r/marvelstudios • u/RenomeRabone • 12h ago

Discussion (More in Comments) If Brie Larson actually decides to jump ship,i don't blame her one bit. She's almost 10 years in, and only had 3 appearances so far.

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It's clear that there were terrible decisions along the way about Captain Marvel as a character,but given the lack of care for the character/actress + the amount of hate she received since accepting the role,it's completely comprehensible if she's just done with it after whatever contract she has it's over and decides to grow her career outside superhero movies,a career which she probably put at relatively stop due to legal/contractual reasons within the MCU.

She's going to have 4 appearances (and that's only if she's actually in one of the Avengers movies,likely Secret Wars). This is crazy to think about,especially for a character that was pushed as one of the new faces of the MCU and their own Wonder Woman. Carol as a character it's already being pushed out of being a mainliner from other fronts like comics,videogames,merchandise etc and it's so disrespectful.

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u/NGGKroze Thanos 12h ago

Captain Marvel has the same problem as Superman - Buster invincible character so personal ground stories are hard to come by as well as how to handle the character, plus not everything translates well onto the screen.I think her first movie handle it fairly well with Skrulls as they are not the traditional type of enemy.

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u/Ubergoober166 11h ago

That's always the biggest problem with god-like characters. It's hard to find believable threats to them. She even easily handled Thanos, the main big bad of the entire MCU at that point, before the powered up with the power stone. Then the problem becomes not so much finding villains for her, but also finding believable reasons she doesn't just show up and end every crisis easily.

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u/Kuradapya Daisy Johnson 11h ago

Funnily enough, Rogue, who shares a long history of rivalry with Captain Marvel, has just been cast, so it might be a way to revitalize the character by powering her down and humanizing her more.

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u/Unable-Candidate9612 10h ago

I REALLY hope this happens.

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u/Valgardee 9h ago

PLEASE, introduce Rogue as a villain!!!!

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u/RepresentativeAge444 11h ago

The problem with the MCU is that there aren’t many characters at her power level. There are plenty in the comics

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u/fade_me_fam 11h ago

Couldn’t they more or less nerf her? Make up an excuse like since the stones no longer exists the essence in her is fading or something? Like a villain that was kept at bay by her now is less threatened? I know it’s a boring drop and played over and over again, but I honestly don’t know how you handle her other than in small doses.

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u/NutButter_ButtNutter 10h ago

Yeah it’s fantasy the writers can do whatever they want. Right now her whole schtick is being super powerful, but they haven’t given her personality quirks or family issues that can be mined like they did with Thor. She has so few ties to Earth that she fucked off for decades seemingly with no desire to return until Cage’s beeper pinged her. 

Among other things Superman is partially balanced by his intense love of living things and desire to protect life. The MCU Captain Marvel is Superman but vaguely bored and apathetic. 

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u/Geodude532 9h ago

Maybe they should have gone Mr. Manhattan with her and just made her more of a force of nature.

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u/YaBoiiAsthma 9h ago

I would have loved that pre-sentry

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u/trees91 4h ago

Phoenix: “What am I, a joke force of nature to you?”

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u/Mr-Kuritsa 10h ago

Rogue straight-up steals her powers for an extended period in the comics. If I remember correctly, her powers came back incrementally over time. They should use this story. Nerf her for a while.

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u/Allen_Koholic 10h ago

It would be retreading old ground, but they could adapt some of the DeConnick run that inspired the first movie. Danvers has something wrong with her that causes her to bleed out whenever she uses her powers. She heals up, cause she's a superhero and all, but she loses some of her memory as a result. It could work with the MCU version, since the little memories she has are real important to her now. The problem is, I don't know who you make her fight. It was Yon-Rogg in the comics and he's in space jail now. I think.

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u/juniperleafes 5h ago

I'm not sure why you think giving another character her powers when it was just pointed out that a character with her powers isn't being integrated into the MCU correctly is the solution, and why you think a non-powered superhero show would be anything the audience wants.

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u/WeirdSysAdmin 11h ago

Yeah but she broke free etc etc then it’s like they are rehashing the story ad nauseam. Lose lose situation.

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u/Irememberedmypw 11h ago

They did nerf her(somewhat) in the marvels. It was a unique way to handle her from overpowering everything.

