This is the overriding plot of the movie. When Carol returns to her home planet with questions about her past, she quickly begins to challenge the status quo. We see her handle catcallers and shut down mansplainers with ease. We see her shun the skimpy outfits so often favoured by women in superhero movies, instead donning a grungey biker jacket, tee and jeans combo. And, when she teams up with a young Nick Fury, we really see our hero come into her own.

In previous movies, Jackson’s Fury has been portrayed as the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful director of S.H.I.E.L.D. He has always had the upper hand. He has been cold, calculating, and emotionless. And he has always been able to yank the rug out from beneath the feet of Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and their fellow Avengers. In this movie, however, Fury is… well, he’s a low-level desk jockey, with little to no knowledge of superheroes. He does the washing up, he baby-talks at any fluffy cat he comes across, and he makes mistakes. Big ones. Huge. And, perhaps most importantly of all, he’s not the cleverest or most capable person in the room: Carol is, 100%… and she’s not afraid to let him know it, either.

The resulting dynamic is, without a doubt, one of the most interesting we’ve seen so far in the Marvel Universe. Carol and Fury strike up a friendship – or a “compatriotship”, to use Jackson’s terminology – over the course of the movie. She teaches him about the other-worldly forces that threaten planet earth, saves his life a bunch of times, and relentlessly calls him out on his bulls**t. He, in turn, teaches her the very human lesson of trusting your gut over your head. And, as the story progresses, the duo learn to trust one another other. Indeed, Fury comes to trust Carol so much that, when Thanos wreaks havoc on the world some 25 years later, she is the first and only person he reaches out to for help.

The huge significance of those 7 little words in Captain Marvel