Kamala, Monica etc. They're going to be needing spin-offs real quick for this franchise to hold all that awesome.
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Captain Marvel: The Road to $1 Billion at the Box Office
- Thread starter Ishaan
- Start date
Kamala, Monica etc. They're going to be needing spin-offs real quick for this franchise to hold all that awesome.
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Empire magazine's spolier special podcast on Captain Marvel is up.
They have an interview with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the directors of the movie. There's some interesting stuff in there.
Spoilers below, so read at your own risk.
One of the things they reveal that I thought was interesting is that they say they always intended for Jude Law's character, Yon-Rogg, to be this manipulative, abusive spouse sort of character, right from the start of the movie to the end.
The Empire team then goes on to discuss how everything the Yon-Rogg character does is part of his abusive behaviour, including his training scenes with Carol at the start, where he's constantly asking her to keep her emotions in check (which is supposedly keeping her power in check as well).
Now, I'm not certain if this is something people are reading into too much or if I simply missed it (I've only seen the movie once so far), but I never felt that way at all, and I don't feel the movie draws a particularly clear line between the parts of Yon-Rogg that genuinely care for Carol and the parts that are manipulating her.
As her partner/superior officer, Yon-Rogg asking Carol to rein her emotions in seemed perfectly natural to me. She's a combatant in a military organization--of course you want to keep your emotions in check and not lash out at a superior officer (or any other situation) out of anger or frustration. That's basic protocol.
Maybe it's just Jude Law, but Yon-Rogg always felt like he genuinely cared for Carol. And yet, the movie goes on to pretend that there's just no complexity to that relationship. It actually felt a little forced/heavy-handed at the end to me, when Carol's big "screw you" gesture to him and the Supreme Intelligence was the idea of tapping into her emotions even years of being told not to do so. And that emotion is where her power comes from, so all those lessons from Yon-Rogg were useless. I would argue that, no, they were still valuable lessons that any combatant would have to learn.
When she says she has nothing to prove to Yon-Rogg, that makes sense. The rest, not so much. I just think the movie could have done a whole lot more to convey that Yon-Rogg, ultimately, is a grey area, instead of painting him as this outright awful person at the very end, when he very clearly didn't seem that way at the start. It feels like the concept wasn't very well fleshed out, and I would have appreciated had they taken an additional 15-20 minutes to really flesh the relationship between the two out, and better establish the duality of Yon-Rogg.
(Someone that clearly cares about Carol, yet manipulates her for the Kree and displays abusive tendencies at the same time)
They have an interview with Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the directors of the movie. There's some interesting stuff in there.
Spoilers below, so read at your own risk.
One of the things they reveal that I thought was interesting is that they say they always intended for Jude Law's character, Yon-Rogg, to be this manipulative, abusive spouse sort of character, right from the start of the movie to the end.
The Empire team then goes on to discuss how everything the Yon-Rogg character does is part of his abusive behaviour, including his training scenes with Carol at the start, where he's constantly asking her to keep her emotions in check (which is supposedly keeping her power in check as well).
Now, I'm not certain if this is something people are reading into too much or if I simply missed it (I've only seen the movie once so far), but I never felt that way at all, and I don't feel the movie draws a particularly clear line between the parts of Yon-Rogg that genuinely care for Carol and the parts that are manipulating her.
As her partner/superior officer, Yon-Rogg asking Carol to rein her emotions in seemed perfectly natural to me. She's a combatant in a military organization--of course you want to keep your emotions in check and not lash out at a superior officer (or any other situation) out of anger or frustration. That's basic protocol.
Maybe it's just Jude Law, but Yon-Rogg always felt like he genuinely cared for Carol. And yet, the movie goes on to pretend that there's just no complexity to that relationship. It actually felt a little forced/heavy-handed at the end to me, when Carol's big "screw you" gesture to him and the Supreme Intelligence was the idea of tapping into her emotions even years of being told not to do so. And that emotion is where her power comes from, so all those lessons from Yon-Rogg were useless. I would argue that, no, they were still valuable lessons that any combatant would have to learn.
When she says she has nothing to prove to Yon-Rogg, that makes sense. The rest, not so much. I just think the movie could have done a whole lot more to convey that Yon-Rogg, ultimately, is a grey area, instead of painting him as this outright awful person at the very end, when he very clearly didn't seem that way at the start. It feels like the concept wasn't very well fleshed out, and I would have appreciated had they taken an additional 15-20 minutes to really flesh the relationship between the two out, and better establish the duality of Yon-Rogg.
(Someone that clearly cares about Carol, yet manipulates her for the Kree and displays abusive tendencies at the same time)
you can see them, too! just search "captain marvel" on youtube and click literally any video you see
He's gaslighting the shit out of her and purposefully holding her back from the full expression of her potential.
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Right, but then it's a mistake to have "keep your emotions in check, Vers" be part of this abusive behaviour, in my opinion. Because that doesn't seem abusive in the slightest. It just seems like common sense. Even in hindsight.
LIke, either make him a complete dick (which, if they tried to do, I didn't see it), or give him enough complexity and layers that their showdown at the end doesn't come off feeling quite as heavy-handed. (Which they also didn't do) Their relationship feels to me like the weakest part of the film.
