The morning after Captain Marvel premiered in Los Angeles—but before the Brie Larson vehicle hit cineplexes around the world—the comic-book writer credited with shaping the current version of Carol Danvers, Kelly Sue DeConnick, had one very clear wish: “We live in a capitalist culture. What makes money is valued. I want this to make a lot of money, because it will change the way that people think about women. We could pretend we dont live in a world where [that is true], but whats the point?”
One month later, DeConnicks wish has been granted. Captain Marvel has officially become the first female-led superhero film to join the billion-dollar box-office boys club—and that groundbreaking success is flinging open doors for the women who helped create Carol Danvers. Theyre teaming up to make sure Captain Marvel is only the beginning when it comes to women dominating the typically male-dictated world of action and genre stories.
In the years it took for Marvel Studios to get its first female-fronted superhero film off the ground, a number of talented women were tapped to help shape an origin story that not only established Carols place in the world of the Avengers, but seeded in gender-specific themes of gaslighting, imposter syndrome, and the strength of female friendship. In 2014, Marvel approached writer Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy, Detective Pikachu), who went to work on cracking Carols story with Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) throughout 2015 and 2016. Geneva Robertson-Dworet joined the project in June 2017, and worked for six months to put the puzzle pieces together, along with Captain Marvel co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. DeConnick herself was brought in to consult during the last year of the project.
Five people—Perlman, LeFauve, Robertson-Dworet, Boden, and Fleck—have “story by” credits on the finished project. Often, when that many writers are attached to a project, it means there was some kind of behind-the-scenes acrimony as one team handed the torch to another. That was famously the case when Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn publicly denied Perlman credit for her work on his film.
But Robertson-Dworet and Perlman said they have no interest in squabbling over credit. Instead, theyve joined forces—along with Lindsey Beer (The Kingkiller Chronicle)—to form a new production company called Known Universe that will focus, Perlman told me, on combining the clout theyve earned on past projects to “exponentially lift up storytellers and less heard voices.”
So, whats responsible for this new attitude of unity? “Women are refusing to fall into the trap of being set against one another as though theres only one seat at the table,” DeConnick said, “and were all competing for it. Theres an incredible Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote where she was asked how many women on the Supreme Court would be enough. Shes like: I dont know, maybe nine? Its just the tiniest shift in perspective. What if we didnt ask permission?”
Working in the male-dominated worlds of comic books and Hollywood blockbusters, all three women have stories about being shut up, shut down, pushed aside, pitted against each other, and being the only one in a room full of men. “I remember one of the first pitches I went to,” said Robertson-Dworet, “I pitched on this action movie. My take was very dark, very violent, very aggressive, and the director just said, Oh, I think I need a more muscular take.” Robertson-Dworet said she knew that was code for more masculine. “Weve frequently been tokenized as the one woman in the group,” Perlman said. “Instead of us being competitive with each other, we found ourselves banding together, sharing our experiences and our Rolodexes.”
The Captain Marvel team was, in a way, responsible for the foundation of Known Universe. “Id just come out of collaborating with Anna and Ryan when I saw how fantastic it was to have a long-term creative partner,” Robertson-Dworet said. “After that, I immediately started working with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, another directing team. Hollywood can often be about ego, and it has to be my idea that wins. I saw how these collaborative teams really let the best idea win.” That kind of creative environment was refreshing for DeConnick as well: “I felt incredibly heard. Im embarrassed to say, quite honestly, I was a little skeptical going into the whole thing.”
The smashing financial success of both Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel means that DC, Marvel, and other studios are finally scrambling to put forward more female-fronted comic-book films. Sony, for instance, has several Spider-Women and villainess projects in the works. Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins reportedly more than tripled her salary when she was tapped to direct that films sequel. In other words, theres more opportunity than ever for women filmmakers and storytellers to move into the lucrative sphere of genre blockbusters—especially, as Robertson-Dworet said, since most studios have decided to have women write and preferably direct those movies as well. In the case of the upcoming Harley Quinn spin-off, Birds of Prey, star-turned-producer Margot Robbie herself pushed to have a woman in the directors chair.
“One of the most violent but also fun and brilliant scripts Ive read recently was Christina Hodsons Birds of Prey draft,” Robertson-Dworet said. “Ten years ago, people wouldve said only a man would write this. Thats part of why we started the company, in order to open more doors to people who dont look like the standard action-movie or genre writer.”
Though everyone involved in Captain Marvel has offered up inspiring quotes about how they hope the film will embolden young women, DeConnick is still deeply pragmatic about what achievement in Hollywood really means. “Are you familiar with targeting marketing?” she asked me, before launching into a nuanced explanation of how, according to research, “women will buy things that are marketed at men because men are high-status in our culture, [but] women are low-status in our culture. Men, on the other hand, will generally not cross-identify and buy things that are marketed at women, because nobody wants to identify down, right?”
That attitude, she said, carries over to films: “Women will go see movies marketed toward men”—like, say, the 20 Marvel films that preceded Captain Marvel in the Avengers franchise—“but when we identify [something] as a chick flick or chick lit, thats a pejorative, right?” A billion-dollar win for Captain Marvel, she said, will hopefully go a long way towards undoing the damage targeted marketing has done to our culture.
“Women are 51 percent of the population—and the last time I checked the statistics, about 16 percent are protagonists,” DeConnick said. (The latest data have film protagonists at closer to 24 percent female.) “Thats not representation, you know. The good news is we have become very good at cross-identifying. The bad news is some of us tend to think of ourselves as supporting characters in someone elses story.”
But for DeConnick, Robertson-Dworet, and Perlman, at least, moving women to the center of genre and blockbuster filmmaking doesnt just mean slotting female performers into classic male-archetype roles. While women can (and do) write scripts that are every bit as “muscular” as their male-written counterparts, there was a focus in Captain Marvel on creating a character whose strength wasnt divorced from the female experience. “We didnt want her to just be Sylvester Stallone, but with breasts. We wanted her to be a strong woman, which, of course, led to wonderful conversations with Meg about what that means. We wanted to make sure that our version of what it meant to be powerful wasnt just a hard, unyielding, never-emotional person,” Perlman said. “Meg and I dont believe that that is what it means to be strong.”
Perlman cited inspiration from Hollywood producing legend Lindsay Doran, who in a speech called “The Quagmire of the Female CharRead More – Source
[contf] [contfnew] 
Vanity Fair
[contfnewc] [contfnewc]
