“Can you fly this thing?”
“I think so.”
“It’s a yes or no question!”
“Yes.”
This was in the trailer, so I assume it’s an example of good writing?
I (think I) agree with Kelly Wand in that MCU portrays people who are yanked out of a decade of pop culture as still stuck in it and (more or less) portraying the best of it. I’d much rather have seen Carol represent the late 80s in overcoming the contemptuous post-grunge 90s. I don’t recall they did anything to color her pre-Kree life in its own time period. I see what Tom is saying about the music and clothes being for the viewer, but if it’s only for the viewer it’s too incongruent.
I also thought the script felt unfinished; when I read about Joss Whedon or Tony Gilroy being flown in to fix scenes, I imagine they sound like parts of this movie before they get their hands on it. I know, who am I to accuse Disney of not polishing a movie, but 5-6 scenes just needed a couple reworked sentences or an extra line to really make them sing. I enjoy rewatching movies with small scenes more than the action when done well.
I do want to rewatch it, though. And man, I love a lot of the portrayal of the Kree vs. Scrull war. Make an RTS, Marvel!
Based on my experience on several movie/gaming forums, where these views are somewhat more prevalent, at least it seems like that, it’s the same people who anti-Disney/Marvel, anti-PC/SJW, so they obviously don’t like movie critics and Rotten Tomatoes, and think that the Oscars suck.
Their overall point is that recently Hollywood started shoveling its own political agenda down their throat. I know, I know. Which makes all those inclusive blockbuster movies automatically bad, as bad as recent Ghostbusters or Ocean’s 8. Remember the end of BlacKkKlansman, which was too preachy, so the movie left a bad taste in your mouthes? That’s how they see things, even when they’re subtle.
So Wonder Woman is weak compared to Snyder’s efforts. BvS Snyder’s cut is a masterpiece. The Last Jedi is awful, because of all these women characters, who’re always right. Prequels and Lucas FTW. Black Panther is the worst Marvel movie ever made with completely stupid and banal villain, even MCU’s phase one origins were better. Besides, we already have the Blade trilogy, so what’s all the fuzz about?
Fury Road wasn’t a sure win, because of wives, grandmas on motorbikes, and they’re still not 100% sure about Furiosa. But Blade Runner 2049 was, probably because women were put on their places, where they belong, and boobs. And don’t get them started on Moonlight. Green Book… that’s how you should deal with race and other minority related topics.
So Ripley obviously rocks, Sarah Connor rocks as well. They were women, because they’re women, not because of political agendas. They need to be women, Ripley had mother-daughter issues, Sarah should give birth. You can’t just replace them, and they’re not Mary Sue. Look, even James Cameron is on their side and uses almost the same rhetoric (source):
“All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided. She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing! I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie but, to me, it’s a step backwards. Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon. She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit. And to me, [the benefit of characters like Sarah] is so obvious. I mean, half the audience is female!”
The saddest thing about this whole mess is that the most adequate of these people keep saying that all these racial, minority issues don’t affect their ability to empathize with characters, it’s just that all these movies are really, really bad, because modern film makers put their agenda and money first, quality of a movie second. But time and time again they’re proving that they can’t distinguish a good film making from a bad one, a good shot, a line of dialogue, a scene from a bad ones. If the movie sucks, everything in it sucks, there is not a single redeeming feature.
P.S: I haven’t seen Captain Marvel, so haven’t listened to this podcast either, but Brie Larson was right when she said the things she said. Although Wrinkle in Time is not a good movie.
What’s weird about this is that Captain Marvel is only preachy in kind of a half-assed way. There are a couple of lame “smile more” and “emote less” lines in the film, but it’s mostly totally incidental that she’s a woman, just as Fury’s and Rambeau’s blackness is not a plot point in any way beyond a throwaway line or two. Black Panther leaned 1000% harder into black empowerment than Captain Marvel does into female empowerment.
Well, here is what I think about it. There is nothing wrong in depicting a minority character with all their specific issues, when your point is that’s their life is different, complicated, but ultimately interesting enough, because you probably don’t know anything about it, because right now it’s not well represented in the culture.
On the opposite side, there’s nothing wrong in showing a minority character without all their specific racial or gender issues, when your point is their life is exactly the same as yours, because ultimately they’re the same people like you, so let’s be more tolerant of one another.
While people I clumsily tried to describe will call the former movies way too preachy, the latter movies are blatant tokenisms to them. So you can’t win that argument.
So: idiots then. Got it. Least it sounds like they’re not getting laid, so hopefully their lines will die out soon.