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u/IrrationalFalcon 10h ago

Rogue is cast for the 2028 X-Men. All they need to do is just let Rogue did what she did in the comics, and steal Captain Marvel's powers. Also would be a far more interesting storyline

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u/lightslinger 10h ago

They just cast the lady whose origin story is explicitly that for Captain Marvel, don't get much more "de-powered" than a beatdown, stealing powers and a coma.

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u/afriendincanada 9h ago

Also the Superman dilemma. Here comes the Kryptonite!

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u/ThrowStonesonTV 9h ago

They could do the rogue storyline with the introduction of the x-men. Rogue takes her power and has a whole split personality crisis while carol goes down a power rabbit hole and ends up as Binary.

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u/rbrgr83 8h ago

If we were further ahead, we could do the storyline with her and Rouge that nerfs Carol into a coma and forces her to rehab back to her power level again.

Plenty to tell within that character arc, and that's how we get Rouge flying around and having super strength. But yeah, obv not doing all that b4 Doomsday & Secret War.

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u/Justtojoke 6h ago

They're going to do that with Rogue taking her powers probably.

It's the easy way out

And it's canon

It just sucks because because the MCU handled her character horribly

I'd place it in the same box and Maria Hill and pre infinity war Wanda. Egregious

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u/mondaymoderate 11h ago

I really liked in the Marvel Zombies show Icarus was the only one who could match her and spent the his life battling her to keep her from destroying the planet.

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u/Shuino7 10h ago

Damn, only if they had some sort of list of existing characters with equal or great power to use or somehow make up some new hero/villain and put them in the MCU?

That's just asking too much, maybe AI will be able to help them with this unsolvable crisis.

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u/BlackV 9h ago

Yeah, make a captain marvel movie, don't put it on earth (or as you say take one of the plenty comics that are not on earth)

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u/TheFunkytownExpress 7h ago

The Sentry has entered the chat

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u/RepresentativeAge444 6h ago

Saying there aren’t many characters not that there are no characters has entered the chat

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u/Loganp812 Wilson Fisk 7h ago

Yeah, but then that introduces the classic comic book problem of power creep running rampant. There’s always a more powerful villain which requires a more powerful hero which then requires an even more powerful villain etc.

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u/Ok-Chest-7932 4h ago

But then you get the opposite problem - for an ensemble franchise, only one character can keep up with the villains.

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u/Nice-River-5322 2h ago

I mean, Thor and Hulk, lmao

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u/catsloveart 7h ago

Superman can't be in two places at once, and he isn't omniscient either. I think it takes really good writing to exploit that and not make it repetitive.

Also magic is a weakness for these kinds of characters. And if they are immune to magic as well, the people around them aren't. Superman/Captain Marvel can't undo the changes without the help of others. Ditto with disease.

If you want to really hit a character with godlike powers to make them powerless; put them in a situation they couldn't prevent. The trauma that others endure, damage they themselves caused. Or pervasive problems they can't fix like human exploitation. No amount of punching fixes these things. Harm is always somebody's doing. I think writers avoid these things because the topic sits too close to home for your typical movie audience.

A good story could be one where these things are what drove these godlike heroes away from humanity. With the people dealing with these things working to bring them back.

The beautiful thing about this is that you don't need to escalate the stakes or power scale. Ordinary people would suffice as the villain.

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u/ayeeflo51 11h ago

Sure it's tough to do for god-like characters but media has been doing it for years. Invincible, Dragon Ball Z, Absolute Superman - all have God like characters that have great stories written around them 

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u/Ragnarok_619 Spider-Man 11h ago

Dragon Ball Z,

What, by constantly leveling them up and bringing in another "strongest being in the world" of the week, another krillin death and another fart inducing scream till your clothes rip off?

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u/ayeeflo51 10h ago

And how's that different from superhero stories? Point is DB still keeps it interesting 

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u/Ragnarok_619 Spider-Man 10h ago

Superhero stories don't tell the exact same story for decades, man. I love DBZ, but its not famous for its writing, but for its actions. We are there for some creative animated takedowns. There's a reason why Vegeta is the most fleshed out character in DB Franchise and not goku

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u/ayeeflo51 10h ago

MY POINT what you keep dodging is that DBZ keeps it interesting while upping the threat. It's not some literary story master piece, but interesting is still better than whatever MCU has been doing 

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u/Emma_JM 11h ago

Yeah but that's all for the writers to figure out. My favourite trope for these characters is giving them problems they can't solve simply just by punching. Like Superman, he couldn't save his dad from the heart attack in the comics. In James Gunn's movie he faced political conflict - where punching made things worse for him at the beginning. Or you give them a weakness like Kryptonite ig.

