Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane!

It’s Brie Larson.

Captain Marvel herself was in Toronto this week to promote the movie Free Fire, a blackly comic shoot-‘em-up from British director Ben Wheatley.

Free Fire has an ensemble cast that includes Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, Noah Taylor et al.

It opens next year.

For Larson, 26, much has changed since her last TIFF visit.

She was here to promote the movie Room a year ago and won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA and a SAG award, among many others honours, for her performance in that film; in July she also found herself a coveted spot in the Marvel Comics universe.

Asked about those major changes, Larson said yesterday, “I think it’s kind of a typical thing — a year later, so much has changed and so much has stayed the same. A lot of things about my public persona have changed, in that more people know what my face looks like, but all of the intimate details, like my private life, the friends I have, how I take my coffee - that’s all the same.”

Larson is a bit of a superhero in person, talking about her profession, for example, as being an "act of service". As Captain Marvel she’ll have super strength, the ability to fly and the capacity to project energy; she doesn't need a costume for that last quality.

You can see why Larson got the role.

“I have very specific reasons for doing film, and they don’t have to do with me or getting my face plastered on more objects,” she says.

“It’s about the material. And movies live on and can be places I can’t, and I want to be conscious about what it is that I’m presenting to the world, and what those representations of life are, and how they’re being shared.

"And obviously Marvel is such an incredible platform to be able to share in storytelling."

Adds Larson, "I think what Captain Marvel represents, and what this film is shaping up to be, has a message that’s undeniably important to the world right now.”

Twitter: @LizBraunSUN