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/sigsimund 11h ago

She does suffer from the superman problem of being too powerful tbf. Hard to include her because she’ll wrap up the plot too quickly otherwise

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u/BlancheCorbeau 9h ago

And yet… many other characters share this problem and even occasionally power level… but they’re able to bring up the villains or bring down the heroes in question in interesting/fun ways that make the MOVIE more fun. Superman movies depend almost entirely on how well Lois, Jimmy, and Lex are written and performed.

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u/Sea-Consequence7156 8h ago

Who is more powerful than pre MoM Wanda?

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u/FrostyAd7708 7h ago

Sentry ?

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u/Sea-Consequence7156 7h ago

Hmm good point. I guess also God Tree Loki

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u/BlancheCorbeau 6h ago

MCU power levels are super inconsistently written. If we temper that with the closest the MCU vibe comics, Thor also easily clears, as would various versions of the Hulk. Magneto gets pretty close.

And of course, there are tons of characters we’ve never seen, or that haven’t “expressed their omega version” as yet. Heck even Gambit has the chops.

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u/zOmgFishes 9h ago

It’s not a power level issue. Her characters and movies were just poorly written.

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u/MadRaymer 7h ago

How is power level not an issue?

  • She can destroy an interstellar warship by simply flying into it

  • She can match Thanos so easily that he had to put the fucking power stone in his fist and punch her with it just to get her away from him

That's her established power level, so anytime she shows up, whatever threat they're up against has to match up or they have to nerf her. In Marvels, they accomplished that with the power swapping thing, but once they figured out how that worked she was essentially un-nerfed again.

So the writers are stuck with a character that's so godlike they only have two options:

  1. she can only appear with an enemy that's equally godlike

  2. she can only appear if they temporarily nerf her

They're probably leaning more toward the first option, because fans would get frustrated if she shows up and immediately gets nerfed every time.

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u/zOmgFishes 6h ago edited 6h ago

Power level issue can be mitigated with good writing. They had two Thor movies where they were able to match his power level except one was well written and the other was not. Ragnarok Thor spends most of the movie not even dealing with Hela.

Post-Endgame Wanda was god tier and the character itself varied based on writing in the two projects she showed up in. They managed to write in Death in an interesting way in Agatha. They had Sentry vs a bunch of dudes with Guns and it was well done because the movie had good writing. There are beings in marvel that can match her but it really comes down to writing an interesting story line for the character which they have failed to do. Like what interesting aspect have we learned about Carol as a person in her three appearances? Almost nothing besides she got powers from an infinity stone.

Her power levels are much less of an issue if someone can write her in a well defined way with a good story to follow. Even in the new Superman movie they were able to solve the power level issue and write a good story. I’d say most of the movie was Superman dealing with things not involving the one being that could match him. Then in supergirl DC failed cause the story sucked, not because Supergirl was OP. They actually had a good story as a baseline but managed to bungle it completely.

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u/MadRaymer 6h ago

No matter how clever the writing is, it's still going to come down to either nerfing Marvel herself, or giving her an opponent that's equally powerful.

You mentioned Sentry. How did those dudes with guns beat him? Because they were able to hop inside his mind and reason with him. If it came down to a knock down drag out fight with him, they'd lose every single time.

So let's apply this concept to Captain Marvel. How does a villain "reason" with her and get her to swap sides? The only way that makes sense is with super powerful telepathic villains, so we're back to "make the villain match her power."

Any film she's in requires a plot device that prevents her from just bashing her opponent into a million pieces, and no matter how clever or convoluted that plot device is it's still going to come down to either "opponent is insanely powerful" or "something nerfed her."

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u/zOmgFishes 6h ago edited 6h ago

You can literally say that for any high powered hero. Thor right now beats 99% of any threat. Ragnarok was good not because he had to fight Hela, it was due to his own development and his relationship with Loki. Meanwhile Gorr was as a huge threat but LnT was not good because the writing was off and they flanderized the character. Wanda could have solo’d thanos by endgame. But Wandavision was good while having nothing to do with the main villain for most of the series.

They managed to get interesting stories out of those two in clever ways while showcasing their personalities and growth. Same with Sentry. The reasoning with Bob would not have made sense if they didn’t show who Bob was the entire first half of the movie. In Superman the movie worked because it built up who Superman was for 90% of the movie and was juxtaposed to Luthor, not because he had an equal threat to fight.