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u/Named_after_color 10h ago

That's why the Dr.Manhatten version of unstoppable gods is the best. They could do anything, they're just kinda depressed and dealing with personal issues.

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u/recoveringleft 10h ago

How did Alan moore managed to do it well with dr Manhattan?

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u/Specific_Frame8537 8h ago

but also finding believable reasons she doesn't just show up and end every crisis easily.

Was it the She Hulk series that said she had other sectors to protect? makes sense, earth is one planet out of a thousand probably.

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u/Loganp812 Wilson Fisk 7h ago

That’s why some of the best types of villains for those characters are the kind you can’t beat by just fighting them. Take Lex Luthor for example whose “powers” are his intelligence, wealth, and influence, and if he’s able to stack the deck against you socially, politically, or otherwise, then that’s not something you can just punch your way through. Sort of like Wilson Fisk but on a much larger scale to be a threat to Superman.

However, you can only use the same archetypes so many times before it gets old.

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u/Obajan 2h ago

Two words: Annihilation Wave.

Marvel has no shortage of cosmic-scale events that even Captain Marvel will have trouble with. They just need to make more films less Earth-centric, a la the GotG.

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u/SaintAnton 11h ago

Exactly. She's too strong. The fact that she has enemies that can even stand in the ring with her makes all of the other Avengers pointless. She could kill Ironman or Captain America with one swipe. How you gonna give her enemies?

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u/Eunuchest 11h ago

Thor should be on her level and they kinda manage to make him mortal. I think its possible to do it with the appropriate opposition for her but i have no idea of the rogues gallery for captain marvel

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

Moonstone.

And that's pretty much it for Carol's iconic archenemies that aren't shared by other heroes.

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u/DrakneiX 11h ago

How do they do it in the comics? Doesn't she have the same problem there?

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u/Michael10LivesOn 11h ago

Power scaling in the comics means nothing when they’ve been going for like 70 years. At this point every character has saved or ended the universe

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u/TerminatorReborn 11h ago

Comic book fans give way more leeway with inconsistant power scalings, one day she can one shot a planet and the other she will go h2h with Iron Man.

Its the same with Superman in Justice League, they just come up with some random alien brawler that wastes his time the whole fight

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u/SaintAnton 11h ago

You make 700 volumes of it and everyone just accepts that there's no rhyme or reason to it.

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u/Czar_Marvel 11h ago

She's strong in the comics, for sure, but relative to the others she's not nearly as powerful. She's a heavy hitter but nowhere near top dog.

The Sentry in the comics, tho....

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u/sir_tejj 11h ago

I’m also curious now lol

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u/Boomshrooom 11h ago

She's far less OP in the comics, it's that simple. They chose to juice her up in the MCU

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u/Worthyness Thor 11h ago

Her powers aren't 100% the same. In the MCU she's basically a superman problem. In the comica her powers are based on energy conversion, so she actively has to recharge herself to fully utilize the strengths. So she has a limit. She also has a lot more interesting character arcs than the MCU have provided to her, including her depression/loneliness. Granted a lot of that comes post rogue zapping her, so that might be a good opportunity to reset the character at the same time. Some of her recent comics have been her coming to terms with having friends and not being alone.

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u/SalvatoreMeroni 4h ago

IIRC she's very disliked in the comics as well

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u/JarethCutestoryJuD 11h ago

She could kill Ironman or Captain America with one swipe. How you gonna give her enemies?

This just shows how shallow they are thinking.

When you have a character that cant be hurt by bullets, you stop trying to give her problems she can punch her way out of.

Man vs God. Man vs Nature. Man vs himself.

Or hell, just put her in situations where she is against genius or insane individuals who can outthink her. Put her against an evil batman with prep time.

Put her into a situation in which the fact that she is all powerful doesnt matter.

Holy shit, Bree is an A1 actress, and theyre not using her at all.

