#Marvel captain marvel movie#

In its final act, the movie reveals that to be a lie: Diana is the daughter of Zeus. The film version of Diana’s origin story begins in the classic way: The queen of the immortal and isolated Amazons longed for a child so strongly that the gods took pity on her and breathed life into a clay doll. Captain Marvel had a gender-neutral, comic origin story and chose to invent a female presence for it. Wonder Woman had the opportunity to root itself in an existing comic origin story that was deliberately crafted to be entirely feminine, and chose instead to use an origin that had a masculine presence inserted into it. Still, while pitting Captain Marvel against Wonder Woman isn’t productive - they are two different movies with two different approaches to the female superhero - there is one specific comparison that is apt. And also because the playground argument with pretensions that is the “Marvel vs. I want to be clear about that, because there is often pressure to savagely winnow an already small body of films down to the One True Good Superheroine Movie in a way that there isn’t for a One True Good Superhero Movie. I liked Wonder Woman more than Captain America : Civil War and Aquaman, which are also movies I enjoy. If anything I enjoyed Wonder Woman more - but again, that’s not a comparison of much significance. The only two female-lead superhero films of our modern era should not be pitted against each other lightly. Captain Marvel genderbends Mar-Vell, giving the heroine an origin story where her heroic strength - universal that it is - comes from female source.Īnd this gives it a leg up on Wonder Woman. It turns out we were all barking up the wrong tree.

Marvel Studiosīefore the movie was released, many speculated that Jude Law’s unnamed role, announced to be Carol’s Kree mentor, was Mar-Vell. They also hold Lawson’s pacifism dear they found solace and inspiration in her goal of ending wars, not fighting them. Carol and Maria talk about how their jobs as test pilots for Lawson’s research were ones that allowed them to live out skybound dreams that were denied to them by the US military simply because of their gender and sex. That Carol still sees Lawson when she speaks to the Supreme Intelligence implies that Lawson had an enormous emotional impact on Carol, a lot bigger than realizing your boss is an alien and taking their word that an engine needs to be destroyed.Ĭarol and Lawson don’t get a lot of shared screen time in Captain Marvel, but it’s not hard to guess at some probable reasons why Lawson’s presence would be the key to Carol’s emotional trust. Wendy Lawson, a to-all-appearances-human engineer.

Before Yon-Rogg wiped her memories, Carol knew Mar-Vell as Dr. The AI reaches into your mind and finds the one person who you find most trusted and comforting and parental - because that’s what the Supreme Intelligence is to the Kree: a parental, comforting, trust-it-or-else way of enforcing cultural hegemony.Īnd the reason why Carol sees the Supreme Intelligence as Annette Bening is because Bening’s real role is as the undercover, pacifist, Kree scientist, Mar-Vell. The movie Captain Marvel forges a new and cohesive origin for Carol Danvers, but there’s one change that is a head and shoulders above all the others.ĭuring the press tour for Captain Marvel, Annette Bening revealed that her extremely-under-wraps character was the Supreme Intelligence, but if you’ve seen the movie, you know that the Supreme Intelligence appears differently to everyone. Then she got new ones from aliens experimenting on her. She got her powers from being gene-scrambled with the alien superhero Mar-Vell, in a machine called the “Psyche-Magnitron.” Then she lost them from touching the X-Man Rogue. This is not unexpected in the realm of film adaptation, nor did it come as a surprise for fans of the hero in the comics, Carol is not the second, or third, but the sixth person to be Captain Marvel. In the process of bringing Carol Danvers to the big screen, Captain Marvel changed her origin story.

Marvel captain marvel