Captain Marvel & Black Panther: Social justice in blockbuster films

Here's the thing, Captain Marvel is the first lead female superhero (or heroine) to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not the first strong female character necessarily but the first female-centred superhero film by the MCU. It stars Brie Larson who at the time had just won an Oscar and was one of the most talked-about actresses of that time. Because of this reason, it felt like the movie would bring the MCU to a new level: a great movie with an Oscar-winning performance and a socially significant message.

Two years have passed and the film has pretty much effaced from popular discourse.

Looking back at people’s commentary on the film, they tend to range from “this was really bad” to a resigned “meh”. So, what happened?

Black Panther wins at SAG awards

(Image Credit: Joe Pugliese, people.com)

In 2019, Black Panther became the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscar. For a brief moment, everyone was super psyched. Not only was the academy making an active attempt to open itself to mass entertainment, but they were also moving towards ethnic diversity in film. There were backlashes too. Many argued that it didn’t deserve the nomination, that the academy was compromising its judgment in service of social justice. It doesn’t matter though. Black Panther was still part of the discourse. Everyone was talking about it.

Pinar Toprak, first female Hollywood composer for a superhero film

(Image credit: Business Insider)

It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that the MCU was trying to emulate that success with Captain Marvel. In addition to releasing it the same week as international women's day, every aspect of the film: the plot, the story, the characterisation and the script is encoded with a feminist message. One of the sillier attempts to hammer in the social message of the film was the trailer which had the “her” in “hero” fade in before the full phrase is shown. There were some genuine attempts at female representation. For example, Pinar Toprak, who scored the film, was according to The Hollywood Reporter, the “first woman to provide the music for a superhero movie solo”. And of course, there was Brie Larson, making press appearances, talking up the film’s contribution to contemporary feminism.

Needless to say, the marketing tactics employed already made Captain Marvel a feminist movie. This is not new. Black Panther did similar things. Long before the movie was released, the press was already talking about its majority black cast.

So, what makes one successful and the other not so much?

First, we have to understand how popular films become successful in this era. Popular films, more often that not, are governed by clear pragmatic objectives. Despite the filmmakers’ attempts to add some sense of artistic integrity, these movies set out first and foremost to make money. This is not necessarily a criticism; it's a fact. And most people have come to accept this fact.

In recent years, the internet has changed the dynamic of popular films, adding the voices of fandoms to the mix. With twitters and how quickly movie reviews are generated, the fan coagulates into a kind of mass movement that influences the movies. You can read more about this from Henry Jenkins’ Participatory Culture theory where he touched on textual poaching and how fans are now active participants in the construction and circulation of text meanings.

Henceforth, popular films succeed when there is a fruitful compromise between the popular (the fandom), the capitalist (producers) and the artist (filmmakers). Depending on the success of this triangulation, the resulting film varies in quality, satisfaction and profitability.

Most recently in the 2010s, things began to change. With the advent of social justice in the media, we now have a fourth factor. We’re probably going to have to do another study entirely on where woke culture truly penetrates mainstream cinema… but one of the key moments came with Ghostbusters (2016) when the fandom became bitterly divided over making the ghostbusters female. From then on, every popular film has to factor in the woke-ness into its calculation.

Ghostbusters (2016)

(Image credit: Screen Geek)

Disney was probably the first to really manage this smoothly. In 2016, they released Moana, a film that scores all the high points in woke-ness despite having all-male all-white filmmakers. The adept-ness of Disney at being "woke" permeates its live-action remakes. They make Belle a feminist and make Jasmine a female Sultan. And finally, it reached the MCU.

Moana (2016)

(Image Credit: Little White Lies)

Disney’s formula is simple: whatever the message is, whether it is the anti-racist message of Black Panther or the feminist message of Captain Marvel, it has to serve the purpose of the film's financial success. Progressiveness in these films are not meant to be rebellious or daring, but crowd-pleasing and indeed fan-pleasing. They find directors that are willing to work with this compromise. 

Black Panther is a really good film that also tries to be progressive. The decision to make it a poster-child of racial issues is underscored by the knowledge that doing so would also make it one of the highest-grossing films of all time. I don't think Marvel or Disney would release a film like Black Panther in the 1980s or the 1990s when progressiveness wasn't yet fashionable.

Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther

(Image credit: The Playlist)

This is why a film like Black Panther must try to give its story nuance. Whether the film achieves this is up to the talent and skills of the filmmakers: Ryan Coogler and his team. And fortunately, they nailed it. The central question of Black Panther is not a simple issue of racism. It actually tackles the question of open borders, integration, emancipation and responsibilities to one's creed. These are issues that are included within the purview of race, tackling this complex issue in subtle yet meaningful ways.

Black Panther recognises that the struggle against racism has changed. The fact that African-Americans have found enough of their own voice reflected in the film to populate 90% of the production crew mirrors the film's portrayal of a successful African nation, Wakanda, capable of leading the world. This is not to say that institutional racism no longer exists in modern society. The film is not dismissing the continuing need for progression in racial discourse. It only questions its own role: whether the purpose of its existence (seeking profits) complies with the message it is trying to convey (anti-racism.) Black Panther recognises the more complex narrative and produces a meta-analysis of the film’s own place in the MCU. It is self-aware.

Aside from this, the film manages to make a meaningful and unique representation. The film serves as a crossroad between modern African-American culture and traditional African culture. The filmmakers made meaningful efforts to represent a globalised multicultural world.

For a deeper discussion on how multiculturalism is explored in Black Panther, check out these two videos: Afro-futurism: From Books to Blockbusters by Storied and How the music in Black Panther tells a story by Sideways.

So, if the key ingredient for making a successful yet socially significant blockbuster flick is to approach the chosen social issue with nuance and meaningful efforts, Captain Marvel completely missed the mark. The movie used generic music, CGI and story lines that don’t have any deeper meaning. Nothing in the film’s narrative supports the film’s meta-text of being important or relevant. While T’challa story mirrors the complicated struggle against racism and interrogates the role of those caught within it, Captain Marvel is a story of… a really strong woman?

And not even that good of a strong woman.

Brie Larson as Captain Marvel (2019)

(Image credit: Cinema Blend)

For a film that’s supposed to present the first major female superhero in the MCU, it has a remarkably uninteresting lead. Carol Danvers seems to have one trait: a snarky tough soldier. And despite her Oscar award, Brie Larson dropped the ball on this one. In films like Room and Short Term 12, she created characters that were deeply vulnerable. Each performance oozes with subtlety and pain. In both cases, the characters are compelling because they grow into stronger individuals. But Captain Marvel allows for only one scene of emotional vulnerability and it was done in a way that actively hides her pain. Because of this reason, there seems to be no character growth.

This problem is directly caused by the studio’s profiteering needs dominating over artistic integrity. We can see that the directing and editing allows very little for character growth or for stories to unfold and sink into the audience. This makes sense in the MCU studio system as it would allow for the film to be quickly made yet still be efficiently entertaining. However, this seems to have gone too far. The studio is so caught up with rolling the film out to meet the feminist day deadline, hoping to catch up with DC on female-lead superheroes following DC's notable success of Wonder Woman (2017). They forgot to make a compelling film.

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman (2017)

(Image credit: Insider)

If they didn’t bother producing a good film, they weren’t likely to be nuanced in their feminist message either. Instead of trying to talk about the issue, the movie is reduced to an attempt to manufacture iconographies of a strong woman. Instead of channelling their efforts into making compelling characters and stories, they wasted it on trying to make Captain Marvel a true feminist icon. It’s an attempt to produce a commercial film with an easy message, in other words, an effort to make social justice profitable. The failure of Captain Marvel is emblematic of a discouraging trend: fandoms, movies and social justice commodified to maximise profits.

We don’t want to close on a downer. While its female captain has failed, Marvel has succeeded in talking about social justice in the past. Black Panther’s success proves MCU’s capabilities and potential. Before thinking about profit and social justice, the fundamentals of a good story and compelling characters should be established first. It also shows that a good contribution to the social discourse is one that is creative and new.

The power of communicating social justice in films is that the discussion can be done in fun and engaging ways. When movies present theses and stories, they can often explore arguments from different perspectives and angles. They also have the potential to reach more people, sparking interesting conversations in millions that may drive social discourses to a whole different level.