In this dark, confusing time in film history, we are often faced with a trying question, one to which no one truly knows the answer. In an age of agendas crawling their way into films like they never have before, that question must once again be asked... Who is best girl? Now, obviously this question isn't quite that serious, forgive my jovial hyperbole, but in the past few months, Alita: Battle Angel released in cinemas and grossed an admirable $400 million worldwide, the film has also gathered quite the following, of which I am very much a member. My local Odeon did another charity giveaway a few week back and I snagged their giant Alita: Battle Angel posters without hesitation, I've since bought the first two volumes of the Deluxe Edition Manga, which I've yet to read because I'm not much of a reader. But then there was Captain Marvel, a film that was propelled past the billion mark in a landmark demolition of the Get Woke Go Broke phenomenon, never mind that it was released in a quiet release window, only a few weeks before Avengers: Endgame, one of the most highly anticipated films in history, and was part of a franchise for which its name is enough of a selling point to some, and despite hitting $1 billion worldwide, is still a full $40 million behind Wonder Woman at the domestic box office, a detail that I'm sure a lot of people would rather ignore. There is one thing that a lot of people, normie or not, agree on though, Captain Marvel wasn't very good; Brie Larson isn't a good hero, the film is sloppily put together, and of course, it's overly and distractingly woke. You already know which film I think is better, but since Captain Marvel has become this glass ceiling-shattering monument to female empowerment, there are some real juicy questions that need asking about just how special and amazing Ms Danvers is, and whether or not a CGI piece of metal with doll eyes is the better character, let's go.
Carol Danvers and Alita are two very similar characters in a lot of ways; they're both crazy powerful super-soldiers with no memory of their previous lives who go on a journey of self-discovery, while also learning the difference between right and wrong and finding out which side they're on. The differences start immediately however as we enter Carol Danvers' story half a decade into her new life as a Kree warrior. Our first time seeing this character is her having an ominous dream before going to her mentor and asking for a sparring session. This is a completely functional introduction to a character; she has a dream, informing us that she has a mysterious and hidden past, before going to her mentor for a fight, establishing her relationship with her mentor as well as a potential ark of learning to be a stronger warrior. Where it falls apart though is in how Carol Danvers acts; talking to Jude Law with a dull, deadpan delivery, the snark helps, but snark is also dependent on delivery, and in this case, the delivery isn't good. From this scene, we see that Carol Danvers has no personality; she isn't curious about the world, she isn't sceptical of the Kree, she's being snarky but it falls flat thanks to the delivery, and she has no chemistry with Jude Law, the person she admires and respects the most, unless you count secret Kree scientist lady. This couldn't be further from how we are introduced to Alita in Alita: Battle Angel. Like Danvers, Alita dreams, but we don't see the dream, we just get her waking up. There's also the scene in Captain Marvel where she wakes up, but again, the two scenes couldn't be further apart. Danvers crawls out of bed and stares out of the window with her usual blank face, whereas Alita yawns, an inconsequential element of the scene, but one that is very human.
Then Alita realises that she's in a new body, and again, we get a very human scene as she checks out her new body with childish curiosity, where she waves her new fingers around and looks at herself in the mirror. In this scene, we get her standing up and immediately falling over, which could be seen as a gag, but the fact that it takes her a second to remember how to walk, like the yawn, cannot be understated in establishing her as a character; she's a human, she's imperfect and clumsy, she has room to grow and learn, these are all things that Captain Marvel lacks. Both characters don't remember their pasts, with Danvers being a Pegasus test pilot before being taken by the Kree, and Alita being an URM Berserker, a three hundred year old indestructible cyborg ninja, but how the two characters deal with their amnesia is very different, and one is far more effective than the other. With Danvers, we get one line; "I don't remember my past," once again delivered with all the sincerity of a robot. Alita meanwhile is mostly robot, but when she doesn't remember her past, she takes it hard; we get an entire scene of her realising that she doesn't know who she is. In this scene, she exhibits a host of qualities, naivety, innocence, and most importantly, sadness; when she realises that she doesn't remember her name, she starts crying, this is a genuinely sad moment for both her and the audience as she is lacking one of the most fundamental parts of a person's identity, their name. And this is contrasted in the very same scene with her taking a bite out of an orange and being disgusted at the taste, before eating some without the skin and loving it, two funny and adorable things that make her look really cute.