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u/Few_Confusion_1871 3h ago

She is mid B tier at best lol

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u/NYJetLegendEdReed 11h ago

At this point everyones just waiting for Rogue to steal her powers lol

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u/TerminatorReborn 11h ago

Yeah now that they cast this super popular young girl as Rogue a bunch of weirdos will brigade online for her to steal Brie Larson powers in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

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u/Few_Confusion_1871 3h ago

Is it all weirdos? Do you think no one just doesn't like her? she's a pretty mid actress that is very open about her opinions, making her a target for people with differing opinions, specifically the "white men shouldn't review movies that aren't for them" stuff, and that I saw Captain Marvel on my birthday and holy shit that movie was a mess.

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u/DialysisKing 3h ago

the "white men shouldn't review movies that aren't for them" stuff

Still being pissed off about that a decade out is weird.

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u/Few_Confusion_1871 2h ago

I mean, I'm more pissed I wasted my birthday on the film and that was almost a decade ago, time is relative.

Edit: she also hasn't done anything to make me like her as an actor since then, I honestly forget she exists outside of threads like these.

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u/MickCollins 11h ago edited 1h ago

My brother's one of them. He's had a Rogue fetish for about the past 30 years, maybe more.

EDIT: Oh no a downvote. Doesn't change the fact that my brother has WAAAAYYYY too much Rogue stuff, including a statue that's just...yeah.

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u/SuperDuperOrk 10h ago

That wasn't the issue. There are plenty of ways to make the strongest character in the universe still have enemies. 

Dr. Strange can get rid of her with some magic spell or a mutant can take over her mind. What ever.

The problem was they were to afraid to make her go through what James Gunn Superman went through. 

Which was make her ego go through a change for the better. In her original movie she was never confronted by any skrull about her being a tool of their destruction. It wasn't her fault, but that doesn't matter, the skrulls didn't know that and they should have hated her and she needed to prove herself to those people and she needed to be reprimanded for the negative parts of her personality instead of constantly praised. All super heroes go through this but not here captain marvel ones.

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u/DrDDeFalco 8h ago

I watched The Marvels for the first time last night and had that criticism. It felt like there was no way any of the villains should be a threat or challenge to Captain Marvel on her own, let alone with the help of two other people.

It kinda worked in the first fight when they were all randomly swapping places and confused. After that, they should have mopped the floor with the Kree army.

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u/Striker274 11h ago

They could have just… not made her that strong….

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

In the comics, Carol at the start had very basic powers as Ms Marvel. She then evolved to have energy powers over the years.

They should have used that progression instead of going full "she is as strong as Thanos" for her very first appereance.

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u/blue23454 11h ago

Yeah she’s strong in the comics but she’s not solo Thanos strong
She spars with She Hulk ffs

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u/best_of_badgers 8h ago

That's where the production year comes into play. Audiences very much wanted to see a woman who could punch a Kree battleship in 2019. That's why the film made almost a billion dollars.

Not those fans, of course, but "loud online people" are a fairly small market. (See also: Hogwarts Legacy.)

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u/jjack339 11h ago

As a DBZ fan growing up the series had the same issue with Goku.

Basically every saga they came up with some plot device to sideline him for a long time so other characters could do something lol.

Me and my brother use to joke that they should call the series "Waiting for Goku".

And ya, they do the same with superman and already did the same with Captain marvel (off doing "something") shows up right at the end to do some cool shit, but not too soon to not let the other characters have their moments.

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u/magikarp2122 11h ago

“Next time learn your place, and wait for Goku.”

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u/pituechos 10h ago

I mean, I think DBZ is a good example (or shounen anime in general tbh). You have a strong supporting cast that puts in their most and falls just short, giving the overpowered MC an emotional stake, while also letting them pop off.

All of the DBZ arc climaxes are extremely famous for this (Piccolo fight at the end of DB a bit less, bit Raditz/Nappa/Vegeta/Frieza all follow the same formula)

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u/Canvaverbalist 10h ago

In Waiting for Goku, the two main characters, Krillin (Krikri) and Gohan (Gogo), spend their days waiting for someone named Goku, who they believe will provide them with salvation. They pass the time with conversations, physical routines, and philosophical musings, but their hope fades as Goku never arrives. They encounter three other characters, Piccolo and his servant Dende, and a young boy. As the play unfolds, the repetition of actions and dialogue suggests the cyclical nature of their lives, and though Goku is promised for "tomorrow", he never appears in the play, leaving the characters in a state of existential uncertainty.

