‘The Marvels’ Made A Conscious Attempt To Soften Up Brie Larson’s Prickly Rep, But Audiences Still Resisted

The box office non-event that the internet has been anti-hyping for weeks finally came to pass as The Marvels debuted to the lowest-ever opening weekend for a Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. Neckbeard Nation will likely place the blame on Marvel’s supposed “wokeness,” by which is meant its occasional willingness to cast women of color in substantial roles; the most likely actual culprit is the sheer volume of superhero #content that’s been made available to casual and diehard fans alike, with increasing lack of discernment between the difference between the two. This is a year, after all, where a movie about the Flash, co-starring Michael Keaton returning to the role of Batman, couldn’t find its box-office footing; obviously the era of a superhero movie showing up and making $200 million and change as a matter of course has come to a close.

But The Marvels is also worth considering as a direct sequel to Captain Marvel, which was released in between the Avengers: Infinity War cliffhanger and its three-hour resolution Avengers: Endgame. That timing was likely instrumental in the movie’s blockbuster grosses; I’d also wager the then-recent success of DC’s Wonder Woman movie helped too, as Captain Marvel (also known as Carol Danvers) was more or less positioned as Marvel’s version of that otherworldly Amazon princess. The first Captain Marvel itself is, well, OK, in that way that a lot of Marvel movies from the past five years have been OK: a well-cast, sometimes amusingly, dully shot, easy-to-watch mediocrity that has its moments. It’s a shame that The Marvels has faced such an avalanche of bad press, because it improves on its predecessor all over the place – including its use of Brie Larson, an Oscar-winning star whose absences from movie screens have been nearly as substantial as Carol’s sojourns into unseen planet-saving adventures across the galaxy.

see also

Brie Larson Visibly Irked By Red Carpet Question About Her ‘Captain Marvel’ Future: “Does Anyone Want Me to Do it Again?”

Larson said she's unsure how long she'll continue to play... By Greta Bjornson @greatbjornson

Larson has been a constant target from the Moronic YouTuber Industrial Complex since before Captain Marvel came out. Watching a plurality of these videos would irrevocably ruin my YouTube algorithm in a way that I’m not willing to risk, but the central idea seems to be that Larson is a strident and humorless feminist self-righteously attempting to reshape comic book movies in her image by criticizing the lack of diversity in media, unsmiling her way toward the ruination of the MCU’s precious maleness. There also seems to be a horseshoe-theory resistance to Larson from less overtly anti-progressive folks who find her feminist/quasi-activist rhetoric opportunistic, disingenuous, and vanity-based, given her underdiscussed past as a would-be purveyor of teen-idol mall rock. In other words, they find her unconscionably actor-y.

What the YouTube dopes and rage-tweeters are inarticulately grasping at (and, in some cases, likely willfully misinterpreting to stoke outrage clicks) is a certain opacity in Larson’s performing style, particularly as Carol Danvers. Larson’s most interesting pre-Marvel roles have two tracks. More prominent is the open-hearted toughness of characters who turn caregiving into acts of sheer will in movies like Short Term 12 and Room, for which she won an Oscar. But she also shows off an arch flipside as memorably costumed characters who don’t care much for anyone in movies like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (where she plays icy rock star Envy Adams) and the shoot-out farce Free Fire. 

Carol Danvers combines these two modes, though perhaps not intentionally. She’s not supposed to be arch or uncaring so much as in possession of a certain fighter-pilot stoicism – and the fact that this derives from her more human side, not a kind of enlightened-goddess sensibility, seems to make a lot of nerds uncomfortable. It’s obviously a persona that appeals to Larson; in her recent Apple TV series Lessons in Chemistry, she plays Elizabeth Zott, a chemist facing sexist discrimination in the 1960s, who applies her scientific know-how to hosting a feminist cooking show. Elizabeth has confidence in her own abilities that makes her passions appear aloof. Like Carol Danvers, she’s also told to smile more.

Lessons in Chemistry has the framework of an unconventional thinker fighting against social conformity; in that context, Elizabeth’s seriousness and forthrightness has self-evident virtues. A less nerdy version isn’t as immediate a fit in Captain Marvel, largely because Marvel Studios only deigned to make its solo-female-superhero movie after a decade-plus of parceling out different kinds of shtick to other characters. So Carol, a high-achieving human who temporarily loses her memory and trains as part of an intergalactic fighting force, can’t really do the fish-out-of-water alien-warrior thing; that belongs to Thor. She can’t really be the deadpan, unemotive operative with a heart of gold; that’s Black Widow. The military-trained leader with an innate sense of right and wrong has been claimed by Captain America. She’s closer to a Jason Bourne figure, only her memory wipe doesn’t cause as much visible angst. In other words, she’s a challenge, despite Larson’s charisma – and maybe also because Larson resists the kind of cutesy likability cues younger actresses have been expected to perform for so many years. 

