By David Futrelle
Captain Marvel has been in theaters for two and a half months now, but the baby men of the internet are still finding excuses to throw tantrums over it.
The latest? An extended scene, posted online, featuring the titular character stealing a motorcycle from a random creep after he patronizingly asks her to smile; instead of punching him or throwing him through a window, like a normal action movie star, she gets her way by squeezing the creep’s hand real hard.
Here’s the scene, which is all of a minute long.
The scene is a clear homage to a similar if much more violent scene in Terminator 2, in which a nude Arnold Schwarzenegger appropriates a motorcycle from a biker after squeezing his hand real hard (and then throwing him onto a hot stove, throwing another guy through a window, and thoroughly beating up a good portion of an ornery looking biker gang).
But the angry dudes (and a few angry gals) of the internet have reacted to Captain Marvel’s too-firm handshake as if Brie Larson — the actress herself, not the character she’s playing — had gone on a crime spree in Los Angeles.
Leading the charge against the motorcycle-stealing superlady? A motley assortment of professional shit-stirrers on the right, including the alt-right adjacent YouTube blabber Tim Pool, video-prankster-turned-joke-congressional-candidate Joey “Salads” Saladino, self-professed debate champion Ben Shapiro, and one of Ben’s employees at his vanity publication the Daily Wire.
Schow’s Daily Wire post on the subject is somehow even more embarrassing than her tweets about it. She begins by taking issue with the shorter version of the scene in the film itself, in which the Lady Captain simply steals the bike — no hand-squeezing necessary.
Hooray for feminism! A man creepily asked for a smile, so she commits grand theft auto. That’s not at all a disproportionate or insane response.
But in her mind the extended scene is oh so much worse, turning the superheroine into a supervillain. “Let’s recap,” Schow writes, working herself into high dudgeon.
After a jerk suggested he would help her in a creepy way and asked for a smile, Danvers [Captain Marvel] crushed his hand, carjacked him, took his clothes, and stole items from a nearby clothing store and broke traffic laws. And this is supposed to be a celebration of feminism and rebuke of toxic masculinity?
In the original scene, Danvers committed grand theft auto. In the extended scene, she commits assault, a carjacking, a mugging, shoplifting, and a possible driving felony.
I am shocked — shocked! — to see lawbreaking by the main character in an action movie!
If these, er, “critiques” of Captain Marvel weren’t so obviously in bad faith, I would have to wonder if any of these critics had ever seen an action movie before. Or, indeed, any movie.
The trope of a movie hero or heroine stealing a car — or a truck, or a horse, or a motorcyle, or a spaceship — to get to where they need to go is nearly as old as the movies themselves.
Action movie heroes and heroines break the rules — and the laws — all the time. We don’t go to action movies to see blameless goody-goodies obeying the traffic laws in car chases, or watching and waiting for the police when a villain starts wreaking havoc. We go to see larger-than-life characters beating the crap out of bad guys — and we don’t much care if their violence is sometimes disproportionate, or if there’s a bit of collateral damage (to people, to buildings, to entire cities) along the way.
In the original John Wick movie, for example, the titular hero seeks revenge after some thugs kill his dog — and in the process he manages to kill 77 people. (His body count across all three John Wick films? An even more staggering 299.) Yet we still root for the guy.
The critics of Captain Marvel’s motorcycle theft are not only forgetting that this is a MOVIE and not real life; they’re also completely ignoring the plot of the film — and the character arc of the air-force-pilot-turned alien-human-hybrid who became Captain Marvel.
When she arrives back on earth at the start of the film – and steals the motorcycle she needs to complete her mission — she’s basically a brainwashed, emotionless killing machine working for a race of aliens called the kree. Over the course of the film she regains some of her humanity. That’s called character development.
