SPOILER ALERT!
Captain Marvel & The Skulls: Heroes & Villains in a Refugee Crisis
contains spoilers for Marvel Entertainment’s most recent film, Captain Marvel.
CAPTAIN MARVEL & THE SKRULLS: HEROES AND VILLAINS IN A REFUGEE CRISIS
BY: JEN EVANS
In last month’s article The Language of Migration: Power and Politics in the American News Media, we discussed biased depictions of migration; the implicit and explicit messaging which shapes our policy, opinions, and values.
But these thoughts were far from my mind as I watched Captain Marvel in the theatre on opening night. The latest installment in the now-iconic Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain Marvel represents the franchise’s first film to be independently led by a female character; and its final offering before the much-anticipated Avengers: Endgame.
Needless to say, expectations for the film were high.
In her native Kree Empire—a galactic state governed by the Kree peoples—Captain Marvel is known as “Vers.” Our future hero suffers from amnesia which prevents her from recalling her origin, or that of her superpowers. Amid this uncertain personal identity, Vers receives moral guidance from the Supreme Intelligence, a sentient form of media which rules the Kree Empire.
Vers is a military-type soldier who fights on behalf of the Kree Empire in their war against the villainous Skrulls. As the film progresses, however, spilling into the Earthly world of more familiar Marvel characters, a number of shocking truths are revealed:
The Supreme Intelligence is an illusionary and deceptive media. Captain Marvel is not Kree at all—she is human. Our hero’s origin was hidden from her by the true villains: the Kree Empire, whose near-genocidal campaign has forced the Skrulls from their homes. Yes, the Skrulls are refugees; desperately searching the universe for a place where they may be safe from violence and persecution.
The film tells a tale we know too well: The loyal soldier who is proudly dedicated to serving her country. The corruption of media as a means of ensuring the circulation of misinformation, often for the benefit of a powerful few. And the aftermath: those whose conditioning via deliberate deception led to unwitting participation in victimization.
We find our hero in that dreadful place: The dutiful soldier who realized, too late, that her belief of “right” and “wrong” was based on lies; mistruths deliberately perpetrated by those whom she most relied on for information and direction.
So what of those people who we most rely on for information?
Terms such as “fake news” have become common jokes in our modern culture, poking fun at the heavy bias of our news outlets and the media activities of our politicians.
But is comedy masking our complacency?
In Captain Marvel, misinformation resulted in an intolerant, hateful, even homicidal attitude towards a neighboring race. It constructed the false identity of a nation, who believed in the righteousness of their own peoples and in the slaughtering of another. And all of this amid a woman’s emotional suffering as she struggled to recall the truth of her past; a truth which was deliberately withheld because it did not serve the corrupt Kree Empire.
With our increasing dependence on technological connectivity, the notion of a media-constructed reality no longer seems out of reach. As we acknowledge the capacity for media producers to deliver misinformation; as we poke fun at our political adversaries for their devotion to biased news outlets; as we mockingly “Share” and “Retweet” inaccurate social media posts from elected officials, let us not forget the dangers of such misinformation.
And let us find the humility to question even the information which we would like to believe.
Our actions and identities are built upon the many truths we experience throughout our lives.
But they can also be built upon the mistruths.
LION, A STORY ABOUT BELONGING
BY: SOFIA SILVEIRA
Screenwriting, or the laws of storytelling in cinema, can help us understand what works and what doesn’t in a film. With that in mind, I revisit a powerful movie that didn’t receive the recognition it deserved in the 2017 Academy Awards. It is an immigrant’s story and a moving journey through the terrain of belonging and memory. To discuss these elements, I will compare two scenes from the movie Lion (2016), directed by Garth Davis and written by Luke Davis.
There are many rules to films: the progression of the story, the dynamic between protagonists and antagonists… Video essays, books, everything screenwriting-related usually abide by these same rules: “About 15 minutes into the story, the hero needs to deny the calling to the adventure,” – manuals say – “they will only take the calling after about half an hour.” The stipulations that govern most feature films can seem like an endless, often irregular, list of do’s and don’ts. Trying to understand these formats – some might say “the format” – requires efforts only paid off when a segment that broke the “rules” makes a point interchangeably connected to the underlying idea of the story.
