Captain Marvel has been yet another triumph for Marvel Studios.
At $550M and climbing, the 90s-set adventure is well on its way to topping $1 billion – a rare feat for Marvel-owned movies, given only six MCU films have been enshrined into the billion-dollar club. The top three are all Avengers films (no surprise there), while Iron Man 3 and Captain America: Civil War currently round out the top six.
That means Black Panther is Marvel’s only non-sequel to gross higher than $1 billion, so as things stand, Captain Marvel is headed towards box office immortality.
And as the post-mortem continues, Marvel Studios editor Debbie Berman (Black Panther, Spider-Man: Homecoming) has revealed details of the original ending she had planned for Carol Danvers’ solo flight.
I did actually suggest some tweaks to the ending of this film. It used to end with Carol flying off into space alone, and I found that a bit jarring. Like, where exactly was she going? And what was she doing? It felt like we needed a stronger visual to assert a more specific justification for her leaving and disappearing for so many years. So we added Talos and his family in their spaceship waiting for her, and they all fly off together. It gave her more of a sense of purpose and made it easier to believe that she left her newfound life on Earth because she was with a friend we knew she cared about, and for a more specific mission. It gave more resonance and closure to her final moment in the film.
Berman’s entire interview with Entertainment Tonight is well worth a look-in, especially if you’re curious about the creative process involved in Captain Marvel. Here’s another tidbit Berman shared when asked about the “My name is Carol” moment, where Brie Larson’s heroine begins to understand the finer details of her own origins story.
I remember when I came across the line where she says, “My name is Carol,” and there was a take where a tear runs down her cheek. I had a lot of other takes of that line where she just said it in a stoic, kick-ass fashion. And I was drawn to those other takes because that’s what I am used to seeing — and in a way, I’ve been programmed to feel that someone being strong and emotionless is the right play. And they were really great performances and you could feel her power. But then I thought, I have never seen a superhero cry while saying her most kick-ass of lines, and honestly, if I had gone through everything she had just gone through, no matter how strong I was feeling at that moment, I think I would be having a multitude of emotional experiences simultaneously.
She concluded:
So I went with the “kick-ass tear” take. And again, I was expecting pushback [on] it and was again surprised and delighted everyone loved it. It’s one of the most powerful moments of the movie. It’s something new and unexpected, and Brie really brought the performance in that moment, and I embraced it as something that felt real to me.
Captain Marvel is playing in theaters across the globe, and she’ll soon be joining the ranks of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Don’t believe us? Just look at the new trailer for Avengers: Endgame, hot off the presses.