As human beings, we’re all flawed, and we like our heroes to be, like us, somewhat less than perfect — because that’s what enables us to relate to them. Our heroes may be reluctant — like Humphrey Bogart’s Rick in Casablanca — or roguish scoundrels with a heart of gold, like Han Solo. They may have a dark side they wrestle with. Sometimes they win this struggle (like Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel); sometimes they lose (Darth Vader, Walter White).
Everyone who goes to movies knows all of this — and is happy to accept these tropes when the flawed hero in question is male. But once it’s a woman in that scuba superhero suit, all of that knowledge seems to drain right out of some men’s (and some women’s) brains.
Some, like the right-wing shitstirrers who helped to gin up this phony controversy in the first place, really do seem to have trouble distinguishing between movies and real life.
A number of critics seemed to think the clip reflected a certain sort of rank bigotry directed against males — especially white males, and even more especially against those who like to go around saying crude and patronizing things about (or to) women.
Others demanded a sort of moral blamelessness from Captain Marvel that no one would demand from a male superhero. She’s a terrible role model, they cried. Just think of the children! And the adults! And all of the other superheroes that look up to her!
Hate to break it to you, dude, but Superdickery has been a thing since, like, the 1950s, if not earlier.
Dudes, this is a movie, not a WikiHow video. No one is recommending that women literally steal a motorcycle every time a creep asks them to smile. It’s a fantasy in a film that’s all about fantasy. The scene is funny because it allows women (and men) to indulge a harmless fantasy of taking violent revenge against some of the most irritating men on the planet.
Let’s face it, perfect characters are boring, and make for boring movies. And they’re not good role models either, because no one can truly relate to them. It’s better for girls to see female characters struggle with their flaws than to demand that they emulate someone who’s flawless in every ways — and constantly find themselves coming up short.
But the real issue here isn’t character flaws. If the writers of Captain Marvel had made their central character pure and blameless in every way, angry dudes would be complaining about that too – how come she’s perfect, they would whine, while all the men have flaws?
No, the issue here is the fact that this superhero is a woman that a retrograde internet mob has decided isn’t deferential enough to men. And so they will grab on anything they can in order to make bad faith demands on Marvel and Disney in order to get them to stop making action movies with female leads. There’s no real point in arguing with these people. Just turn to them, like Captain Marvel herself, and ask with a smirk “What, no smile?”
UPDATE: And here’s that line in gif form.
UPDATE 2: Oh, look, it’s Ben Shapiro, who was so indignant about Captain Marvel stealing a motorcycle, applauding the latest John Wick movie, in which Mr. Wink kills 94 dudes:
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Wait, that was it? From how everyone was reacting, I was expecting, I don’t know, more than just a threat. Windows breaking, punches being thrown, that always-great moment when the asshole hits the hero and it’s the asshole’s hand that ends up hurting. This was just… bog standard chaotic heroing!
And, though it really doesn’t matter, the guy did more than ask her to smile. After catching Captain Marvel’s attention, and seeing her very clearly indicate that she wasn’t interested, he walked right up to her and, more than just physically invaded her space, actually pushed the map she was holding aside! He might not have deserved having his hand broken (note: his hand is not actually broken) but he definitely deserved something.
@Big Titty Demon
Isn’t there a white knight upon a fiery steed? Late at night, I toss and I turn, and I dream of what I need.
@David Futrelle
Ah, that explains it. I did wonder.
Please. Obviously Carol’s real offense was getting girl cooties all over his stuff.
Pfft. It’s not like the Major Film Studios© are going to make a big-budget action hero film without a heavy dose of action hero tropes, even if they star women. I mean, I’m sure there are a few exceptions out there, but I haven’t seen any.
However, this is only half of what needs to be done. They’ve done a decent job of lowering some women to men’s level, now they need to raise some men to women’s level, if you’ll pardon my feminism. ?
Pfft. Captain Marvel didn’t do anything that countless male protagonists, even heroes, haven’t done before.