This dude telling a brainwashed woman he kidnapped to keep her emotions in check does not sound abusive to you?
Because he's just using that as a convenient cover to keep her under control. The Kree abducted her and brainwashed her. The guy's an asshole. What are you talking about?
You misread that relationship. All that abusive spouse shit is obvious.
Yon-Rogg and the Kree dont give a shit about her. If they did, they wouldn't have kidnapped her and wiped her memories and enslaved her to commit war crimes for them. He was gaslighting her the entire time.
Not sure if you've ever been in an abusive relationship before. But walking into the movie knowing what to expect from Kree, it's abundantly clear in tone and body language how much both Yon-Rogg and Supremor are taking advantage of Carol from just those first two scenes.
He was using her, molding her into what he wanted her to be and probably just in hopes of her leading the Kree to the Source of the Lightspeed engine.
Once he knew that SHE knew the truth his entire demeanor changed.
How many times do you hear "Women are too emotional" as a way of dismissing them as effective leaders or authority figures? Like it's not even based in any kind of factual reality. It's just a line you hear parroted again and again.
Yon Rogg never gave a shit about Carol. Whatever admiration he did have was clearly second to the fact that he wanted to keep her under his boot. Their final faceoff where he pathetically tries to bait her into a fist fight is evidence of this. He doesn't want to see "what she's really made of." He doesn't want her to "control her emotions". There's nothing out-of-control about her. That was never the hurdle, no matter how much he insists it is. She doesn't actually need him. He wants her to feel dependent and inferior to him - that's it. And for 6 years, she'd bought into it.
I thought the movie does quite well to suggest that Yon-Rogg does legitimately care for Carol/Vers. I don't think he was lying when he said he was proud of her at the end. But he also knows that he's outclassed, and he's still a nationalist and a patriot, so he stands against her.
Nope. You don't enslave people you care about. Where the hell is this take coming from?
He's a Kree military officer, he doesn't care about anything other than power and extending the reach of the Empire.
No, this is an unnecessarily black and white take on the matter. Hell, we have evidence of slaveowners feeling affection and compassion for their slaves in real life (the now dead author who wrote about his immigrant family's domestic slave from the Philippines). People can have complex and conflicting emotions and clearly whatever affection Yon-Rogg felt towards the Kree slave soldier known as Vers didn't outweigh his loyalty to the Empire.
Getting humilliated and sent back to the Supreme Intelligence with nothing to show for his troubles was a fitting punishment imo.
Nah.
Hitler loved dogs and presumably his wife. Being capable of affection or compassion doesn't make you a good person or not an evil bastard, it just makes you not a sociopath.
Were his dog and wife fucking jews? How fucking stupid are you?
If we're going to roll with this metaphor Carol would be one of the conscript Osttruppen.
This is what's so scary about this approach... that even members of the audience feel that he "cares" for her.
I've talked to enough abuse victims to know that his behavior is 100% accurate in how they groom and manipulate and gaslight victims into thinking that they are inferior to the guy in charge - that he's the one worth earning respect from, of obeying, of listening to. "He does it because he CARES about me. He just wants what's best for me." No, he wanted what was best for HIM.
"Control your emotions" is used against women every damn day in the workforce. While this may be a military setting, she's a brainwashed captive whose kidnapper has convinced her that her EMOTIONS are what's holding her back (and do ask the question, "holding back from WHAT?"). He doesn't want a free-thinking, emotional woman capable of disobedience or free-thought; he wants a mindless drone he can control, use for his purposes, and retain superiority over, even when he's actually at the disadvantage.
Yon-Rogg is HEINOUS, and the fact that any part of his "I'm proud of you" or "I want what's best for you" approach convinced any part of the audience he was sincere is disturbing, because that's precisely how abusers work in the real life. "No, no, you don't understand. He DOES care for me! He really does!"
Screw him. He deserved far worse and Carol realizing just how beneath him he truly was is one of the film's best moments.
Letting him live in disgrace is better than killing him. He'll never shake the shame.
... are you defending Hitler? C'mon now.
How the fuck do you get that I'm defending Hitler?
I'm saying that you don't need to be a sociopath who feels nothing towards others to be a bad person.
Yon-Rogg is a bad person. He also might care somewhat for the person he's gaslighting and manipulating. That doesn't stop him from being a bad person and a villain.
ETA: As far as storytelling goes, one of the marks of a good villain is that they don't believe that they are the villain. IMO this is the case with Yon-Rogg. So good job Boden, Fleck, and Perlman I guess.
Hitler? Which thread did I click on?
Yon-Rogg telling Carol (I mean Vers) to keep her emotions in check is great in that scene, because that actually is good advice in a hand-to-hand fight. It's only later that we realize it was part of the Kree's effort to keep her power limited.
Yon-Rogg telling Carol (I mean Vers) to keep her emotions in check is great in that scene, because that actually is good advice in a hand-to-hand fight. It's only later that we realize it was part of the Kree's effort to keep her power limited.
That post is.... not defending him.
