… where the CAPTAIN MARVEL writers had to pitch their story to studio executives.
SCREENWRITERS: Okay, first off it’s an origin story. Captain Marvel or Vers or Carol is on some planet somewhere in the desert and then she’s in a futuristic city and someone is teaching her to be a warrior and we learn there are good aliens and bad aliens and the bad aliens want to do something bad but need some fabrazabber to do it, whatever it is – take over the galaxy and shit. Yeah, they want to take over the galaxy. And they can change into anything they want so they’re hard to find.
Oh wait, her teacher/Yoda/Liam Neeson type guy tells her her one flaw is she lets her emotions get in the way. How fresh is that? We haven’t seen that character beat since at least 2016, maybe earlier.
And here’s the thing: Captain Marvel has all these fragments of memories that are all completely random and confusing but cool and maybe we find out what they are but for now we forget about that and send her on a mission to do something somewhere and it doesn’t go well for some reason and she winds up in a rocket pod that lands on earth in 1995. We do a scene where she lands in a Blockbuster Video, which is maybe the greatest idea ever in the history of movies. Can you imagine? Aren’t you just hysterical thinking about it? She walks down an aisle and picks up THE RIGHT STUFF. The audience will laugh for twenty minutes.
Okay, so now she’s on earth trying to get to a secret Air Force base because she used to be in the Air Force but doesn’t know why or when, which is fine because we do a big car chase for no reason and have an action sequence on a Metro train where she’s chasing people she thinks are bad but they get away but we meet Nick Fury so we forget that the Metro sequence was superfluous. But cool.
Nick helps her. Oh yeah, she’s trying to find out some stuff about someone and he helps her. But it’s not easy because a bunch of bad guys show up and there’s a big obligatory fight scene. Oh oh oh… forgot to mention – we introduce a cat. Real cute. And we’ll find a way to make it important and cool.
Now the good and bad aliens land on earth. We show a bunch of flashbacks, and Captain Marvel is still looking for answers so she goes to the best friend she remembers she has when he need her to remember that. The friend will be African American because Captain Marvel is not. Oh, and she has a daughter that will peg the cute meter. She and Captain Marvel will bond of course. Except she's not Captain Marvel yet. She's still Carol or Vers.
Now comes a few plot twists that you’ve never seen before… in this franchise.
Oh, along the way there will be funny ironic lines – at least one every fifteen minutes. Can’t be cool without funny ironic lines.
At this point we reach the third act. They get the fabrazabber. Captain Marvel becomes Captain Marvel. The little girl makes her a role model. Captain Marvel kicks serious ass and we do a giant cluster fuck of a sequence that takes place in outer space, on earth, in other galaxies, space ships, dimensions – the beauty is we make it so full of special effects that nobody cares where they are or what purpose any of this is serving other than seeing Captain Marvel beat the shit out of everyone. Which she does.
Of course we do a dogfight like every STAR WARS movie, video game type laser fights, mega explosions, and ‘90s pop hits because that worked so well in GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY.
Needless to say we’ll have a lot to wrap up so we figure the film will end five times, maybe six. And it goes without saying we’ll set up a bunch of sequels.
Whattaya think?
STUDIO HEAD: That sounds like you merely stitched together every trope from every superhero and space adventure movie and thrown them together in a blender. You’ve jammed in every cliché and there’s not a moment that is remotely original. And it will probably cost upwards of 150 million dollars.
SCREENWRITERS: Brie Larson wants to do it.
STUDIO HEAD: You have a greenlit movie.
Hey, I went to see it.
from By Ken Levine
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