If she’d been a flawless paragon of virtue people would be calling here a Mary Sue…
To all the people clamoring about how horrible it is she stole a man’s bike and squeezed his hand a bit: Get over yourselves, you whining hypocrites!
Male heroes have done a lot worse to women in the history of cinema.
James Bond’s corrective rape and other things come to mind.
@ Big Titty Demon/Weatherwax
Now you’ve gone and reminded me of Johnny Five chasing the criminal mastermind in Short Circuit 2.
…Now that I think about it, I’m going to make a mild objection about using the Terminator as an example, but not John Wick. Wick might not be a hero, but he’s a protagonist. The Terminator might arguably be the star of the film, but he’s the main antagonist.
The main (Ahnold) Terminator is a hero* in Terminator 2, which is the Terminator movie referenced in the article, and he still pulls this.
* Time-traveling bodyguard for the kid main character.
At least tge guy was a jerk and she uses the bike to travel somewhere. Minor spoiler for Avengers Endgame, but theres a scene where a male hero smashes up a complete stranger’s car, for absolutely no reason.
This kind of behaviour is a very, very common trope in action movies. There could definately be a legitimate discussion about whether “heroic” characters should behave this way. But of all the rich variety of cases people could choose to highlight, why this one?
Right. Okay. I didn’t pay attention to the video, it’s been decades since I’ve seen either film, and I only remember something like that happening in the first one. I’m not even sure if I saw the beginning of the second one; my father had a tendency to play rental videos without telling anyone he rented anything or asking if anyone else wanted to watch, so I missed the beginning of a lot of things.
(Why didn’t he say anything? Because nobody asked. Why can’t I just watch it myself later? Because he rented it, so no one else can touch it, since if anyone else damages it he’s responsible for the charges. He could be rather infuriating to deal with.)
In other news, while British politics continues to eat itself, there was some satisfaction to be had in the complete failure of Yaxley-Lennon and Benjamin to get elected to the European Parliament.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/markdistefano/far-right-internet-personalities-europe?origin=shp
Prior to the new John Wick movie, I saw a trailer for a movie called STUBER, in which a policeman commandeers an Uber driver’s car to pursue some bad guys, thereby repeatedly putting the driver into danger of being killed.
So, do you think all the people who have been complaining about CAPTAIN MARVEL are going to be equally as splenetic about this? For that matter, do you think that even one of them will post something even mildly critical of it?
Ah, yes. Female characters have to be absolutely perfect. But male characters, ah, Kimmy, they are fine. You only pipe up when female characters behave better than male ones, but still not perfect enough.
Of course, you also pipe up IF they are then portrayed as perfect, because in THOSE case, you screech “Mary Sue”. Always an excuse to hate female characters.
And, naturally, you’re intentionally ignoring the context of the scene, where her not behaving perfectly is even PART OF THE POINT and her whole character arc.
People screeching about female characters do not seem to be very good at media literacy, for some reason. Almost as if that is part of why their comments are dripping with misogyny…
Wait, you mean to tell me that the literal Kree mind-slave, indoctrinated into a culture of stoicism an brutality comes off a tad inhumane? Gee, it’s almost as if we’re not really supposed to like what she is at this point and root for Carol rejecting and overcoming that indoctrination in the last 3rd of the film.
(though accepting US Airforce indoctrination is only marginally better)
@Snowberry – Geez, that’s awful. Sorry you had to deal with that.
In, like, 99.99% of movies ever made, if the protagonists just sat still, asked authority for permission, and obeyed the rules, nothing would ever happen. Films tap into people’s anger that “the system” doesn’t protect the little guy, and that the most effective way to get justice is to take matters into your own hands.
It’s interesting how, as soon as the narrative centers a woman, suddenly the manosphere becomes very, very focused on the periphery. She becomes a blind spot in the middle, of lesser importance than the surrounding men. We saw that a few weeks ago when a female scientist became the public face of the black hole images and everyone was all BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TEAM.
