this is so interesting, we were just talking marvel today with my best friend and she pointed out captain marvel as one of her favorite mcu characters. and it’s specifically because she’s a strong female character who’s allowed to be strong without being hyper-competent or incredibly cerebral or anything like that. she’s just a woman who stands up for things and punches shit occasionally and is allowed to win through sheer brute force.
and yes, she’s way too powerful in many of the same way as superman, which is a narrative defect, but i find it extremely hypocritical how much more scrutiny people point toward captain marvel on that, while superman continues to be one of dc’s most popular heroes, despite marvel using her better than dc uses superman.
It’s new to me that Superman evades that criticism. There’s a reason Batman gets so much more media than him lately, in large part because of the “What if Batman is actually bad for Gotham” philosophical junk.
Even the Zack Snyder films, for all their flaws, examine the two-toned mistakes of the hero more than the power, eg “Maybe a god X-raying us at every occasion and destroying buildings to fight his rival is perhaps too oppressive” versus “Maybe he should’ve used his X-ray vision to see the bomb in that guy’s wheelchair before he set it off.”
he doesn’t evade that criticism, but there aren’t constant “scandals” around him regarding that. half the time you hear about captain marvel, it’s someone criticizing her for being too powerful (sometimes with accusations of “wokeism” thrown in, but not always). nearly all the time you hear about superman, he’s just there, it’s a regular positive-ish portrayal you’d normally see around any character, with a bit of critique thrown in of course. that’s the difference in scrutiny i’m talking about, the internet doesn’t tend to blow up every time they make a superman movie the same way it blew up for captain marvel because god forbid we see a woman in the same position as supes.
(also, i suppose many of her critics were the same people who criticize stuff like female thor or black captain america by saying go make original heroes – this is the treatment you get when you comply. underprivileged groups always get higher scrutiny, and it easily propagates to otherwise well-meaning people too.)
this is so interesting, we were just talking marvel today with my best friend and she pointed out captain marvel as one of her favorite mcu characters. and it’s specifically because she’s a strong female character who’s allowed to be strong without being hyper-competent or incredibly cerebral or anything like that. she’s just a woman who stands up for things and punches shit occasionally and is allowed to win through sheer brute force.
and yes, she’s way too powerful in many of the same way as superman, which is a narrative defect, but i find it extremely hypocritical how much more scrutiny people point toward captain marvel on that, while superman continues to be one of dc’s most popular heroes, despite marvel using her better than dc uses superman.
It’s new to me that Superman evades that criticism. There’s a reason Batman gets so much more media than him lately, in large part because of the “What if Batman is actually bad for Gotham” philosophical junk.
Even the Zack Snyder films, for all their flaws, examine the two-toned mistakes of the hero more than the power, eg “Maybe a god X-raying us at every occasion and destroying buildings to fight his rival is perhaps too oppressive” versus “Maybe he should’ve used his X-ray vision to see the bomb in that guy’s wheelchair before he set it off.”
he doesn’t evade that criticism, but there aren’t constant “scandals” around him regarding that. half the time you hear about captain marvel, it’s someone criticizing her for being too powerful (sometimes with accusations of “wokeism” thrown in, but not always). nearly all the time you hear about superman, he’s just there, it’s a regular positive-ish portrayal you’d normally see around any character, with a bit of critique thrown in of course. that’s the difference in scrutiny i’m talking about, the internet doesn’t tend to blow up every time they make a superman movie the same way it blew up for captain marvel because god forbid we see a woman in the same position as supes.
(also, i suppose many of her critics were the same people who criticize stuff like female thor or black captain america by saying go make original heroes – this is the treatment you get when you comply. underprivileged groups always get higher scrutiny, and it easily propagates to otherwise well-meaning people too.)