It’s easy to forget that Brie Larson was still in her 20s when she was cast as the lead in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s blockbuster origin story Captain Marvel, even though she’d been working solidly for over a decade by that point and had an Academy Award for Best Actress under her belt.
While her feature-length debut as Carol Danvers definitely isn’t one of the franchise’s finest installments, does it really deserve the unwanted distinction of being the MCU’s lowest-rated solo adventure when it comes to Rotten Tomatoes audience approval ratings? That depends entirely on who you ask, but there’s a sizeable section of social media users who fully agree.
Larson has emerged as one of the most polarizing figures in the most successful film and television property there’s ever been, so there’s a tinge of bittersweetness to hearing her admit to Harper’s Bazaar that she didn’t want a marquee gig in the multi-billion dollar behemoth to have her put on a pedestal, because it’s one a lot of people would love to see her torn down from.
“I was scared of what would happen to me. I was like, ‘What world is this, where these are the choices I have to make as an artist?’ Anytime I feel like I’m being put too much on a pedestal, it’s my job to figure out how to remove that within myself.”
With rumors of The Marvels being beset by behind the scenes issues being widely debunked as its leading lady gets defended to the hilt, it’s clear that the tides have yet to definitively shift. The best way to continue battling back is to deliver a knockout performance in a superior sequel, but we’ve got to wait until November until we discover if that’s the case.