What’s So “Marvelous” About Captain Marvel’s Big Arrival?

What’s So “Marvelous” About Captain Marvel’s Big Arrival?

There may be several reasons why Captain Marvel appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe when she did. I think one factor that cannot be ignored is the success of DC’s Wonder Woman, which likely showed Marvel an opportunity. Among Marvel’s heroes, there had been a lack of this kind of leading “big sister” figure. Black Widow certainly has no problem when it comes to popularity, but with Thanos looming and the heroes on the verge of total defeat, it is hard to expect Black Widow alone to turn the tide. And Black Widow’s own characterization inevitably creates a certain distance from the audience: this type of superhero is the most hard-earned and the least attainable, requiring training and willpower far beyond that of ordinary people. By comparison, mutation is a much quicker route. Captain Marvel, then, quite naturally becomes the character who rapidly transforms into one of the most powerful beings in the universe through mutation (though Thanos would probably disagree and wait for a one-on-one rematch in Avengers 4). The arrival of such a character also means that the balance of Marvel’s superhero world is being disrupted. One new character after another seems to evolve, like in Dragon Ball, from relatively ordinary skirmishes to the Super Saiyan stage. Once everyone can destroy worlds at will, the story may soon become impossible to sustain. I suspect Marvel may even borrow a page from the X-Men playbook and pull off some kind of timeline reset in Avengers 4, reversing time and space so future stories can start all over again decades earlier.

Back to Captain Marvel itself. The Chinese title “Jingqi Duizhang” (“Captain Surprise” or “Captain Amazing”) is worth discussing. On the one hand, Marvel as a studio name is translated as “Manwei,” but Captain Marvel is rendered as “Captain Marvelous” rather than “Captain Marvel.” To a large extent, this weakens Chinese audiences’ sense of the character’s importance. Just imagine if a film had a protagonist named Miss Disney, Mr. Sony, Captain Paramount, or Emperor Lucas… a character bearing the studio’s own name would surely represent the company’s highest degree of confidence and hope. In that sense, “Captain Marvel” should start out several tiers above Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, and the rest. But “Captain Marvelous” feels much less significant. What’s more, throughout the entire story of Captain Marvel, what we actually see is only a standard, formulaic superhero tale with almost nothing truly “marvelous” or surprising about it, which further weakens the title. As a standalone superhero film, Captain Marvel feels more like a temporary extra performance staged for Avengers 4, made simply to introduce her before her appearance there. In both story and characterization, it is formulaic to a startling degree, lacking even the slightest innovation or breakthrough. Compared with Ant-Man or Venom, it comes off noticeably weaker, let alone earlier standouts like Hulk, Spider-Man, or Iron Man. It seems clear that Marvel never really intended to build Captain Marvel’s own story into a major series. Rather, she was created mainly so the Avengers would have a character capable of balancing the power scale enough for the larger saga to continue.

To be fair, the screenwriters probably put quite a bit of effort into adapting Captain Marvel’s story. A character carrying out mysterious missions in a fictional cosmic setting accidentally arrives on Earth, an ordinary planet, only to discover—quite surprisingly, and perhaps the most surprised person in the whole film is Captain Marvel herself—that this planet is deeply connected to her own origins. Following scattered clues step by step, she eventually discovers that she is actually a mutated human from Earth; the supposed villains she has been hunting are in fact innocent victims; and the comrades who had fought beside her in that fictional universe are the real villains. Then, as she reconnects with an old close friend, the villains suddenly arrive, triggering a life-and-death battle… If this story had been developed into a trilogy in the style of Men in Black, it might have turned out far more impressive. But when everything is forcibly compressed into a single film, every section can only be touched on briefly, making it difficult for the audience to truly connect with it. Marvel simply did not leave Captain Marvel much time to introduce her own background, and Avengers fans would not have had the patience to follow this late-arriving superhero through film after film at a leisurely pace. Everyone just wanted her to hurry up, defeat Thanos, and save half the universe. As a result, her own story could only rush by like a fast-forwarded montage.

In the end, Captain Marvel is a story in which perhaps only the captain herself gets to feel any real sense of surprise. As for whether this heroine, who bears Marvel’s own name, can truly shine in the Avengers series, we can only wait and see.