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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They never cared about cursing, but they would get so angry with me if I woke them up in the middle of the night with nightmares.
@Yutolia
Well that’s just terrible, I’m sorry for that.
Look, if we’re going to pick on heroes for pointless violence and needless property damage, then I want to see the bitching about the actions of Captain America in The Winter Soldier. I mean, he wrongfully resisted arrest, beat up about a dozen SHIELD agents in an elevator (although, to be fair to the man, he did ask them if anyone wanted to get out first), caused property damage when he jumped out of the glass elevator, and further property damage (and probably at least injury, if not death of the actual pilot(s)) when he destroyed a Quinjet with his shield and a motorcycle. All of this because he didn’t like an order he’d been given.
Then two days later, he comes back with a couple of friends, and destroys three helicarriers and the Triskelion building.
Now where are all the right-wing protesters screaming about that, huh?
(I mean, his justification for all of this was there were actual-factual Nazis attempting to overthrow the US government by force, but really… that’s just an over-reaction, and he should have met them halfway and talked it over like reasonable men, right? Because any kind of anti-fascist violence isn’t going to work at all, right?).
[/sarcasm]
[/sarcasm]
[/sarcasm], damn it!
PS: Look, if the various HYDRA bosses couldn’t read the files and realise what happened the last time Steve Rogers discovered they’d experimented on James Barnes (Captain America: The First Avenger), then in my opinion they deserved everything that happened to them afterwards. There is such a thing as being too stupid to survive.
On the subject of parents and bringing children to movies that aren’t for them, I have a distinct memory of my dad taking me to an action movie when I was very small, probably only 5 or 6. I don’t remember anything about the film except that there was a big shootout scene that ended with one of the characters taking off his sunglasses and I’m pretty sure he had no eyes underneath, just empty sockets? IDK what the movie even was, it would have been about 2003 or 2004.
Only questionable thing I can think of my parents exposing me to is my mother reading me a book I picked out at the library from school. She used to read to me before bed time and the book was called camp zombie. I just remember it ending with the brother and sister who were sent to the camp burned some of the zombies but there was one still left at the bottom of the lake. waiting for the return of campers.
Ryan, on the question of Tim Pool being alt-right-adjacent, here is a twitter thread with photographic and video evidence of him being not only figuratively but literally alt-right-adjacent,
https://twitter.com/vicbergeriv/status/1104435118146445313?lang=en
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BATMAN
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DEADPOOL
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“Did they really expect us to view her as heroic?” NO, ya, doorknob, they DIDN’T, because she WASN’T a hero at that point in the plot! She was working for the alien invaders! Fiction is replete with characters who work for the villains but switch sides when they realize they’re in the wrong: Cecil Harvey in Final Fantasy IV, Yasha in Asura’s Wrath, Zuko in Avatar…There’s a trope for it, even! I see know reason why this particular instance should be more objectionable to you other than “It’s an icky GIRL doing it.” This is just the “Black Panther is an alt-right hero” argument again, because the argument only works if you didn’t actually watch/understand the movie.
@Lainy: I was allowed to watch or read whatever I wanted except Davy and Goliath, which my mom called “the religious Gumbi”.
They mostly just didn’t want to have to pay attention to me, so they let me watch whatever, but if I was ever upset by what I saw or read, their cop-out answer was always, “well, you chose to watch it!” To a child they refused to give any guidance to.
My mom recently (finally) admitted that I raised myself.
So, yeah, it bothers me too when I see kids at stuff they may not understand. I tend to be really protective of what the children in my life see or hear while they’re in my care.
I get the “taking kids to the movies because we can’t afford a sitter” thing. Movies were a bit different back in the 60s and early 70s, though.
I can count on one hand the number of times I had a sitter as a child and that includes the times there were other kids, as well. But my parents usually went to drive-ins so that I could sleep* in the back seat. Neighborhood get-togethers and card nights generally involved everyone’s kids** in the host families’ parent’s bed together doing a slumber party-type thing but without the food, drinks and pranks.
*Which I almost always did! Except the time I got a heads-up from some other kids about the strip club scene in The Graduate, which I peeked at from between the front seats of our car. We talked about the lady twirling tassels from her ta-tas for weeks!