So let's run through this; with Danvers, we get a single line of her acknowledging her amnesia, with Alita, we get an entire scene of her showing vulnerability and pain as well as being absolutely adorable, one of these scenes clearly has a much more poignant effect than the other, as well as showing something that the other doesn't, that being that the character has weaknesses. This is where Alita really has the upper hand in every regard; we find Alita on literally her first day, when she is seeing and tasting all of these amazing things for the first time, we get to see her filled with childish wonder and joy when she steps outside and sees Iron City, when she asks Ido if Zalem is held up by magic and if they can go there. That never happens with Danvers however as we find her years into her new life, after the potential wonders of the Kree world have become mundane to her, and when she lands on Earth and she sees all of these things that she doesn't remember, she never reacts with any of the curiosity and excitement of Alita, she just looks bored of the place as soon as she lands. Compounding this is the effect the settings have on the audience; Iron City is a setting we're about as familiar with as Alita, like her, we're seeing it for the first time, whereas mid-90's America is a much more familiar and mundane setting, even with all of the nostalgic Easter eggs and throwbacks.
It's a widely held belief at this point that Danvers is a boring character; her appearance is bland, her quips are deadpan and none of her emotional expressions feel even remotely genuine, and that's down both to how the character is written and how they are portrayed. Alita is at a disadvantage here as she is a completely computer generated character, her expressions need to look genuine or else they'll look creepy. Despite having an extra hurdle to overcome, Rose Salazar does far, far more with the character of Alita than Brie Larson does with Danvers. Alita is a very emotional character, throughout the film she feels and expresses a wide range of emotions; anger, happiness, love, disgust, wonder, sadness and fear, and all these emotions are felt through the character and through the actress. On the other hand, there is one scene where Danvers shows any kind of sadness or vulnerability, she also laughs every now and again, and as with everything else about the character, these displays feel unnatural and forced. Chemistry is another really big part of this puzzle, and the only semblance of chemistry Danvers has is with Nick Dury, which I said in my review is far more the result of Samuel L. Jackson being awesome than it is any quality of Brie Larson's. The sad part here is that the film's latter half leans heavily on the chemistry that Danvers has with her pilot friend, but there isn't any, and I'd say that's because of Brie Larson's compete lack of charm doesn't convey that the character is engaged in the world or story, and this effects how engaged the audience is as a result, in other words, if the character looks bored, the audience will also be bored.
Alita doesn't have this problem, partly because Rosa Salazer portrays the character with a lot more energy, but also because Alita has two things that Danvers does not; a father and a boyfriend. I'm sure that'll get under the skin of any feminist reading this, but a character is defined by more than just themselves, they are defined by the people that make them, literally in Alita's case. Alita having a father figure is very important in growing and defining her character; but she is just as important in defining him. Ido is not perfect; he is a father who could never escape the guilt of losing his daughter, we see this when he tells Alita the story of why he became a hunter-warrior. Ido feels responsible for his daughter's death, and as he says in the story, maybe he wanted his daughter's killer to kill him too, ending his guilt. He became a hunter-warrior in a quest to make right the things he feels responsible for, only taking the money to keep his clinic open. Then he finds Alita and sees a second chance, a way to forgive himself for his daughter's death and get back the love that he lost, he even gives her his daughter's name; Alita, hoping that she can fill the hole in his heart. Danvers meanwhile has nothing even vaguely comparable to this in her life; Jude Law is possibly the closest parallel, and he's a cartoon patriarch dickbag, an emotionally cold warrior who keeps Danvers in chains, figuratively speaking. He has no emotional attachment to Danvers, and when he turns on her in the film's latter half, he isn't conflicted at all, just as Danvers isn't conflicted about going turncoat, a point we'll get back to. Alita also has a romantic interest; Hugo, which is something Danvers also doesn't have, probably because she don't need no man.
