Captain Marvel and Batgirl Feels
- emopines
- Apr 29, 2017
- 8 min read
It’s not hard being a geek girl. Working on a dairy farm, caring for a loved one with dementia, opposing autocratic regimes – these things are hard. Being a geek girl is fun – there’s tons of cool stuff to love and beloved characters to break your heart and geek friends to make and pretty merch to buy. But being a geek girl also means countering a bunch of misogynist nonsense to wade through that stems everywhere from corporations to creatives to the community itself. So being a geek girl isn’t hard, but it can be freaking annoying. This post is about two recent (but not too recent, because that's not how I roll) annoying things that have happened in my little corner of the geek world.
First, let's direct our attention to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has been around for a nearly a decade now. There have been fourteen films made in the MCU so far. Exactly none of them have been headlined by a female character or had a female director. Only one film had a woman receive screenplay credit – Nicole Perlman, which she did alongside James Gunn, for Guardians of the Galaxy. The first female character to headline a film of her own in the MCU will be Captain Marvel – which will come out after another two years and six films. Nicole Perlman will write the script, this time alongside Meg LeFauve of Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur. Captain Marvel will be directed by a woman – and a man.
Look, I get it. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck are a directing team, like the Russo Brothers or the Coen Brothers or Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. They are a package deal, and the two of them may very well be the directors best suited for this job. And, yes, the screenplay is being written by two women, which is awesome. But, after what will be eleven years and twenty-one films, for Marvel to only have one female director receive half a director’s credit is – in a word – frustrating.
I know Marvel is trying. I know they offered Ava Duvernay Black Panther, a choice that would have awesomely allowed a woman of color to direct a movie with a male superhero of color, and that she was the one who passed. But c’mon. Ant-Man had to scurry for a director after Edgar Wright dropped out, and, not to knock Peyton Reed, but couldn’t they have looked for a female director there? I enjoy Thor: The Dark World, but given the trailers for Wonder Woman, I can’t help but imagine what Patty Jenkins would’ve done with the film.
Besides the directing team, and besides the two-year wait for a female led movie, the other thing that irks me about Captain Marvel is the Captain herself. Marvel cast Brie Larson to play Carol Danvers. Larson is an amazing and talented, Oscar-winning actress. She is also twenty-seven. Chris Hemsworth is thirty-three. Chris Evans is thirty-five. Mark Ruffalo is forty-nine. Robert Downey, Jr is fifty-two. Carol is a Colonel in the US Airforce and worked as a security captain for NASA. Sure, this is the realm of superheroes, so immense skill and streamlined achievements are in order, but even so, for a woman to achieve all that before hitting thirty puts strain on the suspension of disbelief.
What’s more, Carol is supposed to be a peer to Tony Stark. The two characters just went toe-to-toe in the comic event Civil War II. Tony is played by RDJ who, as I just mentioned, is in his fifties. Larson is literally half his age. I’m not saying Larson didn’t earn the gig or that she won’t do an amazing job with the role – I’m sure she did and I’m sure she will. I am saying was it so impossible for Marvel to find an actress who matches RDJ’s … gravitas? authority?
I’m a young person. I know that we young’uns can be strong and valuable members of any society, but I also know there is a certain respect that age commands. Carol deserves that respect. I’m not saying that Marvel needed to find an actress in her fifties for the role – although, for the record, I think that would’ve been awesome. But couldn’t they have found an actress in her forties, or at the very least someone older than Cap or Thor?
Maybe I’m being too harsh. After all, when Iron Man 2 premiered, Scarlett Johansson was twenty-six. Twenty-six also happens to be the age Elizabeth Olsen was when she made her Marvel debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Maybe in Marvel’s mind, casting a woman that will be twenty-eight when she makes her screen debut is casting an older woman.
Okay, I know I'm being snarky. Marvel has obviously cast actresses older than twenty-six. Although to date the only two female Avengers to be cast are, in fact, Johansson and Olsen. And, no, Evangeline Lilly doesn't count because she hasn't been allowed to even put on her wings yet, much less assemble with the big boys.
