We’re still sixteen months away from The Marvels flying into theaters, but we’ve already been inundated with speculation surrounding the Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel, and it’s not all been of the positive variety, which is to be expected given the presence of the unexplainably polarizing Brie Larson in the lead role.
As soon as it was first announced that Carol Danvers’ second solo outing wouldn’t be opting for the standard MCU naming formula of Captain Marvel: Insert Subtitle Here, it was inevitable that a slew of unconfirmed and uncorroborated rumors would begin making their way online claiming the Academy Award winning actress wasn’t capable of headlining her own superhero series, despite $1.1 billion at the box office proving otherwise.
What we do know is that there’s going to be a team-based element to the narrative given that Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan and Teyonah Parris’ Monica Rambeau are essentially sharing the burden of title character, and The Marvels also has one of the fastest-rising talents in the business behind the camera.
Nia DaCosta was just 30 years old when she was hired to helm the project, making her the second-youngest filmmaker to oversee an MCU blockbuster after Ryan Coogler, who was 29 when he was first tasked with Black Panther in January 2016. The filmmaker’s Candyman reboot has been riding a wave of buzz for well over a year now, and in a new interview she revealed that The Marvels has given her more creative freedom than she’s ever experienced before.
“It’s a lot less traumatizing to work on for sure. But this movie also deals with specific, personal, sometimes sad things. But no, it’s been nice to work in a different world for sure. It’s amazing. It’s more freedom than I’ve had on anything. It’s great because we’re all just comic book nerds who want to make a great comic book movie.”
Now that the MCU has long since been established as the biggest game in town, Kevin Feige is much more willing to hand his directorial talents a lot more leeway to put their own stamp on the material than he was during the first couple of Phases, and DaCosta’s The Marvels is set to take that freedom and run with it.