Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel Influences Young Girls With Superhero Appeal

Brie Larson is becoming more of a real life superhero every day.

Larson, who is quickly turning into one of the most talked about rising stars in Hollywood, accepted the role of Captain Marvel so she could be a positive influence in the lives of young women across America.

While promoting her new movie, Free Fire, at the Toronto International Film Festival, Brie explained her reasons for taking on the role of the first female superhero to headline a Marvel movie, according to the Toronto Sun.

Hint: it has nothing to do with getting her face plastered across the country.

“It’s about the material. And obviously Marvel is such an incredible platform to be able to share in storytelling… I think what Captain Marvel represents, and what this film is shaping up to be, has a message that’s undeniably important to the world right now.”

Larson’s role as Captain Marvel, a U.S. Air Force pilot named Carol Danvers-turned-superhero, will carry an “undeniably important” message to young girls across America looking for a role model, the actress told Yahoo! Style.

“The thing that’s been the most exciting now is on social media I get sent a lot of pictures of young girls in the Captain Marvel costume and I’m excited to see more of that.

“She’s such a great symbol for young girls, and realizing what a deficit we have, that we don’t have more of those. I think it’s really cool to see a girl in a Batman costume or a Spider-Man costume, but I’m really excited that there’s a symbol of women. I think that’s really important.”

Brie Larson: 'Captain Marvel' Is A Symbol For Women https://t.co/gg3We1Sdbw pic.twitter.com/AObkGviyA2

— Heroic Hollywood (@heroichollywood) September 10, 2016

Here’s what we know so far.

Marvel originally intended to release Captain Marvel in July of 2018, but the addition of Spider-Man to the Marvel universe set the film’s debut date back almost a year. The movie is timed to sit squarely between the Avengers: Infinity War movies due out May 4, 2018, and May 3, 2019.

That’s led to speculation that Brie will tease her superhero role before the movie’s release with an appearance in another Marvel film, possibly Avengers: Infinity War. That would enable her character to be fully fleshed out in Captain Marvel and allow for her inclusion in the second Infinity War movie.

The character of Captain Marvel, first known as Ms. Marvel, was created in 1977 by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gene Colan, but her alter ego, Carol Danvers, was around nine years before that.

As a member of the U.S. Air Force, she was present when an explosion from a device planted by the Kree, from Guardians of the Galaxy, fused her with DNA with their alien genes. The fusion of Kree genes turned her into a alien-human hybrid and granted her super powers.

The character can fly, absorb and project energy, and has a limited ability to tell the future. Due to hit theaters in 2019, Captain Marvel will be the first movie in the franchise to feature a solo female superhero headliner.

In the meantime, fans can see Larson in Kong: Skull Island when it opens March 10, 2017, and Free Fire on March 31, 2017. The actress was in Toronto this week promoting the shoot ’em up thriller Free Fire by Ben Wheatley in which she plays the only female character in a cast full of men.

Based in 1978, the movie is a never ending shoot out between members of the IRA and a group of arms dealers trapped in an abandoned warehouse. Larson told Entertainment Weekly she spent the entire shooting crawling around on her hands and knees as her character tried to avoid being shot.

“My job is so weird. This is what I’m doing. How do I explain this to people?”

[Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images]