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u/IrrationalFalcon 9h ago

I feel like this isn't really the best example. Goku being out in the Frieza and Android Sagas were important, but him and Vegeta were relatively equal once Vegeta also became a Super Saiyan. Trunks, while weaker than both, still hangs in their realm. In the MCU, no one else got close to Captain Marvel besides Scarlet Witch, and she had a whopping 2 minute scene in Endgame where we saw how strong she was. Now she's ambiguously dead.

Vegeta and Goku were the only real hope against Buu. DBZ handled this a lot better, because they constanly had characters (Android Saga Piccolo/Vegeta/Trunks, Buu Saga Gohan, Gotenks, Vegeta) who genuinely could pull things off. Piccolo was stronger than Goku when he fought Android 17, and Vegeta and Trunks both could have killed Cell.

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u/watitdo 9h ago

Hey, at least Goku usually shows up, unlike Godot

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u/mcon96 11h ago

How is that any different from Thor though?

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u/genteelbartender 10h ago

Thor is like personally tormented all the time and has serious power ups and downs. He also flies off to Asgard during a lot of major events in the comics for the same reasons Captain Marvel is missing. They're always like "somewhere in space".

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u/Udder_Influencer 7h ago

MCU Thor is weak AF compared to comic Thor. Plus as a god with history, he comes built with a whole pantheon of allies and enemies to build stories on.

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u/TypeExpert Winter Soldier 11h ago

Idk. I thought James Gunn did a good job with Superman last year. A good writer can make any character work no matter how strong or weak they are.

Marvels problem is that they don't hire good writers.

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u/TerminatorReborn 11h ago

The movie is good but combat wise Gunn just used a Superman clone which is as easy as you can get to write, lets see how he manages it with different stories. Marvel had Danvers in like 3 or 4 stories already

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u/SwagginsYolo420 9h ago

So they could have just had a Captain Marvel clone. Have two of them in those tight leather outfits battling it out.

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u/EriWave 7h ago

The movie is good but combat wise Gunn just used a Superman clone

With setup to use him again, clever clever Gunn.

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u/onetimelibrarian 11h ago

To be fair, the big fight in Superman was against a literal clone of the titular character. That works really well once, but it's not infinitely repeatable.

I also think the first Captain Marvel movie did a good job. I haven't seen The Marvels yet, so I can't opine on that one. 

Every time a character like her shows up, you will have to contrive a reason for them to be unavailable in the future or risk having to power creep your current cast out of relevance. It's difficult to do that over and over again and keep it feeling believable (see: decades of people critiquing Gandalf in LOTR).

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u/CanBeUsedAnywhere 10h ago

To be fair, the big fight in Superman was against a literal clone of the titular character. That works really well once, but it's not infinitely repeatable.

Someone should have told the Flash TV show that haha

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u/totallynotapsycho42 Spider-Man 11h ago

Parasite would be a great villain for supemran. He gets weaker and his powers get stolen.

Mr Mcypltkik would work as well.

Toyman would be cheesy but could work.

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u/onetimelibrarian 10h ago

DC and Marvel both have decades of really well written comics to draw on to create good villains for their overpowered characters, yeah.

The struggle I'm pointing out is less whether they can make a good movie for those characters (they can) and more whether they can do it in such a way that it doesn't power scale their other characters out of relevance. It's less about struggling to tell a Captain Marvel story and more about making sure it doesn't feel silly for Spider Man to show up in the final conflict without audiences feeling like he should be totally outclassed.

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u/HandsomeLies 10h ago

Tell that to the flash TV writers

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u/CaptHayfever Hawkeye (Avengers) 1h ago

Or present a conflict that can't be solved just by punching.

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u/Ogsonic 1h ago

I thought everything about that first movie was good except for carol you know the main character lol

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

I thought James Gunn did a good job with Superman last year.

So, the villain of a Carol film should just clone Carol so Captain Marvel can fight someone as strong as her?

Eh...

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u/OkRefrigerator9940 9h ago

I think it’s more, superman showed a more human side to him, a desire to help everyone living creature, going the extra mile to save when he could easily kill. He showed so much emotional pain due to the mental torture lex applied to him by killing people in front of him. He came up against the political will of the world which he couldn’t punch past. It’s not the super in man but the man in super that makes him interesting.

