Say what you like about the woes of the DCEU, but at least it gave us Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. The film not only proved that a female-fronted superhero movie could be a box office hit, but is a cut above most other blockbusters in characterization, narrative scope and cinematography.
So, despite his MCU brainchild repeatedly cleaning up in theaters and another 20 instalments planned, it’s not surprising that one of Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige’s few regrets is that he was beaten to the punch in making a film with a female superhero front and centre. This info comes from Vanity Fair’s excellent interview with him, where he’s asked what he thought of Wonder Woman and said, “I think it’s always fun to be first with most things.”
It sounds a tiny bit tinged with regret, and one of the few inarguable flaws with the MCU is its focus on male heroes. Even worse, they’ve had a potentially kickass female superstar knocking around in their ensembles for nearly a decade now. I’m talking, of course, about Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, whose story is continually relegated to B-plots in movies largely about men.
And for those of you who are skeptical about whether the character could carry a feature length film by herself, she’s a super assassin with a mysterious past played by one of the best female action stars on the planet. In other words, a Black Widow solo film would have ruled.
While the character probably won’t get a standalone outing at this point (it looks as if Infinity War might mark Johansson’s last appearance in the catsuit), we at least have 2019’s Captain Marvel to look forward to. Starring Brie Larson and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the 1990s set film promises to be “a very different type of movie.”
Let’s hope that it’s just the first in a long line of great female-led Marvel films. By which I mean bring on a She-Hulk movie!
