by Linda Kay

Starring: Nemo, Tango

Directed by: Nia DaCosta

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this film!

Synopsis: Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) goes up against a ruthless Dar-Benn (Zawe Ashton) who is determined to repair her planet after the unintended consequences brought about by Carol’s annihilation of the Supreme Intelligence. Complicating matters is the fact that Carol’s powers have become entangled with those of the estranged Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Marvel wanna-be Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani).

Cat Burglars (Scene Stealers): Returning with Carol is Goose, who on the surface appears to be a ginger tabby cat but is actually a Flerken (creatures with tentacled mouths and infinite space contained within pocket realities inside their bodies). Goose is playing with a laser pointer aimed by Carol on her ship when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) calls.

The pair set out to find the source of a wormhole anomoly.

They return to their ship before continuing on to a Kree spaceship to find out what is happening.

Carol suddenly changes places with Kamala, who inexplicably finds herself on the Kree ship with Goose. Never having had any actual contact with any of the members of S.H.I.E.L.D., this comes as a complete shock to her. She is even more shocked when Goose proceeds to eat a couple of Kree who are about to attack her.

Switching places again, Goose and Kamala find themselves back in Kamala’s house where her family are now the ones to be shocked, especially after Goose coughs up the Kree and a fight breaks out.

Nick Fury and Monica arrive at the house to try to explain to Kamala’s family why she is now involved in this complicated situation. Nick takes a moment to pet Goose.

To protect Kamala’s family, Nick takes them and Goose up to his space station. Kamala’s mother notes how someone seems to be overfeeding Goose, who is cleaning herself using her mouth tentacles.

Things look desperate when Dar-Benn creates a broken wormhole to steal the Earth’s sun. As Nick and his crew are trying to figure out how to evacuate everyone from the space station, they find out where some strange egg-like items have been coming from. Goose has laid the eggs and they are now hatching out countless adorable Flerkittens!

This gives Nick an idea. He realizes that evacuating a family of Flerkens is easier than trying to evacuate hundreds of crew members.

In the best scene of the film the song Memory from the musical Cats performed by Barbara Streisand starts to play as a voice instructs the crew members to let the Flerkens eat them. People are running everywhere in a panic as the tiny kittens swallow them up one by one.

Herding the kittens into an evacuation pod, the Flerkittens are launched into space and begin floating in Zero G.

Nick and Kamala’s family, along with several other Flerkittens, get into the last pod and launch but are almost sucked into the wormhole.

Breaking free, they plummet to Earth and crash in New York. Some of the kittens throw up crew members after getting sick while traveling in the spinning craft.

Goose is last seen sitting outside Monica’s former home in Louisiana with Kamala’s family moving in.

Behind the Scenes

Since this entry in the Captain Marvel universe was filmed in the U.K. and not the U.S., cat actors Reggie, Gonzo, Rizzo and Archie did not reprise their roles as Goose. The animal trainer this time around was Jo Vaughan and she chose cat actors Nemo and Tango to take over the coveted role. Tango took the lead role while Nemo was the backup. This was a debut screen role for both cat actors.

A terrific interview with Jo Vaughan written by Emma Radmilovic was published on the Pumpkin website.

Ten kittens were reportedly also cast to play the Flerkittens with hundreds more created using CGI. It is clear CGI was used in numerous scenes involving Goose as well, especially when she and Captain Marvel are flying through space. Below is a fascinating look at how CGI was used to bring the fuzzy little voracious space creatures to life.

Posters were released featuring both Goose alone and with her offspring.

Final Mewsings: Cats lovers would happily let their cats eat them if that’s what the kitties wanted.

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