I’m not Marvelling at this ‘feminist’ superhero

The latest Marvel vehicle, Captain Marvel, has taken $153 million in America on its opening weekend. This is the secondbiggest debut of a new Marvel character on the big screen, topped only by last year’s record-breaking Black Panther.

The shock factor is supposed to come in the fact that Captain Marvel is female. For Captain Marvel is Carol Danvers (played by Brie Larson): part human, part Kree warrior (me neither), who experiences flashbacks to her life on earth as she fights a member of Starforce (again, no idea).

Not only is Captain Marvel the franchise’s first female-led superhero, it is the first of its films to boast a female director, Anna Boden, holding the fort with a chap called Ryan Fleck. Those who waited to see how Marvel’s “feminist” offering would perform in comparison with rival DC’S Wonder Woman of 2017 are cooing over its $455million global debut.

Don’t get me wrong. I am happy for the world’s little girls, who deserve this as much as I deserved an alternative to steroidal men in capes as a child. It’s just that Wonder Woman was dull, just as all superhero movies are – feminist only insofar as she was a male heroine with breasts.

I feel similarly conflicted about Mary Queen of Scots. I won’t see it because the event at the centre of the narrative – their meeting – never took place. Women occupy far too little historical space to misrepresent the fraction we can own.

And I was bored by The Favourite. If one isn’t surprised that people in The Olden Days had sex – even female people – then there wasn’t much to it, apart from some rabbits – and they were made up. Honestly, you wait a lifetime for some female-focused plot lines, then all that you’re sold is a bunny/pup.