MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

In 2017, Wonder Woman was released by Warner Brothers Studios, offering our first foray into solo superheroine films. While popular film franchises in the past touted “powerful” female protagonists, there hadn’t been a live-action, mainstream American film in which the titular character was a female superhero. Wonder Woman, having grossed 800+ million dollars, went on to become the highest earning film with a female director in terms of domestic earnings.

The success of the Wonder Woman dovetailed into 2019 when Marvel Studios released Captain Marvel. The film was the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first female-led superhero film and became the first film in the same category to gross over one billion dollars. While both films have been lauded as “…the best Hollywood can deliver,” and “engrossing, enthralling, and rewarding on many levels,” in this presentation I argue that Wonder Woman does far less in the name upturning gender norms, than does Captain Marvel. This exploration examines the narrative space occupied by Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman, and Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury in Captain Marvel.

When comparing feminist ideologies in both films, as connected to the Trevor and Fury, we can see that Wonder Woman, while subverting some traditional gender norms, also does significant work to prop up cliched representations of women. Conversely, Captain Marvel’s handling of the aforementioned tropes, highlights the necessity of progressive, superhero storytelling.

Examinations such as these are valuable in that they ask us, as consumers, to question whether the presence of a female character in popular narrative does, in fact, ensure the responsible representation of said character.