How much do you love Captain Marvel?

 ome time ago, I had a conversation with Bri Williams about Captain Marvel as a film.

Her argument for the movie was that it’s not just about politics. It’s about bullying. Carol Danvers was bullied all her life; First in the military, then later in the Kree Forces when they unwittingly made her their slave.

And it’s true. Captain Marvel is about bullying. I realized that the first time watching the film, too. We ought to relate to Carol not just as a woman, but for standing up to her bullies.

But my gripe with the film was that the theme of bullying seemed to take a back seat to the political message being told. And when entertainment gets political, people will always be unhappy.

In the answer I posted leading up to the aforementioned conversation, I cited Black Panther as a better way of telling a political story.

Yes, the movie had heavy social justice undertones, but at its’s heart B.P was a story about intra-personal conflict between a family.

Deep down, it’s not about diplomatic relationships.

It’s about how it was wrong for a man to abandon his nephew, when he had the resources to help him. And it’s about the damage that such neglect can cause, on an emotional and psychological level.

So regardless of the social justice theme (and believe me, there was plenty of that), I believe that every viewer, regardless of race, could relate to that core value of personal neglect.

And that’s what made Killmonger one of the most sympathetic villains in the MCU.

Because he was more than just the bad guy in a preachy movie. His film had some grounding in actual, good, storytelling.

The same can just not be said about Captain Marvel. And that, I believe, is where all its problems stem from.

To summarize, I noted that Black Panther transcended its political background, and tried appealing to everyone before getting political.

Even though its message is basically one of race relations, through Michael Jordan’s incredible stage presence, and Killmonger’s super-relateable backstory, the movie goes beyond the political message, and it tells a moral message too.

I will admit that Captain Marvel had some grounding in actual, good, storytelling. And it had a good moral, too. Like Bri said, Carol was bullied and trolled by not one, but two races.

But, I believe, it puts its political message before its acting/story, focusing too much on the women empowerment issue, and not enough on the central theme of bullying.

And that hurt its reception.

If the movie had only focused on that bullying theme just a little longer, perhaps displaying more of her human reactions to being bullied in the army, and her their mental and emotional affect on her before gaining superpowers, then Captain Marvel could have been exponentially better than what it is now.

And yes, Carol was bullied before going into space and becoming a slave. Naturally, if it truly did traumatize her at all, she should have reacted to them in some way.

Instead, she was relatively stoic at times when she could have really sold herself.

(I’m tired of seeing this picture now, but) Imagine if, instead of this reaction scene, Carol’s flashback led to a scene hours after her being bullied, where she’s angrily punching a wall for not climbing that rope fast enough.

Or drinking her heart out in some bar somewhere, without saying a word (and without some idiot coming in with cockpit jokes), her countenance just oozing disgust. Be it at her bullies for being jerks, or herself for a perceived inadequacy.

She wouldn’t even need tears for us to sympathize. As social animals, we naturally empathize with people suffering internal conflict.

So yes, I do understand Captain Marvel, and I relate to some extent, too.

But due to a lack of real kicking emotion, the film still feels too political in nature and not organic enough for people who didn’t go through the exact same problem to immediately click with her.

It’s almost as if they’re trying to overcompensate for her being a woman by minimizing any weakness Carol could show on-screen.

But that inadvertently hurt the movie, because we need to see weakness and hardships to relate to a character.

And to top it all off, in that already-heated climate, if you throw in an acid-talking, politically incorrect lead actress who promotes the movie in all the wrong ways, you make double-sure that the film will be surrounded by controversy.

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