**Me and two other girls, usually, maybe three every now and then.
Goodness, it certainly would be a shame if girls and women got *ideas*. They might think is acceptable to respond to abusive behavior negatively, vigorously even.
@Lou – Let me TL;DR you.
Stop talking about stuff. I like the way things are.
Re: age inappropriate movies: Heavy Metal (1981) at under 10 y. o. It was an interesting afternoon when I wrote a “plot summary” for a “what did you do this weekend” assignment in grade school.
… man-babies gonna manbaby…
Seriously, if all women woke up with super-powers, these men would want them ALL locked up for obvious reasons. They’ll die from dehydration for having to think twice about what they say and do to women, but would have no issue backhanding a woman into next week for slightly burning “his” dinner, for defending herself when he groped her on the train, or telling him that “maybe” he’s not as good as he thinks he is.
It’s a control issue. Always has and always will be.
Anyone mention the scene yet in Man of Steel where Clark Kent utterly demolishes a guy’s semi truck because a guy throws a beer on him, instead of throwing him out of the bar like Clark threatened to do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9U3ajjpH5A
That sure was a noble and heroic way to handle a drunk asshole, you betcha.
@Lainy: Deadpool even asked parents not to take their little kids to see the film.
My grad-student parents made a little bed in the back of the car for me (5) and my sister (2) and went to see Omen III: The Final Conflict at the drive-in, thinking we’d sleep through the whole thing. I looked up just in time to see a guy shoot himself, with blood splattering all over the Great Seal of the United States. Whoops.
Talonknife, the film you remember is Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the third and last of Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi movies. And the eyeless CIA in question was Johnny “Hey, I too can play Tonto. I have Native American ancestors, they were part of the…um, let me get back to you on that” Depp.
When I was a snooty kid, I think I was much more concerned with the rating systems than my parents were, although looking back I couldn’t tell you why. I remember having to be talked into watching some pg-13 movies and tv programs.
Sexist fucksticks still being sexist fucksticks…well at least one thing in this reality still makes sense
Oh, and don’t forget that Steve Rogers, and his female besty, also steal a car, in The Winter Soldier, and then joke about it.
In Utlron, Steve and the rest of the Avengers commit international war crimes, which results in:
… during Civil War, he becomes an international criminal for disobeying the American govt.
Bucky pretty much spends all the movies being considered a govt. criminal.
This is a lot like the bullshit arguments we were hearing on Tumblr about Captain Marvel being a piece of Airforce propaganda, when all the other MCU movies have American jingoism in them, Steve is in the Army, in The First Avenger, and Colonel “WarMachine” Rhodes exists!
This is all so sad. They are just grasping at som many straws on their way down. And they are going down because ow that studios have realized how much fecking money they can make from PoC, and women led movies, they ain’t stopping now. This is gonna be a regular occurrence, y’all!
And to this I say:
http://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Nicole-Scherzinger-Stay-Mad-Gif.gif
Anyone gonna go see dark phoenix? not gonna lie, the X-Men had this cartoon when I was a little, Jean Grey was my favorite character because she had red hair just like me. So her getting her own movie was very exciting to me.
Definitely going because I’ve loved every movie of the “soft reboot” they’ve done, including Apocalypse, which I don’t get why so many people hate. I get goosebumps every time with the scene with Magneto awakening his latent abilities at the remains of the concentration camp.
I’ve missed several of the X-Men movies lately. Not sure why, but I haven’t seen DoFP or Apocalypse. Maybe one more? Oh, right. Didn’t see Logan. That one I wanted to see, just didn’t get the chance.
But, yeah, the 2nd iteration of my teenage garage band was named Phoenix back when no one had heard of her unless they actually read the comic book. The whole band was enamored with Jean Grey. I wouldn’t want to miss Dark Phoenix.
@Crip Dyke
You will probably want to watch at the very least DoFP and Apocalypse to grasp Dark Phoenix, because it is in direct connection to those two. DoFP is the sequel to X-men: First Class, but it also sort of “rebooted” the franchise, and Apocalypse introduces Sophie Turner as Jean Grey.