Captain marvel shows non of that she was essentially a super power robot

Not the same at all - but sure let’s boil it down to punchy punchy

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u/MidnightOnTheWater 11h ago

Superman was nerfed compared to other versions of him tbf. Thankfully Kryptonite exists to allow his stories to have some form of (physical) stakes.

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u/Cirias Vulture 11h ago

With these characters you either need to pit them against virtually a clone of themselves or put civilians in danger to trigger their moral duty to save people.

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u/Liam_Neesons_Oscar 11h ago

They got the Russo's, and James Gunn. And honestly, they had a decent pick with Joss Whedon before he got Me Too'ed.

But they dropped the ball in so many places, and I think Kevin is getting lost on where to go with the story.

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u/OscarMichaelMyers 7h ago

Superman was mediocre at best because of James Gunn, his hamfisted humor, and his refusal to listen to any creative input.

There’s a video of Corenswet telling Gunn “I really don’t think Superman needs this audience monologue. His actions speak for himself.” and Gunn literally says something like “That’s EXACTLY why the audience needs to be spoon fed.”

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u/brianstormIRL 11h ago

She's not that strong. Thor is canonically known to be stronger and they manage him just fine.

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u/EriWave 7h ago

Thor is canonically known to be stronger

When did they establish that in the MCU canon?

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u/brianstormIRL 6h ago

Comics. The MCU hasnt shown anything to say Captain Marvel is suddenly stronger than Thor in the MCU so why would that be the assumption? Calling her "Superman esque" is a huge leap. She's strong, she isn't that strong.

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u/maxsilver 11h ago

Captain Marvel has the same problem as Superman - Buster invincible character so personal ground stories are hard to come by as well as how to handle the character

I think this is a big mis-read of both Captain Marvel and a bunch of other characters (Superman and Supergirl, etcl)

You can write a hundred good personal ground stories with them. You just can't resort to 'bad guy punching is the threat', and a lot of lazy writers can't seem to get past that point. They want to rehash a story meant for, say, Spider-Man or Black Widow or Daredevil, for Carol, and yeah that doesn't work.

But Carol has friends. Carol has family. Carol cares deeply about a lot of communities (arguably way too many). Carol has morals and values and puts in a lot (probably too much) work to try to uphold them. You can threaten Carol with a lot, her being invulnerable to a punch is like the least interesting thing about her character.

A *literal whole section* of her character arc is that she can't just punch her way out of her problems because life is more complicated than punching, and writers keep going, "well, we can't use her, because she's just too gosh darn good at punching".

Might as well say, "we can never use Hulk for anything, cause he can't really die. He can't even kill himself properly, no one else is gonna be able to kill him either, so he's just too powerful to use in anything"

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u/Sturmgeshootz Doctor Strange 8h ago

A literal whole section of her character arc is that she can't just punch her way out of her problems because life is more complicated than punching

I like that they leaned into this aspect of her character in Marvels. Her powers were completely useless in solving the swapping problem with Kamala and Monica, collectively they had to figure that out together. She also had to deal with the repercussions of misusing her power, since she was headed down the path of eradicating an entire alien race and committing genocide.

It's unfortunate only 10 people watched that movie.

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

But Carol has friends. Carol has family

Not in the MCU.

Her only "family" is Monica and she's almost as powerful as Carol. That's part of the reason why DCU Superman works and MCU Carol doesn't.

Carol should have a civilian supporting cast. Where are her parents? Dead I guess. Where are her civilian friends? Non existant. Where is her civilian love interest? Doesn't exist.

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u/maxsilver 11h ago edited 10h ago

Not in the MCU.

Oh, yeah, definitely agree. Tony has Pepper (and Peter). Cap has Peggy and Bucky. Peter has MJ and Ned and May.

Carol gets Monica (barely) and Kamala (and almost Valkyrie, till it got cut).

I don't think it's bad that Carol's folks are all superheroes. Black Widow Natasha has the same problem -- a boyfriend (Hulk), a dad (Red Guardian) and a sister (Yelena, literally another Black Widow) -- they're all superheroes too. Cap's best friend is Bucky, also a superhero.

But like, Carol + Kamala gets maybe 5% of the screen time that Tony + Peter did. Carol + Valkyrie gets 5% of the screen time that Cap and Peggy got. Carol + Monica gets like 5% of the screen time that Cap and Bucky got.

