Captain Marvel Battles Toxic Masculinity In New Deleted Scene

Captain Marvel is just a day away from coming to digital download, where you can watch the film and its abundance of special features from the comfort of your own couch. Among the bonus content is six deleted scenes, one of which recently debuted on USA Today, titled “What, No Smile?”

On their Twitter account, the outlet captioned the hero as “taking on toxic masculinity” in the scene, writing:

“Get an EXCLUSIVE first look at @BrieLarson taking on toxic masculinity (in the form of @RobertKazinsky) in this extended #CaptainMarvel scene”

The scene in question wasn’t so much deleted as it was just shortened in Captain Marvel’s final cut. When Brie Larson’s character, known at this point as Vers, arrives on Earth in her standard Starforce uniform, she becomes the subject of mockery to a local biker portrayed by Robert Kazinsky.

The extended scene finds the biker, who calls himself The Don, asking Vers to smile, which she responds to by singeing his hand and taking his leather jacket and the keys to his bike. Though not even a minute longer, the scene adds a bit more character to Vers, who in the final cut just steals the motorcycle without giving The Don his proper comeuppance.

In a film filled to the brim with ‘90’s pop culture references, many noticed this scene’s parallels to a sequence in T2: Judgement Day, in which the T-800 takes the clothes of a motorcyclist who tried to extinguish a cigar on his skin, all the way down to both men’s final line, “Take it.”

Coincidentally, when the first Captain Marvel images debuted, many fans complained that Brie Larson looked too tough for a lighter Disney film, claiming she should be smiling. Larson responded in turn by tweeting posters of the male heroes in the MCU photoshopped to show their teeth. Of course, this exchange wasn’t the first nor last time Larson had to defend the movie from trolls determined to tank it, which wound up grossing over a billion dollars at the box office.

And now, it’ll continue raking in the money as Captain Marvel hits Blu-ray shelves on June 11th. Or, you can download a digital copy from iTunes or Vudu as of tomorrow.