The Marvels
The Marvels is a box office bomb, at least on the scale of an MCU feature. The lowest opening MCU ever, likely headed for the lowest global total. And yet it did set one record, the highest opening for a black female director ever, which itself is a commentary on the state of Hollywood, and who is allowed to direct big-budget blockbusters.
That director is Nia DaCosta, and she has been relentlessly dragged all throughout this process by both some MCU fans and even some of the highest profile entertainment publications on the market. This all culminated yesterday in a truly bizarre THR piece that claimed DaCosta “bailed” on a cast and crew screening of the film. But when the details came out, it revealed:
- The entire cast wasn’t there either due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.
- DaCosta’s “other plans” that night were her own birthday party.
- She was never actually invited to the screening in the first place.
The piece was such a bridge too far it was even community noted by Elon Musk’s Twitter to give it proper context, and the framing is just absurd. And you have to ask how many other directors have you heard stories about regarding whether or not they went to a…cast and crew screening? Who cares?
ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 10: (L-R) Iman Vellani, Nia DaCosta, Teyonah Parris, and Brie Larson … [+] pose at the IMDb Official Portrait Studio during D23 2022 at Anaheim Convention Center on September 10, 2022 in Anaheim, California. (Photo by Corey Nickols/Getty Images for IMDb)
But this has been happening for months. Another infamous story was this idea that DaCosta, again, “bailed” on The Marvels by going to start work on another production when the film was in post-production.
But again, this was not due to any sort of slacking off or disdain for the film. The movie had already been delayed multiple times by that point, and even then, it’s definitely not unusual for a director to start work on another project to some extent before all of post-production was completed. And she did do a ton of work on it after filming.
Or, how about the fan-directed narrative that DaCosta was a “totally inexperienced” director handed a huge Marvel movie that was too big for her as part of some sort of “affirmative action” move? Well, she wrote and directed Little Woods, an award wining feature that put her on the map. And she did the horror film Candyman, which tripled its $25 million budget at the global box office.
Shall we talk about other examples of the “inexperienced” in Hollywood being given big projects? In Marvel alone, it’s easy to see how a specific MCU movie was easily many of those directors’ biggest project by far to that point. Or how about the fact that Amazon just put two first-time showrunners (two white men, incidentally) in charge of its billion dollar Rings of Power?
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – NOVEMBER 07: Nia DaCosta attends THE MARVELS Reception and Special Screening at … [+] The Westin Las Vegas and AMC Town Square 18 in Las Vegas, Nevada on November 07, 2023. (Photo by Denise Truscello/Getty Images for Disney)
There’s a theory that Disney is seeding some of these negative stories, especially in the trades, to try and offload some blame for The Marvels onto DaCosta. There’s no public evidence that’s true, but I do know that she has been unfairly targeted unlike any other director I’ve seen in the MCU in ages.
Yes, obviously, I think being a Black woman is one of the main reasons where she’s being held to some absurd standard that her colleagues are not, or her behavior is being twisted into some sort of narrative about laziness and not caring about the film when that just isn’t the case.
Seeing actual interviews with DaCosta and she seems, extremely cool? Here’s her talking about how Final Fantasy: Advent Children partially inspired The Marvels:
“One of my references when I was pitching for [The Marvels] was from Advent Children. A couple of scenes from that because it’s just an amazing, amazing movie, and has really great fight scenes and has a really great ending sequence with the main character being thrown into the sky by all the other characters.”
She’s a huge gamer, citing influences from The Last of Us and Horizon Zero Dawn. She loves Skyrim and just finished Breath of the Wild.
Anyway, I hope The Marvels doesn’t tank her chances of directing big features like this in the future. The movie is actually better than its predecessor that made a billion dollars a few years ago at the box office, and she did a solid job given the context she had to work within.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
