'Captain Marvel' is (kinda) the Nick Fury prequel you've been waiting for

It's not quite the Nick Fury solo film we've been clamoring for, but Captain Marvel might be the next best thing. For now, anyway.

While it's no secret that Samuel L. Jackson's S.H.I.E.L.D. agent character appears in the movie, what Marvel fans should know is that this isn't just another one of his surprise post-credits cameos.

Jackson is a major character in Captain Marvel – to the point that, during our visit to the set last spring, producer Jonathan Schwartz described the film as a "two-hander" between Fury and Carol Danvers (played by Brie Larson).

Not only that, because Captain Marvel takes place in the 1990s, it'll show us a version of Fury we've never seen onscreen before: younger and greener, still able to be shocked by alien invasions and the like.

Oh, and he's still got two eyes. Though probably not for very long, seeing as Jackson teased that we'd see "the origin of what happened to his eye."

Captain Marvel finds Fury "riding the desk at S.H.I.E.L.D.," as Jackson puts it, and feeling a tiny bit jaded.

"It's kind of the story of him reaching a point in his S.H.I.E.L.D. career where he’s more or less disillusioned," explained Schwartz. "In a post-Cold War era, there’s not a lot for S.H.I.E.L.D. to be doing."

Until, that is, outer-space beings come crashing down from the sky. Though the Fury we know from the Avengers movies is nigh unflappable, barely blinking at frozen super-soldiers or literal gods, the Fury of Captain Marvel never knew extraterrestrials even existed, let alone that they might have an interest in Earth.

So when Carol first comes to his attention, "she's just a crazy lady that broke into Blockbuster," said Jackson. "She's standing there telling me that she came from some planet, and she's got on strange clothes, and she's saying that there are these shapeshifting person that have infiltrated Earth, and we're looking at her like a normal person would look at a person who tells you something like that, like, Yeah, right."

Of course, Carol is right. Once Fury figures that out, his whole worldview changes – and he has the dawning realization that these extraterrestrial would-be invaders "they pose a greater threat than anyone even knows, and that we literally have no defenses against them," said Jackson. Captain Marvel will show us how Jackson dealt with that imminent disaster, and how that shaped him going forward.

At least some of that journey will be undertaken with Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), another fan favorite seen here in a fresher form. In Captain Marvel, he's a rookie so new that Fury barely knows his name – a far cry from the seasoned professional of the Marvel movies and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

But we'll get to know Fury outside his S.H.I.E.L.D. career as well, getting more details about his time in war, his experiences as a spy, and even his life with his family. Among the reveals Jackson could share? "Everybody calls him Fury, even his mother."

And everybody has to be eased into the larger Marvel universe, even Fury. "Before he showed up at Tony Stark’s house saying, There’s a great big universe out there, you just don’t know it yet, someone had to teach him that," said Schwartz.