Her romance with Hugo is one of the film's weaker aspects in all fairness, as the love is seemingly only one way for most of the film, but while I never believed that Hugo loved Alita, I very much believed that Alita loved Hugo, and that was because of the scenes where Alita was at her most vulnerable; when Hugo is dying in the church, and on the factory pipe at the end, when she has to say goodbye. These scenes suck, not because they fail, but because they succeed, Alita is so likable and so well realised as a character that the audience empathises with her pain. But while Alita: Battle Angel does feature several scenes where our strong female hero breaks down and cries, Captain Marvel does not, a combination of the script not allowing it and Brie Larson's performance being too inflexible for it. Alita is a character that you can love, she has a warrior's spirit, but despite literally being a machine, she's not a machine, she's a person who loves and laughs and cries, far more so than Danvers, for whom smiling is a tall order. Danvers and Alita having amnesia is another similarity, only the situations are reversed; Danvers is a soulless soldier remembering her humanity, and Alita is a human remembering that she's a soulless soldier. This may seem like an insignificant difference, but for a couple of reasons, it really isn't.
For starters, Alita being presented to us as an adorable, innocent character leaves a far, far greater impact on the audience than seeing the reverse would, take Danvers for example, who is little more than a Kree drone at the start of the film, she's a boring character right out of the gate, unlike Alita, who is lovable and adorable out of the gate. There's also the paradox of Danvers not being able to control her emotions, because what emotions does she have? her wide range of emotions consists of pissed off and smug, and that's it, yet she's told to control her emotions by Jude Law, implying that she can't and that it's holding her back, which is negated by both Brie Larson's performance and the shocking and mind bending reveal that Danvers was powerful all along. It also doesn't help that she goes turncoat as quickly and without conflict as she does; you'd think that someone finding out that their entire worldview was wrong and that they've been on the wrong side of an unjust war for half a decade would come as a shock, would throw them into a bit of crisis, but not Danvers. Danvers has no trouble whatsoever killing her former friends and squad-mates and siding with a guy who she's been indoctrinated into hating and fearing for six years, which completely undermines any emotional impact such a seismic shift in a character should have, as if it doesn't even matter. Both characters are also physically invulnerable, but for different reasons; Alita is because she's the recovered core of a highly trained, indestructible cyborg super soldier, meanwhile Captain Marvel never really gives us a reason why. She can fly, she can shoot fire from her hands, she can breathe in space, and she can cut clean through the length of a Kree warship and tear it apart without even a scratch.
At this point, you might be thinking that this sounds like another MCU hero; Thor, minus the fire hands, but like I said in my review of the film, Thor isn't a great character because he's invincible, he's great because he has become a stronger character; over the course of the Infinity saga, Thor went from an arrogant, entitled idiot to a selfless, heroic figure, he was born a god, but became a hero through his story, so when he's flying around in Infinity War, ripping shit into those space monkey bug dropships, it's awesome because we know the journey he's been on to get to that point, Danvers has no such journey, she doesn't have to humble herself or overcome a great challenge, she doesn't have to learn the whole great power, great responsibility thing because she's already a good person, she already understands the responsibility because she was born a hero. And that leads us to elephant in the room, the politics of the two characters, or rather, the politics of one and the aplotics of the other. I made my stance on Captain Marvel's political themes clear in my review, but for a refresher, the film hinges on the notion that Danvers and, by extension, women, are already special and powerful and amazing and that the world is holding them back, either because they don't believe in her, or because they fear what she can do without them holding her down. This is presented through A; Danvers' not needing to learn how her powers work, B; not needing to learn how to be responsible with her powers, C; being a hero before getting her powers and D; standing up to the patriarchy, literally. The Patriarchy in the film being encapsulated by Jude Law's character, who keeps her under control with a chip in her neck and prevents her from reaching her full potential.
