'Captain Marvel' Goes with an Unconventional But Neat Directing Duo

By Dustin Rowles | Film | April 19, 2017 |

By Dustin Rowles | Film | April 19, 2017 |

Captain Marvel, due out in 2019, has been slow to develop, but they do have a lead in Brie Larson (yay), writers in Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman (Inside Out, yay), and now a directing duo in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.

Boden and Fleck — who directed Ryan Gosling’s outstanding break-out film Half Nelson — are not exactly conventional superhero film directors, but neither are Meg LeFauve and Nicole Perlman conventional writers. Nor, frankly, is Brie Larson a conventional superhero actress.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and while the team behind Captain Marvel doesn’t exactly scream, “Badass superhero movie!,” it does suggest that a lot of care is going into telling an affecting story. Boden and Fleck’s Sugar was great, Mississippi Grind left me in knots, and It’s Kind of a Funny Story was a well-intentioned misfire. Half-Nelson, meanwhile, was one of my favorite films of the aughts.

Hopefully, what this means is that Marvel will continue to stray from a formula that has gotten a little stale in recent years. With Thor Ragnarok, they’re looking to mine the comedy, and with Captain Marvel, maybe they’re hoping to tell a more emotional story.

I’m not a typical superhero movie fan, but with Larson, Boden, Fleck, LeFauve and Perlman on board, I’m certainly more excited about this project than I was before (and I was already pretty excited about a Brie Larson superhero film). Let’s just hope that these participants do not in any way suggest a strong romantic storyline, because that would feel like a huge fuck you. Neither the writers, nor the directors, nor Larson suggest as much, however. They’re just all really great at telling character-driven stories, as was done with Logan, and there’s nothing at all wrong with that.

via Variety