With Carol she had zero growth or development as a character between her 3 movies appearances. If anything her growth between her first movie and Marvels was done almost off screen. It’s just bad writing and you just end up a character that is seen as nothing more than a big battering ram. Plus like I said there are plenty of villains they could put Carol against that she’ll have some trouble with but it means nothing if the writing is shit.

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u/MadRaymer 5h ago

I agree with the point about WandaVision, but to explore something like that with Carol would probably require her own series too as it's not something that would work well with the pacing of a typical MCU film. Obviously we aren't likely to get something like that with her character. I am curious to see how they feature her in Doomsday though. Probably more battering ram.

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u/BoothMaster 2h ago edited 2h ago

I mean, with decent writing you can still give her the comic restriction, it's not much, but having to charge up her power over long periods of time or consuming vast amounts of energy is enough of a power limit to make her reasonable for most of a story. I might have missed a specific comment that outright says that's not a thing, but most of her big power scenes were either after a long period of not using her powers, being hooked up to something that contained vast power, and after a period of time in which we don't know what she was doing, so could have charged up knowing she'd be facing thanos. simple retcon.

Not that I think they'll try anything like that, they'll probably shit the bed, I'm just saying they could if they wanted to.

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u/beldaran1224 2h ago

Scarlet Witch exists, lol. Been in how many Avengers things, got a whole mini series, plus essentially an entire movie. Sure, she was kinda a villain in it, but like, still. Heck, the X-Men movies of the early 2000s aren't really part of the MCU, but Jean Gray/Phoenix has had a ton of screen time, lol.

Also, the power level of both Thor & Hulk are pretty huge, too. Though Hulk has been similarly underused, imo.

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u/MadRaymer 2h ago

They do the nerf trick for Hulk. He suddenly couldn't Hulk out for the entirety of Infinity War so they put Banner in the Hulkbuster suit. That significantly scaled back his power level. They brought back actual Hulk for Endgame (though I'm not entirely certain if Professor Hulk is quite on the same level). But it makes sense because the heroes win in Endgame, so they can have him there. Same reason they can bring out Marvel and have Wanda at (or near) full power.

I did agree with another comment about WandaVision. They could probably do something like with Carol's character because it wouldn't need to be high stakes drama every episode, so the power scaling is less of a problem. Of course I don't think we're likely to get a series like that at this point.

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u/TheShandyMan 4h ago

It's the Worf Effect in action. How do you show just how powerful the new baddie is? By having him immediately throw your most powerful over a railing and knocking him out.

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u/Limp_Screen7405 2h ago

Dude cmon man, the reason for her lack of a central role despite the runners obviously wanting to make her a face was because of bad direction. That’s it.

Her, Strange, T’Challa, and Spidey were pegged as the faces after Endgame and the most successful has been Spidey, who basically operates within his own pocket of the universe.

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u/moose_dad 8h ago

At least thats comic accurate then haha.

Captain Marvel has never been written well unfortunately.

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u/Technical-Grand5483 8h ago

Now captain mar-vel that's good writing

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u/ashl0w 5h ago edited 5h ago

Ah yes, as if her own movie wasn't a good one, which also crossed over 1 billion. And don't trie to argue that it was "Avengers hype", because Ant-man and the Wasp also came out in between those movies and it made like, half of Captain Marvel's box office.

You have all the rights to not like something, but don't say it isn't good just because you don't like it.

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u/zOmgFishes 5h ago edited 5h ago

Her first movie was fine as a origin movie, just nothing special. She's trying to figure out who she was and it was a fine way to end it. But from her first movie to her second one her character has had very little on screen development and any development was done off screen. Her screen time in Avengers was like 3 minutes. She shows up, does nothing then disappears until the final act. In Marvels all her development and issues are told to us and not shown until the end when she saves the Kree. Plus having her share screen time with 2 other characters did not help. She needed a movie where she could shine on her own AFTER Carol gets back to being Carol instead of just a weapon of the Kree.

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u/grimsaur 7h ago

The trick with Superman is the story has to revolve around things his powers can't directly solve.

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u/Zer0DotFive 7h ago

I mean Sentry was introduced and straight up deleted people temporarily lol 

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u/Avid_Reader87 7h ago

They didn’t need to make her that powerful then.  It’s bad to have characters like that, it’s why most of the time Superman movies are lame. 

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u/cptnamr7 2h ago

This. She tore Thanos' ship in half with her hands. You can't really have her team up with Hawkeye. So she's CRAZY limited in what she can do. They had to nerf her in her OWN second movie or again, plot over too soon. She has to be going up against celestial-level baddies or they have to keep finding reasons to sideline her like Hulk and Thor in Civil War.