But like I said in my review, Danvers' refusal to fight Jude Law on his terms in the finale, while played for laughs and a kind of 'fuck you' moment, proves his point that she hasn't become a stronger character over the course of the film. In the flashbacks, we see how the patriarchy has told her that she isn't good enough; her dad telling her that go carting isn't for girls, being told that they'll never let her fly, and the worst one; that incredibly stereotypical dude bro arsehole joking about why they call it the cockpit. In these flashbacks, we see her get knocked down and then getting back up, which, sure, it shows that she's at least strong willed, but the fact that we never see her grab the rope or win the race is indicative of the hole in her character, these are challenges that she could have overcome to become a better, stronger person, but as far as we know, she never did, because apparently being strong willed is all it takes to be a hero, you can be completely useless at any given task but still be a hero because you believe it. Of course though, she isn't useless; she punches a Kree warship to death, something she never needed to learn to do, with a power she never needed to learn to control, one she got by accident by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like I said in my review, the hole in her character is that she has no room in this film to grow; there is no challenge for her to overcome, either moral or Kree related, because she's already strong enough to overcome them with ease, and like playing a video game on god mode, where's the fun in not being able to lose, the same rule applies with film, if there is no threat, there is no reason to get invested in the conflict, and there is no threat to Danvers in Captain Marvel because she's the strongest being in the universe, maybe even stronger than Thanos, who made all of reality his bitch in Infinity War.
The core of this theme is, of course, that women are strong, but the devil is in the details. Despite supposedly being a strong character, Danvers' heroism comes entirely from the fact that she is crazy powerful, there is no emotional weakness, there is no weakness of any sort, Danvers is already the pinnacle of what she can be, and was born that way because she's perfect. This isn't a very good message for the kids, at least in my opinion. Telling them that they can believe in themselves is certainly a good thing, it'll get them somewhere if they have the confidence in themselves to take risks, to do brave and powerful things, but there's only so far that'll take you before you need some practical skills, unless firefighters save people from burning buildings using only their immense will power. Captain Marvel's message hinges on the notion that Danvers is strong, but she isn't; she's a morally righteous god who never learns from her mistakes because she never makes mistakes, she never learns from her failures because she never fails, she doesn't become strong through hardship, she just is strong because she was written without flaws. Real people on the other hand do have flaws, but if we're going on the idea that Captain Marvel is trying to deliver a positive, empowering message, it fails to do so because real people must empower themselves, overcome their own challenges and become better people, real people aren't gifted the sort of empowerment Captain Marvel is preaching, nor are they entitled to it. And in contrast to all of that, Alita has nothing, Alita has no deeper message about empowerment or being special, and that makes Alita an infinitely stronger character in a myriad of ways.
Now, you're probably wondering how on Earth I could come to that conclusion, but then again, you're probably not surprised, after all, I've been kissing Alita: Battle Angel's arse for the past couple of months, but the primary reason for my conclusion here is that Alita doesn't need to be propped up by a narrative or by a message, Alita doesn't exist as a vessel to spread a message, she exists as a character first and foremost, and must therefore stand on her merits rather than on some corrosive political principal. This gives Alita the freedom to have weaknesses, as bizarre as that statement is, but even more important than that, Alita does something that Danvers is never allowed to do; she loses. In her fight against Grewishka, him and Alita exchange a many a good hit; Alita manages to damage his arm and bury him under rubble, but Grewishka seemingly wins the fight when his grind cutters tear Alita to pieces, reducing her to an upper torso and an arm. This is, from a physical standpoint, the weakest we see Alita in the entire film, as she tries and fails to crawl away, but this scene demonstrates, better than any other, that Alita is a strong character. She has lost, Grewishka is holding her mutilated body, taunting her about turning her into a pendant so he can hear her screaming for mercy, and what does she do, well, she shoves her one good arm into one of Grewishka's eye sockets and tells him, "fuck your mercy." If you want to demonstrate that a character refuses to give up, this is a pretty hardcore way of doing it, Alita doesn't just get back up, she disfigures and blinds him, it's fucking awesome, it's far more awesome than Jude Law comedically taking a photon blast to the chest and not being even a little hurt by it.