Let us leave the Fiege Fiefdom and move over to the DC Extended Universe. Now, I have seen every movie the DCEU has put out – all whopping three of them. I did not enjoy them very much (which is particularly sucky because I wanted to like them so. very. badly.) Yet, for all its flaws, WB is at least trying in the representation department. Man of Steel was Clark’s show, but Lois was definitely present and accounted for. It even had a female villain – sure, she wasn’t the main villain, but she was there and she made enough of an impact that I remember she was there. In BvS it was the Clark and Bruce show, but Lois was there again (although less so) along with Wonder Woman, kicking Doomsday butt and whatnot. There was also Holly Hunter as a senator who got blown up for very little reason. Finally, with Suicide Squad, we got Amanda Waller, Katana, Enchantress, and Harley Quinn. For those of you counting that’s four main female characters, two women of color, one female antagonist, and Margot Robbie who practically headlined the film with the Fresh Prince. Sure, the characterization of these female characters were not great, but neither was the characterization of the film’s male characters. It was equal opportunity awfulness, which I think counts as a win. That isn’t to say the treatment of its male and female actors was completely equal, evidenced by the fact that they edited Cara Delevigne’s model body into even more Barbie-like proportions, an action that produces from within me all of the sighs.
Soon, however, we will have Wonder Woman, which – with all fingers crossed and a sacrifice to the geek gods – looks to not only be the best movie in the DCEU to date but also a legitimately good film. Only four movies in and the DCEU already has a female-headlined film directed by a woman. (Though to be fair, the movie is written by like five different dudes with no female influence as far as the eye can see.) When it comes to lady representation, I’m calling it for the (still very, very flawed) DCEU.
Which leads me to Batgirl. When I heard that Joss Whedon will be writing, directing, and producing a Batgirl film for the DCEU, my first instinct was unadulterated rejoicing. I love the Batfam far more than I do their omnipresent patriarch. Also, Whedon is the diametric opposite of Snyder which means – instead of getting the kind of movie where Superman lets his dad die because he doesn't want people to burden him with heroic expectations – I could get a movie with jokes, actual jokes, and maybe a color scheme other than grey, black, and crusty, old blood red. I could see yellow and purple and one-liners and aggrieved parental figures in my future. It was a glorious vision.
But then the think pieces came out. And, yes, I know, one shouldn’t be swayed by internet think pieces – a rule right up there with “never read the comics” – but in this case, the cacophony of internet opinion had a point. Why weren’t they giving this female property to a female director? (To be clear, I don’t think only women should direct female projects any more than I think that only men should direct male projects. BUT since the opportunities for female creatives in Hollywood are so dismally low, to not allow women to tell the stories of women just feels like salt in the wound.) Then there’s the fact that Joss Whedon has become known as a somewhat of a problematic fave. This hasn’t ever been a problem for me. I’ve enjoyed the output from Whedon that I’ve watched, but I wouldn’t consider him a fave of mine which makes his problems (of which I’m aware) less problematic for me personally because I have no qualms acknowledging them as such.
For instance, in AoU, I don’t agree with the reading that Natasha was calling herself a monster because she couldn’t have children – I read it as she was saying she was a monster because she was the product of a place that placed such an emphasis on killing they destroyed any possibility of making life. Her mentioning that she couldn’t have kids was her intro into that conversation because Bruce had just said he couldn’t have kids. That was my understanding of the scene. But shoehorning in a romance story for Natasha in AoU at all was unnecessary and damseling her so Bruce can have some white knight moment was downright insulting. Being proud of getting to call Natasha a quim in Avengers also wasn’t a great ally moment for Whedon. I never felt comfortable with the way Inara was handled on Firefly. So I get that some fans are hesitant to hand a beloved character into his inconsistent hands. Especially a character that has been so mishandled in the past.
Do I need to mention The Killing Joke here? Do I need to lament how a character as interesting as Babs has repeatedly been denied her own life and agency, but rather been forced to act as a prop, defined not only by her father, her male mentor, but also her male abuser? Joker now looms over Babs like a specter, shadowing our heroine into looking like a victim.
Babs is a strong, resourceful, brilliant character. There’s an opportunity to make something remarkable with her. There’s also the chance to create something harmful. With DCEU’s apparent love for all things grimdark, I am concerned. Suffice it to say that if I see so much as one green hair from Jared Leto’s head anywhere near the marketing of Batgirl I will be pissed.
I know Whedon is planning on basing his film off Gail Simone’s New 52 Batgirl run. While I have read the first volume of Cameron Stewart’s Batgirl of Burnside take on the character, I’ve yet to be able to get my hands on Simone’s. To my understanding, Simone’s Babs is a woman, a survivor, and a heroine, who has to contend with the trauma of her past but is not defined by it. If Whedon can tap into that spirit, if he can have enough of a sway to keep Jared Leto far, far away from the screen, if he can add women’s voices to the film in the roles of producers and perhaps even co-writers, then I’m sure I’ll enjoy Batgirl whenever it comes out. If he can’t, well I guess I’ll just add that to the price of being a geek girl.
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