Captain Marvel: A Hero Gets Her Chance to Shine

Captain Marvel is another blockbuster on our hands, fam. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had a few mis-steps (how did we make it through Thor: The Dark World anyway?), but early indications are that Captain Marvel isn’t one of them. (You can read Variety for an early review roundup.) With ticket pre-sales in the stratosphere (listen, this article is gonna be full of air/space/flight metaphors, so get on board with that now, flygirl), it seems likely that you and many of the folks you know will have seen this one by Monday morning. Hell, I might have seen it twice by then. This brings me to a question with many answers: Why? What about this particular combination of character, crew, and timing has brought Marvel to another hit? Captain Marvel, and Carol Danvers, are resonating right now in a serious way. Let’s talk about why. Higher: Behind the Scenes There can be little doubt that Marvel was under pressure to produce a women-led movie. After the success of Wonder Woman, that had (mostly white) women crying in their seats, Marvel was for the first time, behind the curve. Whatever plans they’d had to make Black Widow the female face of the MCU faded as quickly as Johannsen’s “it girl” status. They needed a woman’s face to put at the top of the marquee with Captain America and the rest or else there was a very real possibility that DC would slap Harley Quinn on everything and beat them to the top. Enter Captain Marvel.

With Kelly Sue DeConnick’s damn-near legendary run on the…