13 fun facts to know before you watch 'The Marvels'

The Marvels is a new adventure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, featuring a trio of female superheroes teaming up to save the universe. It stars Brie Larson, who starred as the titular character in Captain Marvel, Iman Vellani, who held the titular role in Ms Marvel, and Teyonah Parris, who made her debut in the critically acclaimed WandaVision series. 

The movie sees the three superheroes get their powers mixed up as they fight to save the universe.

“I think the three of them together is going to be an exciting combination and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to be a part of that,” says The Marvels director Nia DaCosta.

“The most important thing for me as I dug in and approached the script and the characters was making sure that within all the exciting set pieces, chases, fights and intergalactic intrigue, there’s at the core of this an emotional character-driven story about these three women.”

The movie is set to take the Captain Marvel character and her counterparts to new heights. Here are 13 facts you should know about the characters and the movie.

1. Captain Marvel was the first stand-alone female franchise title character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and The Marvels features the first all-female super hero team-up.
2. The character of Captain Marvel is based on the Marvel comic book series of the same name, first published in 1967. The filmmakers were drawn to a run of comics by Kelly Sue DeConnick, whose take on the character would also be the general inspiration for The Marvels.
3. At 33, director Nia DaCosta is the youngest director to helm a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She is also a self-avowed Marvel “comic-book nerd”.
4. Birthdays occurring during the shoot were celebrated in style. Larson, Parris and DaCosta’s celebrations included on-set dance parties. Vellani marked her 19th birthday with cake in the garden of the Khan House set with cast members, including Samuel L Jackson and producer Kevin Feige.
5. Two cats, Nemo and Tango, share the role of Goose the Flerken, who is infamously known as the creature that deprived Nick Fury of sight in one eye.
6. There were 10 kittens playing Flerkittens on set, much to everyone’s enjoyment — even Brie Larson, who is allergic to cats.
7. The Flerken eggs were an early conversation point as the team worked out what they would look and feel like, using the Kelly Sue DeConnick comics as a guide. In the end, there were 60-plus Flerkitten eggs around the set, hand-painted by the props team.
8. The cast and crew drank about 500 coffees a day. Over the duration of the shoot, that would have been heading towards 42,000 hot drinks.
9. Costume designer Lindsay Pugh and her team made multiple suits for Captain Marvel, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan, not to mention more than 1,000 costumes for the supporting cast. All the racks of costumes together are estimated to cover a small soccer field.
10. There were 54 separate set builds for The Marvels across eight stages, two backlots and the golf course at Longcross in the UK, which is where Carol Danvers’ (Brie Larson) house set is located. The sets included five different planets, a space station, five spaceships, two evacuation ships, three evacuation pods, a space elevator, a Cessna 150 and three houses.
11. The art department had 50 people. The construction team reached about 350 people at peak and the bigger sets took about 12 weeks to build.
12. For a banquet scene on the planet Aladna, production hired two Japanese food stylists. One of them did the exquisite canapés and the other made food towers.
13. Set decorators had amazing ideas for Nick Fury’s office on the S.A.B.E.R. space station. Audiences will get a glimpse into Fury’s life with special props that hark back to Fury’s past and tease his previous roles.