Okay, it’s a completely unfounded rumor at this point, so let’s not get too excited; but Marvel may have approached Angelina Jolie to direct the Captain Marvel film coming our way in 2018.
According to SpoilerTV, Marvel loved Jolie’s 2014 film Unbroken and have offered her twenty million dollars for the super-job. Their source says that “having a female director is a priority” for Marvel, and that Jolie feels that “to be courted by Marvel after the Sony fiasco is a huge pat on the back.” If true, Captain Marvel would be Jolie’s sixth feature film, having previously also directed the documentary A Place in Time and In the Land of Blood and Honey, and being signed on for 2015’s By the Sea and 2016’s Africa.
While I think Jolie would be an interesting choice for the film, I wonder if a female director with a more action-oriented background might not be a better fit for the film. Marvel has a history of making particularly smart choices for their directors, even if they’re not always well-known; in this case, I’m thinking of Game of Thrones‘ Alan Taylor for Thor: The Dark World or Community’s Russo brothers for Winter Solider. Before Michelle MacLaren signed on for Wonder Woman, we made a post of lady directors we thought would be great for the film, and I still think a lot of those choices apply to Captain Marvel. I’d be most interested in Lexi Alexander or the Soska sisters – though we hear Ava DuVernay might be interested.
And ultimately, while it’s wonderful news that Marvel is aiming for a female director, I think for Captain Marvel it’s equally if not more important that they sign on a female or feminist writer. The current Carol Danvers would be nothing without Kelly Sue DeConnick’s voice behind her; we don’t want the script getting left to some David S. Goyer wannabe who throws together something reductive and insulting—because even if the female director makes certain we’re not treated to exploitative ass shots, we’d still be getting a weak superheroine. I know Joss Whedon wants to step away from the Marvel universe for a while after Ultron, but is it too much to hope that he might at least take a pass at the script?
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