Captain Marvel‘s finally making her big screen debut in 2019 with Brie Larson’s superpowered heroine set to take the MCU by storm. The film’s notable for being the first female-led movie in the franchise, which is an important milestone, but for once Marvel Studios is behind the curve on this one. DC, for instance, found huge success with Wonder Woman in 2017.
So, why did it take ten years and twenty movies for the MCU to produce a superhero film with a woman at its center? Well, Marvel chief Kevin Feige told EW that part of the reason lies with the general assumption amongst studio brass that female-led comic book movies just won’t do as well commercially or critically as male-driven ones.
“I think there are a lot of reasons, not the least of which was fighting for many years the erroneous notion that audiences did not want to see a female-led hero [film] because of a slew of films 15 years ago that didn’t work. And my belief was always that they didn’t work not because they were female-led stories — they didn’t work because they were not particularly good movies.”
We all know what “not particularly good movies” Feige’s talking about here. If you need a hint, two of the worst offenders rhyme with Ratwoman and Relectra. Evidence is on the producer’s side, too, as leaked Sony emails revealed that studio execs used the failure of Catwoman and Elektra as proof that superheroine movies “didn’t work.”
To his credit, the Marvel Studios president has sworn to make up for the lack of female-led films in the franchise up to now in the near future, as he promised that Phase Four could see the amount superheroines rolling around the cinematic universe outnumber the men. Plus, Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow movie looks to be finally going places.
It’s been a long time coming, then, but at least the playing field looks to be starting to even. And Captain Marvel will be leading the way when she makes her grand entrance next March.