The Marvels challenges Carol further in the form of her own unwanted team – one way that the past lore actually helps her, given that despite her identification as an Avenger, she’s spent all of about 10 minutes of screentime in that particular supergroup. Captain Marvel, still do-gooding on solo missions out in space, is yoked with Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), her best friend’s now-grown daughter who she hasn’t seen in years, and Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a teenage superhero who calls herself Ms. Marvel, when their various (and often ill-defined) powers become “entangled.” The side effect: When they use those powers simultaneously, the three women abruptly swap physical places. It’s a thin pretense for some amusingly chaotic action scenes and, later, sleepover-style training exercises as they’re forced to work in sync. Carol yearns to reconnect with an understandably wary Monica, while receiving the fangirl admirations of Kamala with a kind of polite discomfort, at least at first.

Is this a conscious attempt to soften Captain Marvel up – to literally get her to smile more? At times, The Marvels appears to be taking Larson on a strange tour of her less successful forays into pop-entertainment performances of femininity, especially when the action briefly shifts to a planet whose inhabitants communicate in song. There, it’s revealed that Carol has, for diplomatic reasons, married into the planet’s royal family, making her both a celebrity and a princess, like an alternate world where Larson’s teen-pop career took off – supplemented by a delightful (if abbreviated) musical number whose cross-cultural brightness recalls Larson’s ill-fated, little-seen musical Basmati Blues (shot before Room but released afterward). Carol powers through her obvious embarrassment; Kamala, raised on Bollywood movies, has no such trouble embracing what might be seen as stereotypical girliness. On the other hand, Kamala is less accustomed to the hard choices superheroism sometimes requires in the heat of battle.

That’s the interpersonal dynamic for much of The Marvels, with Carol and Monica warming up as Kamala tries her best to chill, and it’s communicated in ways unlikely to placate the dissatisfied wails coming from the sentient wall of FunkoPops that broadcast on YouTube. The Marvels is unabashedly silly – and feels more comfortable in its silliness than the canned quips of other recent Marvel projects. The worst Marvel stuff is made with a child’s sensibility while inexplicably assuring adults that this is really for them; this one isn’t explicitly for kids, but seems to understand that kids will watch it, and even actively hope that girls will. A lot of actors would probably blanche at their solo superhero vehicle possibly turning into a de facto babysitting gig, but this shift seems to relax Larson. It makes her guarded, tentative qualities a funnier, sweeter part of her character’s text. Captain Marvel, like Larson, is still figuring out how to be a star. It’s especially neat to see that contrasted with the other career phases on display here: Vellani plays a superhero neophyte, but as a performer never seems remotely hesitant. Teyonah Parris has still been best-served by weirder stuff, like this year’s They Cloned Tyrone, but makes good use of that suppressed electricity as a woman still adjusting to her (again, quite ill-defined) power set. 

That three-woman chemistry mitigates the movie’s considerable choppiness on the writing and editing levels. (Having seen all of the MCU films and shows connected to this one, I can testify that they do not conceal the key to understanding the details of this movie’s plot. Indeed, the movie often feels as if it’s alluding to background information from deleted scenes, or projects that were never actually made.) Placing star power above plot mechanics is actually a rich Marvel tradition; the first Iron Man is an origin story with a standard good-guy-fights-mirror-image-bad-guy climax, enlivened by Robert Downey Jr.’s unforgettable performance. Neither Brie Larson nor Captain Marvel have that level of straightforward pop. It’s taken a second movie for actress and character to fully sync up – and based on the early box office returns, there may not be a third. But if this is a disaster, it’s one of Marvel’s own making, forged in liquid molten hubris. In the build-up to Endgame and the downslope since, they’ve tried over and over to sell their movies as culminations or next chapters – as important brand-name lore in service of that “bigger universe” Nick Fury spoke about in Iron Man (a speech expertly parodied, as it happens, in The Marvels). However ramshackle, The Marvels is a shining reminder of how much actual humans bring to these super-human brands.

Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.