It said that evil people can still have emotions that are considered sympathetic by society. AKA, people who are evil are not usually one dimensional cartoon villains.
But...
Did these fucking dribbling idiot manchildren shit themselves this much over Wonder Woman or Black Panther?
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I feel the issue is two-fold here:
1. Jude Law is just a really likeable guy. I don't think he has it in him to play an absolute sadistic bastard, or maybe the script/direction wasn't clear enough about how he needed to approach certain scenes. Even later in the movie, when he kills the one Skrull and says "it's my blood inside her," I honestly thought it was coming from a place of affection and wanting to look out for his partner/protege/whatever. I didn't sense any outright malice.
At this point in the movie, my read on Yon-Rogg was that he was loyal to a fault to the Kree, and that if he needed to take Carol out, he would. But it would obviously be a very difficult decision for him, and that he'd try everything in his power to find another way first.
2. Garlador makes good point--that this is partly scary because there's layers and layers of deception and complexity to a situation like this. You might have feelings for the other person, but at the same time you've set up this elaborate manipulation where you're handing out good advice, but it isn't coming from a genuine place.
...or is it? That was what I wasn't entirely clear on, even by the end of the movie. Yon-Rogg's deception just didn't feel "sinister" enough to me. It was either too subtle for its own good, or too heavy-handed for its own good, depending on how you want to look at it. I feel a better and clearer middle-ground could have been struck.
You misread it. People were just questioning Hillary Clinton's ability to be president because she was a woman, and could she not be too emotional during stressful events, did she have the stamina. Using emotions as a weakness for a woman is a constant thing, but the movie is saying, fuck it, even if you have more emotion, that's where your power comes from and don't let people tell you to rein it in, so that you're holding yourself back to make them feel better. It was probably the most obvious part of the feminist dynamic in the movie... and Jude Law and the Supreme Intelligence were the primary antagonists.
Yeah like, I'd assume that the fact that he tried to bait Carol into fighting him without her powers was evident enough. Until the very end, he never gave up on trying to user power moves on her, and it was only after she didn't take the bait and had beaten him that he then resorted to a play at sympathy.
Doesnt make his post any less dumb.
How do you go from Yon-Rogg cared for Carol to some slaveowners cared for their slaves to Hitler cared for dogs and his wife. The comparison is stupid and nonsensical in context of the discussion.
Well crazily enough there was this:
These people are fucking dangerous.
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I'm gonna have to disagree with this. Carol is immensely powerful, yes. But that's the power of the Tesseract. Yon-Rogg is who taught her to be a combatant, and to rely on her own skill in combat. I got the impression that, given the time, he would absolutely have been open to Carol unlocking her full potential. He had no reason to believe she would ever turn on him. He was effectively training her to be the best Kree warrior ever.
No matter what else he did, that is a valuable skill to have imparted. And again, I feel the movie just glosses all over this. They don't even have a conversation about it. There's no opportunity for Carol to make her case and tell him he acted like an ass. No opportunity for him to attempt to make his case and come off sounding like an extremely flawed (and abusive) individual.
I just feel they should have done a lot more to flesh that dynamic out. So much of the movie is about Carol running around making wisecracks with Fury that the weight and complexity of her and Yon-Rogg's relationship is lost at the end.
This. The point I was trying to make is that in real life, evil people can be emotionally complex rather than one dimensional. That doesn't make them any less evil. When creating fiction, this means that emotionally complex villains are better than one dimensional, cartoonish villains. Yon-Rogg is an example of the former because he does appear to care somewhat for the charge he has been tasked with manipulating and brainwashing into a good Kree soldier.
Maybe if you actually read the posts you'd understand. Even evil people are capable of complex and contradictory emotions. This doesn't make them less evil. But it does mean that representations of evil people in fiction are better if they hold complex and contradictory emotions. Not every villain in real life, even Hitler who is the worst of villains, is an unemotional robot.
What? Carol doesn't have to "make her case," and there is absolutely no defending what the Kree did to her.
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From a narrative standpoint, you want that scene to play out for the audience, to make it very clear what's going on, and how both people feel about it. Structurally, the movie is set up in a way that way too much time has passed between the training scenes at the start and the battle at the end. It would make for a better conflict if they were to reinforce it better and flesh it out better, in my opinion.
I took that as more of his bullshit. I don't think he's saying "I care about her." I think he's saying "That's my blood inside her and that makes her MINE." As in, he's just talking more about his ownership of Carol, and he's offended that someone has run off with his "blood" and someone else is impersonating what is his. It's more gaslighting (just not at Carol) and making people think he cares, but really it's still all about him.
Just my opinion on that moment.
This. He was training Carol to further himself, his career, and his standing. He didn't care about her, he just wanted a weapon.
Really...disturbing to see people thinking he actually cared about her. Abusive people can have complex emotions, but they don't really care about the people they're abusing. They care about the possession, control, and influence they exert over them. That might make some things look like affection, but, imo, anyway, you can't care about people and abuse them, lie to them, and attempt to control their actions through deceit. Anything they do that might be construed as affection is just an attempt to further control the person they say they care about.