Concern about Carol Danvers and her makeup choices in Avengers: Endgame vs. Captain Marvel shouldn’t be shoved to the side, but it also makes me question my own stance on the matter. For one, I think it’s cool when a female superhero is being a badass while rocking a cat-eye.
The concern with Carol Danvers, however, is that she has more makeup on in the clip we’ve seen from Endgame than she had on in her own debut film—which, arguably, you could pass off as the character growing in her own skin and deciding she wanted to try makeup. I don’t know; we women are complex beings and one day, we love wearing makeup, and the next, we hate it. Maybe Carol just felt like showing up to meet the Avengers with a smokey eye.
That being said, she’s also a fictional character, and it’s worth wondering what the real-world reason behind the difference was. The Russo brothers cleared up this concern at the Avengers: Endgame press junket, also giving us a fun look into the process the actors get to have with their characters:
“We empower them to have control over their characters because they need to be comfortable playing those characters. This was Brie’s first time playing the character ever. First day on set as the character ever. And those are the choices that she and her hair and makeup team made. I think as it approached the [Captain Marvel solo] film, [when] she started to think more about the character, she made other creative choices. But everyone should be given the right to have the freedom to make whatever creative choices they want to make. And those are the ones that she made that day with us.”
It makes sense now, looking at each character, how they feel so grounded in the actors we’ve come to know. Sure, they’re different; that’s what acting is, but the ability to have that kind of say over a character, to dictate what they’d wear and their hair and makeup choices? It’s kind of wonderful.
So sure, Carol Danvers has a bit more make-up on in Avengers: Endgame, but at least we know that it was a choice that Brie Larson made before she explored the character more in Captain Marvel.
(image: Marvel Entertainment)
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