This doesn't just show that Alita doesn't give up, it shows her complete refusal to accept defeat, even when she is at her most broken. But in an ironic twist, in this scene that shows Alita's heroic nature and inner strength, she ends up having to be saved by Ido and Hugo. You're probably wondering what is strong about needing to be saved, well, it goes back to my comparisons to playing a video game on god mode, where is the fun in not being able to lose, and her needing to be saved shows us that Alita, despite all her strength and will power, is fallible, she can lose. So when Ido unites her with the Berserker body, there's a lot of things going on from an emotional standpoint; Ido never wanted to give her that body because he knew the risk involved; he knew what Alita was and knew that giving her the most dangerous weapon on Earth could end very, very badly. Which makes his decision to do it very powerful, as he is torn between his love for Alita and his desire to keep her safe, he doesn't want to lose his daughter again, moreover, he doesn't want to be responsible for her death again, not when he has the power to save her. To Captain Marvel's credit, Danvers' moment of true empowerment is kind of cool, as she manages to defeat the Supreme Intelligence using sheer will power, but Alita's moment of empowerment is so much sweeter, at least to me, because it is an act of love, it is an act of a father trying to protect his daughter, and that, I feel, is just a little bit more powerful. Danvers is a character that is, at her core, propped up by a message, a very gendered, political message that distracts from the film, while also being a handy line of defence for the film itself, because as we all know, if you don't like a film and said film has a female lead, you're a misogynist.
But I can assume that a certain someone would claim Captain Marvel wasn't made for me, that this science fiction action film set in the MCU isn't made for men, it was made for girls, specifically girls, so they can look up to Danvers and see her as a hero. Slight issue, some sixty percent of the film's audience turn out were men, oops, but worse than that, the 'for the kids' defence is a terrible defence, like excusing a bad kids film because it's for kids, it isn't an excuse. There's nothing wrong with a character embodying a message, but for it to work, the message has to be good, which Captain Marvel's isn't, and the character themselves has to be good, which Carol Danvers isn't. The message of Captain Marvel is heavily political, coming from the feminist school of thought that women and girls are being held back by a malevolent patriarchy, a message that'll only really resonate with feminists, and Danvers herself is about as compelling, likable and cool as a door; there is a complete absence of charisma and joy and the character has no major development or emotional ark in the film, despite all the ingredients of one being there, chiefly the moral dilemma of siding with the Skrulls. And why doesn't she? because as her supposed best friend said, she was already a hero and the best woman ever before she could shoot fire from her hands, or something to that effect, she was already perfect, because of course she was. Danvers is a character that isn't allowed to show weakness, because weakness is, well, weak, and this is a feminist film after all, so why would a feminist film depict its feminist hero as weak in any way. Alita: Battle Angel is not a feminist film however, and it's all the better for it because Alita suffers in that film, she learns a lot of things the hard way and has to let go of something she loves, literally. Through that pain, we see a character that isn't perfect, and who has flaws that she can overcome.
The James Cameron brand of female empowerment
Alita and Carol Danvers are both just women in an unjust world, both are women who strive to make their unjust worlds a better place, both are heroes, though not for the same reasons. Alita becomes a hero through hardship, she learns how to be a hero the hard way and has to realise that the world that once filled her with wonder and joy is broken. On the other hand, Danvers has no journey to heroism, she doesn't have to learn anything the hard way and is told that her world is broken, a truth that barely phases her. One of these characters is a feminist hero, the other is not, yet despite existing to be a vessel for the message of female empowerment, Carol Danvers is just that; a vessel, a shell of a character that isn't allowed to be wrong or make mistakes. Whereas Alita, while literally a shell, is defined by her humanity above anything else, without needing to be propped up by a social or political message. It's all made even worse by the message itself, which tries to be positive and empowering, but ends up being a pointless exercise that kids could learn just as easily by watching The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, and they'd probably have a better time with it too. So here is my inevitable conclusion to my ridiculous question; Alita is best girl, bet you never saw that coming, but it really is a shame that in a lot of ways, Alita will never get the love she deserves, that the sort of people who should be idolising and worshiping her are ignoring her or, worse, attacking her as we'll see later, all because she doesn't fit their narrative, meanwhile Captain Marvel is their new Jesus, for no other reason than that she fits the narrative, a narrative she was designed to fit at the expense of being a real hero.
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