This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last but casting Captain Marvel as someone so young has character drawbacks and bothers me for some specific reasons. As a mixed race woman there were quite a few things I would never be. I would never be white, I would never be tall, and I would never be a natural blonde. These are three rather essential things for the Carol Danvers they are portraying in the Captain Marvel movie. However, one of the things that the comic book hero Carol Danvers had that I didn’t, but I could attain, was experience. Unlike teenage X-men or other young white woman superheroes, Carol Danvers was older and only became a superhero after she became a Major in the Air Force and had become the head editor at a magazine. She was a woman who had already had a full career, was starting a second and then picking up a third as a superhero.
That aspect of her character was something that someone who could not even come close to resembling Carol Danvers could identify with. By casting someone as young as Brie Larson, Marvel takes the one thing about that character almost any person could attain away from myself and many others who are looking for women heroes who are not crones, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, immortal twenty-somethings, or girl geniuses but women who become extraordinary at any age.
Specific to the character of Carol Danvers, having cast a young actor there are three things that Marvel could do with her to deal with her youth, all of which are problematic:
Marvel writes her to be the youngest Major in US history
While this isn’t the worst choice, she would be referenced as some sort of wunderkind for quite a while in the series. Amazingly smart and able to be promoted so quickly, this choice would undercut Carol Danvers normalness. What I liked about Carol Danvers when I first read her character in Alias and then after reading the original Ms. Marvel series was that yes, she was an amazing super hero, but she was also a woman who liked to go shopping and wrote a book about her experience in the Air Force. She was already on her second career by the time she became a superhero and was leading an adult life that was not bound to her military service. Being the youngest major in history will not allow her to have that development and focus her life on her Air Force time rather than what she did afterwards.
Marvel takes away or changes her rank away from Major
So the character that Marvel is writing is Captain Marvel and not Ms. Marvel, although she is still, to my knowledge, portraying the woman Carol Danvers. If Marvel chooses to make her a Captain in the Air Force instead of a Major that’s fine. Brie Larson is old enough to be a Captain. However, by demoting her they are removing some of the agency and uniqueness from Carol. They would demote her for the sake of the movie, simplifying the moniker, and undercut the awesomeness as a character. She was also a high-ranking female officer that chose to step away from the game before coming a superhero. That’s awesome and they shouldn’t take that away from her because they chose to cast a younger actor.
Marvel writes her character to be between 30-40 anyways
Marvel doesn’t change anything about Carol and have Brie play a typically aged Major, as if Brie Larson is 35+. Inadvertently, or purposefully, Marvel supports the ageist practice having 20-year-olds play 40-year-olds showing women who are that age that they will never be young-looking enough. For younger woman, as we get through our twenties we’re supposed to have everything sorted out in our lives and be able to shoulder the world before 30. We’re supposed to be experts in anything we pick up by the time we are 24 and experienced aged professionals by 27. Then remain timeless in age until we reach 60 where we all become Meryl Streep.
BONUS PROBLEM: Keeping the current love interest
In the comics, Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers current love interest is Colonel James Rhodes, currently played by Don Cheadle who was born in 1964. Brie Larson was born in 1989. He’s old enough to be her father but if they choose to play her as a 35+ woman she could be a perfectly fine love interest according to Hollywood logic.
The point here is that a lot of the things that make Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel cool involve her age-ency. AKA She had the time to develop skills at a regular pace. She wasn’t the best of the best before she became Captain Marvel, she grew into it after she had established a non-superhero life. I know Brie Larson can play that woman. But I also know that there were many other amazing actresses in their thirties would have done just as great of a job and Marvel could have done more to challenge ageist Hollywood casting practices.
