters nationwide March 8.