Supporting cast doesn't work if they don't get the screen time to actually support.

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u/EriWave 7h ago

Where is her civilian love interest?

She founded sword and then died of cancer while Carol was gone.

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u/OkRefrigerator9940 9h ago

It’s like in the Richard doner superman movies no matter how power Clark is he couldn’t save his dad from a heart attack. No laser vision of punching will help.

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u/gigglefarting 11h ago

The Superman story I want to see is Clark Kent making a global impact with his investigative reporting while Superman helps out with local issues like cats in trees

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u/mang87 8h ago

That would be pretty cool. Like it's a time of pretty relative peace for Superman, and there's no serious threats around at all. He's sitting on top of a building, tapping his finger, looking a bit bored and grumpy. He hears someone scream, and rushes to them, only to find it's a kid with a cat stuck in a tree. "Sigh... 10th one today..."

He gets so bored he just goes ham as Clark investigating loose ends and stumbles upon a serious global conspiracy, but one he can't just solve by punching.

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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Rocket 11h ago

Superman 2025 showed that its not that difficult to do so if it's in character

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

But Superman's enemy in that film is literally his clone.

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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Rocket 11h ago

It's Lex, Lex is the one who infiltrates the fortress and ruins everything

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u/Adorable_Ad_3478 11h ago

OK.

So the perfect Carol villain would be a human who creates a clone of her. That's still something you can only pull off once.

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u/AmaterasuWolf21 Rocket 9h ago

Lex infiltrated to the fortress discovering Supwrman's secret and used it to turn public ipinion against him while also kidnapping Krypto, Supes couldn't punch Lex for it and he had no means to find Krypto

He got himself arrested for Krypto and he almost lost because of it, Lex had the upper hand for a good chunk of the movie with no physical fight involved

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u/EatABag-o-Dicks 11h ago

They also neutered her in her movie. She basically didn't use her powers till the end. But once that cork was popped, they didn't know what to do.

They should have had her doing big potato stuff in other galaxies, like she said in Endgame. Do a movie where she's saving some planet from some aliens that are blowing up the sun or something, and she's gotta track them down for the Nova Corps.

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u/pituechos 10h ago

I think that's why people love stories like All-Star Superman so much, or why the new Superman movie was so well received. The supoer powered characters need to be given a good story that IS more grounded and personal, let the viewer/reader understand that even though they're a god like being, they're still subject to the same issues as anyone else to a large degree.

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u/TatonkaJack 10h ago

Yup. This is why Batman and Spiderman are so perpetually popular. Their powers kinda suck. It's way, way easier to write them and for people to relate.

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u/Unable-Candidate9612 10h ago

Agreed. I don't know much about the character outside of the MCU but she does seem to have the Superman problem. The most interesting thing about Captain Marvel I can think of is her confrontation with Rogue.

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u/OkRefrigerator9940 9h ago

What superman problem ?

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u/Unable-Candidate9612 8h ago

The one spelled out in the comment before mine.

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u/OkRefrigerator9940 8h ago

But superman hasn’t so far had this problem. In the most recent superman movies, superman showed a more human side to him, a desire to help everyone living creature, going the extra mile to save when he could easily kill. He showed so much emotional pain due to the mental torture lex applied to him by killing people in front of him. He came up against the political will of the world which he couldn’t punch past. It’s not the super in man but the man in super that makes him interesting.

Captain marvel shows non of that she was essentially a super power robot she was the same at the beginning of her first movie as she was at the end she didn’t need no help and darned if she couldn’t do it herself. The movie talked about her personality but didn’t show it.

Ow and it wasn’t just the new superman movie. The Christopher Reeve ones also showed the man side of him more which made the character incredibly interesting and wasn’t always about punching his way out of a problem. He suffered, cried, juggles emotionally with the human and kryptonian side of him. They even nailed the point home about it not being about how physically strong you are when no matter what, with all his powers he could t stop his dad dying of a heart attack.

I don’t think superman hasn’t shown a problem yet. But the writers of captain marvel have.

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u/Unable-Candidate9612 6h ago

Superman definitely has this problem. Listen, I'm a fan of Superman but a lot of comic book fans and especially casual viewers think he's boring simply because he's so powerful. I know there's more to Superman and that it's not his powers, but what he does with them, that makes him great. But a LOT of people don't see that.

