The curtain is finally lifting on Captain Marvel, the first female-led superhero movie to hit the MCU. It took long enough, and this is one of the few areas where Marvel can said to be followers, rather than leaders. Regardless of that, Marvel is treating the character like the big deal she should be, teasing her appearance at the end of Avengers: Infinity War and a future role in Avengers 4. So what took so long to get to this point? Marvel's Kevin Feige has probably been fielding that question every day, but he gave an answer to EW that helps explain his side while promising more movies with female heroes to come...
“With [‘Ant-Man and The Wasp’] and now with ‘Captain Marvel’ and many movies to be announced in the near future, I’m anxious for the time where it’s not a novelty that there is a female-led superhero movie, but it is a norm. And it is less a story of, ‘Oh, look, a female hero,’ and it’s more a story of, ‘Oh, what’s this about? Who’s this character? I’m excited to see that.’ And I think we can get there."
As for what those future movies might be? We've heard rumblings of an all-female teamup movie, although that seems to have quieted lately. Also, Feige himself has mentioned Ms. Marvel as a character he's really interested in seeing on the big screen.
And as for the long wait, Feige says there are a number of factors, all of which he mostly dances around...
“I think there are a lot of reasons, not the least of which was fighting for many years the erroneous notion that audiences did not want to see a female-led hero [film] because of a slew of films 15 years ago that didn’t work. And my belief was always that they didn’t work not because they were female-led stories — they didn’t work because they were not particularly good movies.”
That's probably a shot at the old guard over at Marvel Studios, aka the previous chief Ike Perlmutter. Feige basically usurped authority from him three years ago and now reports directly to Disney. The results speak for themselves as Marvel Studios has seen unprecedented growth not only in box office but in quality.
Feige has never been a big partaker of the silly Marvel vs. DC rivalry, cheerleading their films when they find success. He does so again by recognizing the gains made by Wonder Woman are felt by all, including Marvel...
"I’ve always said, I root for all genre movies because the success of those movies helps us. Because not everybody knows the difference between what studio makes what movie or what comic book company what character comes from. So I’m very pleased when any film in our genre [does well] — not just superheroes, but action or sci-fi or anything. The success of Wonder Woman made me very happy because as I’ve said before in the press, I’d much rather the question be, ‘Oh gosh, what did you think about that successful female-led hero that came out a few years ago?’ Rather than the question I used to get, which was, ‘Are you afraid that people don’t want to see a female hero?’"
Captain Marvel hits theaters on March 8th 2019.
