Captain Marvel screenwriter says movie is action comedy
Captain Marvel screenwriter Geneva Robertson-Dworet said that the first female-led Marvel movie will be “more of an action comedy” and the big screen version of superheroine Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson (Kong: Skull Island, Room) will be like her comic book character: “Sassy,… a smartass, (and) won’t take sh– from anyone.”
Roberston-Dworet elaborated on this in the Entertainment Weekly report, saying that this direction for Captain Marvel was in part carried over from her work on writing the Tomb Raider reboot for Warner Bros. The film adaptation for the tale of iconic video game character Lara Croft was first set to be a comedic origin story of the action heroine as a teenager. Tomb Raider star Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, The Danish Girl) opted for a more serious narrative instead, which led to the script being rewritten and ultimately landing on a more dramatic take.
“Captain Marvel has a very funny voice, and it’s more of an action comedy, more like what we were talking about doing in the first draft I wrote for Tomb Raider…. [but] that tone survived in Captain Marvel.
“I love funny female characters, so as Tomb Raider got more serious, I got even more committed to the idea of Captain Marvel being hilarious.”
Roberston-Dworet also pointed to the source material as being important in the writing process:
“Carol Danvers is one of the funniest comic book characters. She’s so sassy, she’s such a smartass, she won’t take sh— from anyone, and the comic books do an amazing job at capturing that voice, and it was important that the entire Captain Marvel creative team [kept to that].”
She made sure to thank co-director Anna Boden, the first female director for the MCU, in fleshing out Carol Danvers as a woman that’s not just the strong, independent type a la Wonder Woman.
“Certainly we were writing after Wonder Woman had come out. We already saw one example of what a superheroine looked like on screen. So we wanted to carve our own path and make sure we weren’t retreading the same territory, and showing all facets of what women are capable of.
“I’m hoping that sassy, funny superhero [in the film] is something people haven’t seen before, and that they’re going to be excited to see in Carol Danvers. A lot of the great Captain Marvel comic books really broke ground with Carol Danvers’ voice, and that’s something we want to continue with the movie.”
We’ll see just how comedic Captain Marvel is when it comes out on March 8, 2019.