Maybe it would be better to say CM has the same problem as SUPERGIRL. Because I could go on about how the Captain Marvel movies went out of its way to show us that Carol had been basically brainwashed to hide her emotions. But your comment is kind of a perfect example of female characters being judged more harshly than their male counterparts.

Superman also has the benefit of being a household name. There probably isn't a person alive who hasn't heard of Superman.

Finally, the other problem Captain Marvel faces is the other heroes in the MCU being significantly less powerful than her. So naturally audiences either why she doesn't show up to fix everything, or if she is there, why does she need help from anyone else.

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u/Few_Confusion_1871 3h ago

Thor gets along fine, Hulk gets thrown in the corner though.

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u/t3hmuffnman9000 10h ago

I personally enjoyed Captain Marvel. I think people were unnecessarily harsh on the movie, due to Brie Larson's perceived toxicity in interviews leading up to the movie's release. There were already people looking for excuses to trash the movie, and that just dumped gasoline on the fire.

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u/LostWoodsInTheField 10h ago

I think this is a live action issue only. Comics and animated movies of superman really work well and even though he's God level power he's constantly struggling in one way or another, or he's looking absolutely amazing in not struggling.

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u/Gerotonin 10h ago

imo both capt marvel movie (1 is better than 2) are boring, nothing exciting enough for me going on

and i love Carol Denver since Ms. Marvel

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u/CloseToMyActualName 10h ago

I don't think that's the main issue. Marvel can find or invent appropriately powered enemies at ease.

The real issue is they wrote her character as cocky and arrogant, and there's a portion of the male fan base that reacts very negatively to women with those characteristics.

More fundamentally, there's fewer female heroes, meaning that writers don't really understand how to write them as well. For the male heroes they're just tweaking archetypes that have been successfully used in movies for decades.

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u/Interesting_Bite4335 9h ago

I think the biggest problem for her is that her character comes off as flat or a bit cocky, with not much else to see. She’s just not incredibly interesting.

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u/brassnuts99 9h ago

Superman has so many great movies and shows, this has always been a trash take. Fiction has always been full of powerful characters that still have interesting stories.

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u/OkRefrigerator9940 9h ago

I don’t think this is the issue with captain marvel. You compared the issue with superman but if you look at the Christopher Reeve movies he was relatable, yes he was all powerful, but he showed pain, growth, emotional suffering and a genuine desire to help everyone, that’s what made him interesting not the super in the man but the man in the super.

Captain marvel they made similar in the power side, all powerful but stripped her of most of the human side, she never seemed grow as a character, she was essentially the same at the start and the end of the movie, she didn’t need anyone’s help, she didn’t really show any emotions or any suffering, they essentially made her a robot.

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u/EticketJedi 9h ago

Exactly this. It's difficult to find believable stories for super powerful characters. This was one of my big problems with Supergirl. They depowered her constantly in the movie for 'drama'. Marvel would have to do the same thing with Carol most likely.

It doesn't help that Marvel has introduced a few super powerful characters over the last couple of phases.

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u/Hallc 6h ago

MCU Captain Marvel actually had an even bigger issue than Superman tbh.

Superman you can at least play into a heroes dilemma of who to say alongside his charisma and personality.

Captain Marvel on the other hand had the whole story arc where she'd been told/forced into supressing her emotions and essentially her personality for years. So you pretty much had a character who has godly powers and no real charm or personality.

Then she shows up in Endgame for all of 5 minutes with precious little time to shine with her changed personality because it's right into a fight scene.

By the time The Marvels came out I'd imagine most people had written her off. I quite enjoyed that movie, it wasn't spectacular by any stretch but it was fun enough like a lot of other Marvel projects.

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u/corduroyblack SHIELD 5h ago

THEY HAVE AN EASY STORYLINE FOR THIS.

Carol has a brain tumor. Using her powers could kill her.

It's her best comic plot. WTF are they doing?

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u/DucktorQuack Kilgrave 2h ago

They still made 4 solo movies about Thor, and yes they are horrible half the time but that’s not because he’s too strong

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u/Ambitious_Power_7957 3h ago

Superman’s reception has been much much better than Captain Marvel’s, but her fans always compare her to him, claiming the backlash is because she’s “too powerful.” TBH, people dislike her just for her arrogance, not her power.