The average action movie has a ton of incidental carnage and body counts. It’s funny to see how all of a sudden these guys are Extremely Concerned about the humanity of the background NPCs and the property damage, much more so than they are about Captain Marvel’s safety. Seems like what they’re really angry about is being asked to relate to a hero that doesn’t resemble them. Oh, and that this scene might teach women and girls to have boundaries and enforce them.
@Lou
You forgot “both-siders with superior attitudes pretending to be neutral, but who always secretly side with the status quo”. Our debate was incomplete until you showed up to smugly insult everybody as losers for caring about things. Your brave stand certainly cleared things up.
Well to be fair, in Terminator 2, the guy burned him with a cigarette and then he crushed his hand. Then the gang started to attack him. And then he threw everyone around. He’s also called a Terminator so I wouldn’t compare a literal killing machine to a super hero.
Hey Manosphere!! You have now officially become Walter Peck. Aren’t you proud?
So it’s ok for a guy superhero like wolverine to beat up a jerk and steals his stuff….but its not ok when a brain washed felame kree soldier on a mission intimidates and steals from a guy? She isn’t even a “superhero” during that part of the movie yet she is a brain washed kree soldier.
@Kimmy
You want to see the character at their best when all negative traits are gone and she can truly spread her wings?
Then don’t watch the origin movie, wait for part two! That’s how Marvel movies work: The origin is always about them rising.
I knew that Captain Marvel was a piece of feminist shit. At least they could have made her beat a gang of bikers, like good ol’ Arnie. But it seems it was too much to handle for a feminist hero. She could have broken a fingernail, seriously!
Captain Marvel stealing a vehicle means she is a villain. Real heroes like Captain America would NEVER steal someone else’s vehicle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pUYLVaIUEM
Well, MCU Captain America would NEVER steal someone else’s vehicle!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mESEFrhI9sQ
Okay, but what about the (deleted) scene where Captain Marvel uses her superpowers to crush the guy’s hand? REAL heroes like Superman would NEVER crush a powerless person’s hand and then assault them, say by throwing them into an icy chasm never to be seen again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUORL-bvwA0
Um… what was I saying?
The thing is, the absurdity of these guys’ premise can be seen… by watching the damn film. IMO Captain Marvel was not feminist so much as it was anti-imperialist— unless we re-define “feminist film” to mean any movie where the gender of the female characters goes largely unremarked-upon and their competence is taken for granted¹. I suppose (if one were so inclined) that one could read Carol Danvers’s awakening and opposition to the Kree and their oppressive actions as some kind of metaphor for “woman gets woke, discovers the patriarchy” thing but that’s a reach if you ask me. These guys are so determined to see feminists under the dubiously-stained mattresses of their beds that any film that isn’t actual pornography that features a woman is “feminist” to them now.
This .gif though ??
?itemid=14007680
¹ Yeah, we are, aren’t we? ☹️
Kimmy, are you saying that feminists have to both be better than men, but make sure we never presume to be treated as though we are better than men?
I think you may need to do some foundation reading. Your understanding of the basics appear to be skewed, almost as if you’d gotten them from some Chan meme or somewhere.
@ Kimmy, even though you are probably long gone.
I understand that to succeed, women often have to work twice as hard and be twice as good as their male counterparts. That’s not feminism.That’s patriarchy.
Captain Marvel doesn’t need to be better than male heroes. In fact, I don’t want her to be better than male heroes. I want her to be a flawed and complicated person, just like male action heroes get to be flawed and complicated people and just like all of us are flawed and complicated people.
@Weatherwax:
On the other hand: the Tories will now tack even further right, to reclaim votes from Farage; Labour are an ineffectual shambles; and voter turnout was abysmal, with less than one in four eligible voters in Hull bothering to get off their arses, and (I think) no part of the country reaching 50%. Even Lord Buckethead is in trouble. There’s very little to celebrate.