All the of the trailers in front of the showing I saw were targeting a female audience. All dramas with female leads. Lots of emotional closeups. Nothing fantasy / sci-fi / action or comic book.
This theater has always targeted trailers to the genre of the movie before, which I enjoy.
I can’t decide if it is OK that I was bothered by this. I mean, this was a comic book movie right? Should it matter if the lead was woman, man, animal or plant? I enjoy a good tear jerker when I’m in the mood but that was pretty far out of tone from what this movie was.
By making a bigger deal out of the movie having a female lead than the movie being a marvelverse comic film it just seemed sexist in a way. Like telling women, “Here’s your little room. This is what you get to watch.”
Or maybe it’s me. Haven’t thought this one through all the way.
I got Endgame and Shazam and felt sleepy. Then Dumbo and annoyed.
Something else (I think) I forgot to mention on the 'cast that bummed me out was how the amnesia stuff as presented deprived us of anything about her fighter pilot days. Was she a good one? Was flying special to her? Was inadvertently (as usual) acquiring the power of planeless flight and being able to zip around in space more meaningful to her because she’d been a fighter pilot? The movie suggests that she (Brie Larson!) never had any lasting friends (or family) in life till Annette Bening and Lashana. Totally down with an indestructible flying goddess helping a family get onto a spaceship climax to show me what the most powerful Marvel character is finally capable of, but at least give me something.
Yeah, I got Shazam, Dark Phoenix, Dumbo, The Lion King, and the new F&F film with The Rock and Jason Statham. I think it was just your theater.
In the 2012-2013 comics that defined modern Captain Marvel, she is absolutely in love with flying – with planes and without. The first major story arc centers around Carol flying a legendary WW2 plane (which, uh, travels through time). In the second arc, she loses her ability to fly and has to deal with being grounded (until Captain America loans her his flying motorcycle, of course).
I didn’t miss this in the movie, but that’s probably because I brought it with me from having read the comics.
I think there was some exposition there. Her childhood is shown where she’s into racing. That’s a first step toward being a gearhead. We find out later that she couldn’t be a fighter pilot because they didn’t let women do that so that’s why she signed on with Mar-Vell’s test squadron. I think somewhere during those scenes there was talk about her being a really good pilot (and her friend was too…). It wasn’t shoved in our face, but it was there.
I’m probably just being too picky about things called Captain Marvel. Wouldn’t be the first time.
I liked Captain Marvel, but I do support your advocacy for more Thor Ragnarock.
Is it possible to vote for a movie as president?
-xtien
“Thank you, sweet rabbit.”
I can’t imagine any fighter pilot to whom flying isn’t special. Especially when she’s a woman dealing with the Air Force’s limitations on women.
Also, ha ha, @Kelly_Wand wanted more exposition! :)
-Tom
No way, just facial expressions. Like when Brave fires her arrow. And impenetrable Air Force jargon. Totally different!
I rolled my eyes at the bit about “Avenger” being Carol’s pilot callsign because it seemed like a clumsy Just So story for How the Avengers Got Their Name.
But then I read (link below) about the WASPs, the real-life first women trained as USAF pilots in a secret program during WW2 that was almost completely unknown until the 1970s. Most of them were trained at…Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas.
Which means “Avenger” is a great and totally plausible callsign for a groundbreaking woman Air Force pilot. And now I think that’s probably the best justification for naming Marvel’s superteam “The Avengers” (which, face it, is a really odd name for a team of superheroes) that anyone has yet suggested.
(In an alternate universe, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow, and Captain America are known as The Sweetwaters.)
https://www.npr.org/2010/03/09/123773525/female-wwii-pilots-the-original-fly-girls
Given that it gave them an excuse to roll out the avengers theme I was pretty happy with that decision.
I like that back story!
Excellent point! I enjoyed that detail too. There was a character in the Kelly DeConnick Captain Marvel run, Helen Cobb, that was a WASP and another role model to Carol. Helen was also a member (in the comic) of the Mercury 13 program, which (in real life!) trained twelve or fourteen or so women in the original American space program. Many of those astronaut trainees were WASPs. But they weren’t used because NASA wound up deciding that ladies couldn’t be astronauts. Even though, duh, they obviously could have been.
To extend the tangent, there is a really good series of SF books by Mary Robinette Kowal that features a WASP pilot in an alternate history. It’s called the Lady Astronaut series, so no spoilers as to what happens to that character.
I thought it was interesting that the WASP acronym was so tied to “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant” in 20th Century pop culture when there was another perfectly good group with the same name to learn about. And I thought making a reference to the WASP program in Captain Marvel was great, thematically, about another set of women that wanted to be fighter pilots and astronauts.