Captain Marvel: why sexist attempts at sabotage will fail

Brie Larson is the brand new public enemy number one but the movie is still on track for a US bow of more than $100m

Ben Child
Thu 21 Feb 2019

For sexist keyboard warriors everywhere the mere sight of Captain Marvel’s Brie Larson must be enough to make them break out in hives. Here is a successful (Oscar-winning) woman playing the most powerful hero in the Marvel universe, according to studio chief Kevin Feige. In fact, her alter ego, Carol Danvers, might just be tough enough to take down Thanos himself in the forthcoming Avengers: Endgame.

Will 'Goddess of Death' Cate Blanchett solve Marvel's female supervillain problem?

BIOGRAPHY

While female baddies abound in Marvel comics, few have made the transition to the screen. But that’s about to change with Blanchett’s role in Thor: Ragnarok


Ben Child
Tuesday 1 August 2017 12.41 BST

W

hen it comes to truly splendid villains, there’s nothing like a dame. From Tilda Swinton’s icy, curdled charisma in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) to Margaret Hamilton’s cackling Wicked Witch of the West in the classic 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz, female baddies are more than capable of holding their own in terms of offering up sheer, undiluted evil. Which makes it all the more disappointing that there have been so few in the superhero genre. Sure, there’s been the odd juicy role – Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992) or Marion Cotillard as Talia al Ghul in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises (2012). But more often than not, Hollywood’s standard approach towards gender comes into play, and the best supervillain parts go to male stars.

Carol sweeps gay and lesbian critics' awards after Oscars snub

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara

Carol sweeps gay and lesbian critics' awards after Oscars snub

Todd Haynes’s lesbian drama wins Dorians, despite missing out on best film and best director Academy nominations last week, though Rooney Mara remains favourite to take best supporting actress


Ben Child
Tuesday 19 January 2016 11.15 GMT

Fifties romance Carol was the big winner in the Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association awards – the Dorians – taking five top prizes including best film, best director for Todd Haynes and best actress for Cate Blanchett.

 

Haunted Harry ... Daniel Radcliffe in The Woman in Black,
which has become the most successful British horror film at the UK box office

Daniel Radcliffe's The Woman in Black sets British horror record

This article is more than 8 years old

Potter's powers help ghost story become most successful British horror at UK box office, with haul of £14m in just three weeks

Ben Child
Wed 29 February 2012

The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliffe, has become the most successful British horror at the UK box office with a haul of more than £14m in just three weeks of release.

The supernatural tale, from director James Watkins and the revived Hammer Films unit, has overtaken homegrown rivals including Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later and Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead. It has also outpaced similarly-themed US productions shot in the UK with British casts, such as Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Alejandro Amenábar's The Others and Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula. Its success has been partly credited to it appealing to as broad a church as possible in being a horror film with a 12A certificate.

Written by British screenwriter Jane Goldman and based on Susan Hill's novel about a widower who travels to a remote mansion said to be haunted by spirits in Edwardian England, The Woman in Black has received mostly positive reviews. The Guardian's Xan Brooks noted (via a three-star review) that Radcliffe, the erstwhile star of the Harry Potter series, "had taken a shrewd baby-step in the right direction with this busy, bustling ghost story that at times appears less indebted to the Susan Hill bestseller than the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland".

THE GUARDIAN