Who Is Gemma Chan’s Minn-Erva in the Captain Marvel Movie?

Humans and Crazy Rich Asians actress Gemma Chan has reportedly been cast as Minn-Erva, a.k.a. Doctor Minerva, in the upcoming Captain Marvel movie. In comics continuity, Minn-Erva is a Kree geneticist and spy who originally comes to Earth looking to procreate with Mar-Vell, because she hopes that doing so will help to accelerate Kree evolution.

Now, I really don’t need to see a film where the villain is a deranged Asian woman lusting/hunting after a white dude’s DNA. Let’s not. However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has taken plenty of liberties with its comic book inspirations, so there’s no reason to assume that they’re going to follow the comic storylines strictly. Just look at the difference between the comics’ horribly problematic Man-Ape and Black Panther‘s amazing M’Baku, or Iron Man 3‘s inventive interpretation of The Mandarin. Minn-Erva could easily be reimagined as a memorable evil scientist, which I would be 100% into. Given that Marvel’s been quite close-lipped about the plot details, for now I’m going to wait, in hope, on more information.

We do know that Captain Marvel will be a period piece set in 1990s, and it will somehow involve the war between the Kree and the Skrulls. “There’s an entire section of our comics that deal with the Kree/Skrull War,” said Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, “and we haven’t tapped into that at all. And we thought that would be an amazing, huge portion of mythology to belong to Captain Marvel.”

As for casting, Ben Mendelsohn has been rumored to play the Big Bad of Captain Marvel for some time now, and we also know that DeWanda Wise, of Netflix’s She’s Gotta Have It series, has been cast in an as-yet-unnamed role. I’m not sure who Mendelsohn will play, but like everyone else, I’m really hoping Wise will be playing Monica Rambeau. Getting to see Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau fight together on-screen would be pretty damn amazing.

What do you think of Chan’s casting? Do you have any theories as to what Marvel is planning for Captain Marvel?

(via io9, image: Danny E. Martindale / Getty Images)

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