‘Captain Marvel’ Review: Finally, a Hero I See Myself In

Emily Tannenbaum
Photo credit: Marvel
Photo credit: Marvel

From Cosmopolitan

When you’re the first woman to do anything, you have to be perfect. Otherwise, you’ll be inundated by countless critics pointing and saying “I told you so.” I told you girls weren’t funny. I told you girls couldn’t handle the pressure. I told you a girl could never be an epic superhero.

So it’s almost apt that the first critical blockbuster female superhero movie in the golden age of DC and Marvel was about pure female perfection. God is a woman, and her name is Wonder Woman. Okay, her name is Diana, but you get the point. Yes, I cried in my seat when she stormed the war field, deflecting bullets left and right, but did I think I could be like Diana? Not so much. Could a little human girl truly be a hero? The answer was still up in the air.

Then came Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in Captain Marvel. [Spoilers begin.] While she believes herself to be a Kree-an alien race that is completely made up of hot people with eerie green eyes-it turns out she was a human pilot who took in the powers of the Kree (and then some), losing all her memories in the process.

The joy of Captain Marvel is deeply rooted in humanity. There is no alien race-from the shapeshifting Skrull to the ridiculously sexy Kree-that is made of purely good or evil. In fact, Danvers is running with the bad guys for a good chunk of the film, completely unaware that for that time she was technically the villain.

It’s her humanity and, more importantly, her womanhood that gives her the power to save the world. The human girl in her that tells her to get back up every time she’s pushed down. The woman who knows what it means to be gaslit by men who are afraid of what she’s truly capable of. The one who declares, “I’ve been fighting with one hand behind my back. What happens when I’m finally set free?”

The incels will try to tell you that this movie was trash and Larson is ruining the Marvel legacy. Honestly, I don’t even want to respond to that nonsense. But I will show you this tweet to represent what women in Larson’s position face, even when they aren’t “the first.”

Is Captain Marvel clunky? Yes. The first hour moves so slowly, I wasn’t sure it would ever pick up. Wonderfully placed ’90s AOL jokes and the adorable bond between Fury and a cat couldn’t quite make up for the lackluster plot and the feeling that the stakes just weren’t all that high. But in the end, that doesn’t really matter, because they will be. Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel, and she’s the only hope our Avengers have of fixing what Thanos broke. It may have taken Marvel 21 movies to get to a central female hero, but at least she’s that bitch. At least she’s a woman whose origin story isn’t based off of sexual trauma or daddy issues. At least she’s the one who rages out to Gwen Stefani’s “I’m Just a Girl.” At least she’s one I can see myself in.

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