It’s About Damn Time: Captain Marvel and the Female Lead Superhero Movie

With Captain Marvel hitting the cinema so incredibly soon, I’ve been devouring pretty much every single feature I can find on the film. What started as a general – but still ferocious – curiosity about Marvel’s first female lead release slowly morphed into a wide eyed admiration and adoration of Brie Larson and her eloquence, intelligence and feminism.

And this got me thinking.

2017’s Wonder Woman made me cry: when Diana ascended the ladder into No Man’s Land, strong and capable and brave, I felt my eyes get wet. All I could think was it’s about damn time, in an echo of Hope Van Dyne’s words in the previous year’s Ant Man, when she lays eyes on the Wasp suit.

The No Man’s Land scene, for me and many other women, I’m sure, was breathtaking: here was a superhero doing what superheroes do best, but she was a woman, and nobody had drawn attention to that fact – nobody had made the obvious observation that Diana could face No Man’s Land because she’s not a man, for example – and yeah, Diana’s costume bares a lot of flesh, but it’s armour, it’s not gratuitous, and she uses that armour straight away to deflect a bullet, watching the bullet break with the same kind of confused but astonished look that I had on my own face as I watched.

I felt like a kid again, sitting two centimetres away from the TV watching one of my childhood heroes – one of the Totally Spies, or Sailor Moon, or Kim Possible – do something cool, about to pick up my dolls and reenact the scene ad infinitum. But I wasn’t a child, I was an adult – a 20 year old woman, just finished with her second year of university, and it dawned on me after watching the film, while I was still reeling from the cocktail of feelings it’d instilled in me (I felt empowered, awed, emotional) that this was the first time I’d ever felt like this watching a film.

2016’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice gave us a little taster of Diana’s power and strength. But it was just that – a teaser, a hint, a promise of greater things to come next year. She wasn’t named in the title, nobody says Diana or Wonder Woman in the entire film.

And that’s got me thinking, too. It’s got me thinking about the Wasp, who holds the honour of being the first named female superhero in any Marvel film. She shares the title with Ant Man, but she’s named, so that’s something, right? Right?

It’s about damn time, she says. Yeah, it is. Black Widow has been in the MCU since 2010’s Iron Man 2. For some reason, she’s never had a solo film – most of her male teammates have. She’s finally, finally getting one in 2020. It’s about damn time.

The MCU has existed since 2008’s Iron Man. Over ten years later, we finally get a female lead film. It’s about damn time.

Brie Larson told The Hollywood Reporter:

But women have been opening movies since the silent era. We have been part of every major art movement. People just push us away once the movement gains momentum and act like we were never really there.

Now, women are reclaiming their momentum, their place in pop culture. It’s about damn time.

Carol Danvers is strong, majorly strong, and Brie Larson got majorly strong for the role with a hell of a lot of training. She told Total Film that:

“Because body image is such a huge part of being a woman I always just wanted my body to be eliminated from the conversation, I just wish my body would disappear and it would be something that no one noticed or cared about. And this was the first time where I felt like I was able to learn how to use my body as a tool, almost like it’s a paintbrush, something that depicts emotion.”

My reading of this is that Captain Marvel has helped Larson reclaim her body in her art from the male gaze. And I think that’s the crux of the matter, really, with the No Man’s Land scene: I wasn’t watching a female superhero filtered through the male gaze. This wasn’t Black Widow with her suit inexplicably unzipped to her cleavage, or Scarlett Witch with a costume that emphasises her chest. This was Wonder Woman in armour, about to save the day, in a film named after her.

It’s about damn time. 

Now, very soon, we’ll watch Carol Danvers fighting the good fight in a costume that covers her fully, as much as her male counterparts. No curiously skimpy outfit that seems entirely impractical for battle. It’s something so simple, but so meaningful: it screams nobody cares what you think of Carol Danvers’ sexual appeal.

Why it’s taken this long I can’t say. I don’t feel grateful that the tide is finally turning: I feel incredible frustration. Women are finally being allowed a seat at the table, a voice in the conversation. We’re being given what we’re owed, not being presented a gift.

Time’s up.

And there’s still a long, long way to go. Superhero films are still predominantly white, though 2018’s Black Panther went some way towards rectifying this. There are no LGBTQ characters in the MCU or DCEU, despite Wonder Woman being canonically bisexual – and Harley Quinn in a relationship with Poison Ivy – in the comics.

Some women are being given a seat and a voice, but not all. We can’t forget that, even as we celebrate the changes being made now.

Representation matters. People deserve to see themselves in the arts.

Yes, it’s about damn time. It’s about damn time we see the world as it is reflected accurately in the media we consume.

Captain Marvel is about to prove, once and for all, that female superheroes deserve to star in their own films, deserve to be the eponymous hero. Black Widow will prove it again next year. Men never had to face such a test, of course, but I take a great deal of satisfaction in the fact that Wonder Woman deflected any disbelief in the success of a female lead film with the same ease Diana broke apart those bullets with her gauntlets.

Now, it’s Marvel’s turn. And it’s about damn time.