Four longstanding mysteries solved by the concept art book for The Marvels

In a tradition that stretches back almost as far as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) itself, each time the studio unveils a new movie (or, as of 2021, a new streaming series), Marvel Publishing will then commemorate the project with the release of an accompanying art book. These comprehensive, full-color, 200-plus-page hardcover books compile hundreds of pieces of concept art from the film or series’ visual development team. Alongside the artwork, these books feature interviews with the head creatives — namely, the production and development executive, the director, the production designer, and the costume designer — as well as several concept artists who contributed to the project. The latest in this series of art books, for 2023’s The Marvels, was just released in late September of this year.

Officially titled Marvel Studios’ The Marvels: The Art of the Movie, this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at the development process of the 33rd MCU film, which serves as sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, while also picking up story threads from the streaming series WandaVision (2021) and Ms. Marvel (2022). The film stars Brie Larson as Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel, Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, and Iman Vellani as Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel, all of whom are quoted in the art book, alongside writer-director Nia DaCosta, executive producer Mary Livanos, production designer Cara Brower, and costume designer Lindsay Pugh.

What I personally find so interesting about these concept art books is how they afford us as fans the opportunity to experience the “sliding doors” phenomenon — we get a taste of “what could have been” for the movies and shows we likely already know and love if we’re intentionally seeking out their official art books. Concept art gives fans invaluable insight into the earliest stages of the filmmaking process, from how a project is first conceived, to how its various different elements then start to come together to create the visual language for what will eventually become the finished onscreen adaptation. These art books highlight the countless hours of work put in by the artists who make up each project’s visual development team, and in the case of The Marvels, this team was led by Andy Park, Director of Visual Development.

As an avid fan of the MCU myself, and especially The Marvels, I made an effort to acquire my own copy of the official art book as soon as it became available. I’ve spent the past week poring over its glossy pages, and in doing so, I’ve been delighted to inadvertently uncover answers to several of the film’s biggest outstanding mysteries that had been left unsolved ever since the credits rolled in November of last year. Here in this article, I’ve collected four of my favorite discoveries unearthed from the pages of The Marvels’ art book.

Mystery #1: Why was Captain Marvel the only hero in a ballgown?

I’ll admit this first one is just for fun, but when it was first revealed that Carol Danvers would be donning an elegant ballgown during a song-and-sequence on the singing planet Aladna, it begged the question — why weren’t Monica and Kamala also getting the same treatment? At the very least, think of the merchandising opportunities!

In the context of the movie, of course, it’s explained that Carol has to perform a duet with her husband-in-title-only, Prince Yan (played by Seo-Jun Park), as a cultural practice for the Aladnean people — she is, after all, royalty to them. Naturally, her casual clothing transforms into a ballgown fit for a princess. The dress itself is heavily inspired by her super-suit’s iconic red-and-blue color palette, complete with the gold star on the chest. In the art book, we’re treated to several different versions of this dress (courtesy of Elena Pavinato, pages 142-143), but we’re also shown how Kamala would look if she, too, got to wear a ballgown that echoed her superhero costume (once again courtesy of Pavinato, page 153).

According to costume designer Lindsay Pugh, there was once a point in the story where all three heroes would have been dressed to the nines for Carol’s big performance, but the idea sadly never made it out of the planning stages (I, for one, would have loved to see this onscreen). I guess we’ll just have to rely on our imaginations to envision whatever amazing black-and-white ballgown Monica would have worn for the occasion, as no concept art was provided in the book for that particular design.

Mystery #2: What happened to the “rain scene” between Carol and Monica?

Heading into The Marvels, one of the primary interpersonal conflicts expected to be explored was the implied tension between Carol and her estranged niece, Monica. When theofficial trailer for The Marvels released in July of 2023, it included a visual that a lot of fans — myself very much included — regarded as the perfect encapsulation of the now-strained Carol-Monica dynamic that was first teased over two years prior, in a scene from WandaVision Episode 5.

Dubbed the “rain scene” by fans, this hotly-anticipated moment from the trailer featured Carol and Monica, both in their upgraded superhero costumes, standing face-to-face and bearing remorseful expressions, particularly Carol, while rain poured down just outside the window behind them. Aided by the snippet of dialogue we received for this scene in the trailer — Carol: “I would never choose to bring anybody into this.” Monica: “You are not the only thing standing between this and the universe.” — this rain scene was largely assumed by fans to be when Carol and Monica would finally reconcile after 30 years apart.

It was quite unexpected, then, that this scene was nowhere to be found in the final cut of the movie. Carol and Monica did still reconcile, of course, but their conversation took place in an entirely different setting — a grassy field on a random unknown planet — and included entirely different lines than the ones mentioned above. In fact, Carol and Monica only ever shared a single emotional one-on-one conversation without Kamala also present, and that took place far earlier in the movie, on the lower deck of Carol’s ship, The Hoopty. They also never traveled to a location where it was actively raining.

Now, almost a year later, we finally have some answers as to what was going on in this mysterious deleted reconciliation scene. As noted in the section of the art book devoted to the Kree homeworld of Hala, Carol, and Monica were actually supposed to go on a side quest to this planet, which is where the rain scene would have also taken place (the architecture here matches the setting of the rain scene). As per the concept artist Christian Kesler: “For a while, there was a story beat where Carol and Monica actually break into a Kree weapons lab to steal Kamala’s bangle.” (page 114, which also features images of Carol and Monica in this weapons lab).

