There used to be a time when superhero movies were fun, light-hearted fare for a hot summer’s afternoon. With a bucket of popcorn and frosty air-conditioning, watching Iron Man quip one-liners while blowing stuff up was a good way to pass the time.
Marvel Studios really upped the ante with superhero flicks, ladling in humor, depth, pathos, rich characterization, interlocking storylines, and all the rest. For ten years, they pretty much dominated cinemas, with few misfires. Heck, even the bad Marvel films were merely mediocre or forgettable. I’ve definitely forgotten a lot of the plot points since the first Iron Man flick came out in 2008 (good grief—has it been that long?!), but the films were largely humorous, action-packed thrill rides at the time.
Then everything started getting hyper-politicized. Think back to 2008, and how different the world was then. Yeah, sure, Barack Obama was elected President that year—perhaps an important turning point in the wider culture war—but at the time, that was at least billed as a some kind of magically unifying moment. Sure, we conservatives didn’t buy it, and he ended up being everything we feared he would: a race-baiting socialist with delusions of grandeur. But overall, our culture wasn’t nearly as divided as it is now, and while Hollywood always put out some propaganda, it largely stuck to entertainment.
By the time Captain Marvel (2019) came out eleven years later, it felt like the entire world had been turned upside-down. Suddenly, everyone was talking about how much “representation matters” and established superheroes and other characters were being gender-swapped willy-nilly. Rather than, you know, creating compelling female (or [insert identity here]) characters, we were told Batman needed to be gay, trans, Asian, wheelchair-bound, and suffering from a protruding overbite.
It was into this milieu that Captain Marvel was born—and it suffered for it.