This additional information from the concept art actually provides credence to some previously unconfirmed rumors about an earlier version of the movie, one that was reportedly shown to test-screening audiences in the summer of 2022. Plot details that appeared online from this purported test screening did mention a moment between Carol and Monica on Hala, in which they watch the Kree people rejoice in their destroyed planet finally experiencing rain for the first time in years, thanks to the efforts of the Kree supremor, Zawe Ashton’s Dar-Benn (she stole the water from Aladna’s oceans). After talking with Monica, Carol supposedly has some sort of a moral reckoning, which would explain their expressions from the rain scene in the July 2023 trailer.

Of course, all of this is quite a departure from the version of the movie that actually hit theatres last year — none of our heroes ever even travel to Hala, Carol, and Monica are never separated from Kamala, and Kamala only ever loses her bangle for a brief period, at the end of the final battle when she gets temporarily incapacitated by Dar-Benn… which brings me to my next big discovery from the book.

Mystery #3: Was Dar-Benn planning to kidnap Kamala?

One of the biggest lingering questions after The Marvels came out, for those of us who’d been closely following the leadup to the film’s release, was the context behind an official still that depicted Kamala, sans bangle (and, inexplicably, sans shoes), kneeling on an illuminated hexagonal floor plate with Dar-Benn crouched menacingly in front of her.

This image randomly appeared online at the start of November 2023, and it promptly sent fans into a tailspin – had Kamala really been kidnapped? Was she in danger? What happened to her bangle? And where were Carol and Monica? – only for nothing of the sort to occur onscreen when the movie came out the following week. This, along with the rain scene from the previous point, was poised to be a question that would simply never be answered, a suspected relic of an earlier iteration of the movie.

As is the common theme of this article, however, an answer finally did come in the form of the movie’s art book. As depicted in two images by Kesler (page 186), Kamala is in a similar kneeling pose on Dar-Benn’s ship, but this time with a bundle of distinctive glowing blue tubes connecting to her — a visual that fans will recognize from 2019’s Captain Marvel as a way for the Kree to commune with the Supreme Intelligence. The A.I. overlord used to run Hala before Carol destroyed it in the 1990s and unintentionally sent the planet into disarray, as shown via flashbacks in The Marvels. Based on similarities in the shape of the illuminated floor panel, some astute fans did suspect this scenario when the photo of Kamala and Dar-Benn made the rounds online last year, but now this concept art all but confirms it.

Unfortunately, it also actually creates even more questions, and these are ones that we have virtually no hope of ever getting answers to, but as a fan, it’s still fun to speculate about them. For starters, why was Dar-Benn seemingly trying to connect Kamala to the Supreme Intelligence — wasn’t it destroyed by Carol 30 years ago? What was her reasoning for connecting Kamala, the first onscreen mutant in the MCU, to a device that presumably only works on members of the Kree race? Had the Kree supremor repurposed the technology for her own nefarious use in the years since Carol wreaked havoc on the A.I. overlord? And how did she even successfully kidnap Kamala from Carol and Monica and steal her bangle in the first place?

Mystery #4: What was with all that behind-the-scenes footage of Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris, and Iman Vellani filming wire stunts together?

Similar to the art books, as of 2021, the MCU has released in-depth, behind-the-scenes documentary specials on Disney+ for each of their movies and shows from Phase Four and beyond. Marvel Studios Assembled: The Making of The Marvels premiered on February 7th, 2024, and as is always the case with Assembled, there was plenty of supplementary footage from the production of The Marvels peppered throughout the documentary.

A considerable amount of this footage showed Larson, Parris, and Vellani decked out in their super suits, strung up on wires in front of a blue screen, working in tandem to stop some yet-unseen force in the depths of space. Plenty of footage from visual effects-heavy films like The Marvels looks almost unrecognizable during filming before the post-production team works its magic, so this particular footage wouldn’t even be worth noting… if it weren’t for the fact that we never saw anything like in the finished product.

In The Marvels, our intrepid trio never goes out into space together at any point. Monica flies out alone to fix the rift in space-time during the film’s climax, after absorbing the combined energy of Carol and Kamala (now wearing both bangles!). Carol is out in space on several occasions throughout the movie, including when she faces off with Dar-Benn during the final battle, but Kamala never even ventures past the deck of a spaceship (aside from her brief stint in Monica’s spacesuit during the opening entanglement sequence).

It’s long been assumed that at least some of these group wire stunts were from an alternate version of the film’s climax (The Marvels, like most MCU films, underwent at least a round or two of reshoots after principal photography wrapped in November of 2021), but now, with the art book, we can finally gain deeper insight into what was previously planned for the movie’s action finale.

As seen in stunning keyframes by artists Andrew Kim (pages 190-191, 194-195) and Lixin Yin (pages 192-193), and expanded upon in the information blurb for this section of the art book, this finale was previously conceived as an opportunity for the trio of heroes to head out into space together, complete with Kamala wearing an upgraded space-proof version of her new super suit.

The team would have directed their combined light-based powers towards the rift in space-time in an effort to fix it together, and DaCosta also reveals that there was even a time when it would have been Carol making the big heroic sacrifice at the end to successfully close the rift from the inside. In the film, it’s Monica, not Carol, who ultimately winds up trapped in an alternate universe and separated from the team in order to save the day. As DaCosta explains in the art book, “By the time we really got into it, it was always going to be Monica. It just felt important for her that we see her full hero journey.”

The Marvels is currently streaming exclusively on Disney+. Marvel Studios’ The Marvels: The Art of the Movie can be purchased through online booksellers.