The story of Lion is centered on finding “home.” It is the true tale of an Indian boy (Sunny Panwar) lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from where his mother and siblings live. He survives many challenges before being adopted by a couple in Australia. 25 years later, he (Dev Patel) goes on a journey to find his biological family.
There are two very similar scenes that happen 25 years apart (in the story) and I want to capture how an atmospheric resemblance was written and translated to screen. In the first scene, the boy Saroo gets lost. His older brother tells him to wait for him at a train platform. After a few hours of waiting, he sits on a train to sleep and wakes up with the train moving towards a city he does not know, miles and miles away from his family.
We are twelve minutes into the movie when little Saroo wakes up to realize he is trapped, alone, on a moving train.
In the script, the author says: “. . . he’s like a feral animal, realizing it’s trapped. He slaps his hands to the window, looks out. Panicking, he jumps across the aisle. Looks out. He runs up the aisle. Tries the lock of the connecting door.” The feral animal part seems to be brought to us by close shots of Saroo screaming and, right after, looking through the windows of the train, hopeless.
When the train finally stops, after 4 whole minutes of close shots of Saroo’s desperation and shots of the train moving further and further away, we are at a busy train station with what seems to be thousands of people moving around. He is almost hit by the moving crowd that steps into the train as he is trying to get out. The little five-year-old boy is placed in contrast to the moving crowds that seem to know where to go. He has nowhere to go.
In the script, he asks only two people for help. On screen, the result is Saroo asking many different people. The latter seems to work best because the different reactions (brushing him off, trying to understand but giving up on the kid etc.) are the only way for an audience unaware of Indian culture to understand subtly that Saroo and the people at the train station do not speak the same language.
Little by little, Saroo gives up on trying to get help. He has to fight for himself. That realization is described in the script as Saroo walking away before the second confused woman finishes her sentence.
NOW, LET’S GO TO THE OTHER SCENE:
It is 25 years later. We have met Saroo as a child, we saw him face all kinds of trouble in Calcutta, get to an orphanage and be adopted by an Australian couple. Now, we are in Australia with an adult version of our protagonist approximately an hour into the movie.
He seems to have found himself. He has parents, a good life at a university in Melbourne, a girlfriend, and friends. The only clue of trouble that we have is Saroo not getting along with his also-adopted brother who came from the same orphanage as he did, and the fact that he considers himself Australian and not Indian. We have clues that he has completely disconnected from his past in India and the trauma he suffered when he was separated from his biological family.
The real conflict in Saroo’s adult life only starts when he is having dinner with his girlfriend at an Indian friend’s house and he sees, when he is alone in the friend’s kitchen, the same sweets he and his brother stared at (but could not buy) when he was a young boy, on the same day he was separated from everything he knew. In the script, we read: “As Saroo moves to the fridge he sees a tray of jalebis – those deep golden-orange spirals from the far recesses of his memory. He stares at them. His mind spinning. Retrieving the memories. He’s not just struck. He’s thunderstruck.”
In this video, we can see the two moments in the story where we have the Indian candy. First, when Saroo is young with his brother, and afterward, when he finds it again, right at his reach, in his friend’s kitchen.
Saroo’s flashback – described in the script as a “Slam cut” – is a connection with his past and is sort of a second “inciting incident.” What is noteworthy about these scenes is how confused and trapped Saroo looks – 25 years later. The close capture of Saroo’s confusion is what brings these two moments together and it is interesting to see that they haven’t been formally included in the script.
By the time of the jalebis scene, we have already reached all the great milestones of a classic script: 1) presentation of the character 2) finding the character’s problem 3) inciting incident in the form of an Indian candy; and 4) accepting the true adventure: finding home.
The first milestone, of knowing the character, and the second one, of understanding a deep problem the character has, take one hour, when it usually would be “solved” in the first scene. The director and the writer of Lion were wise enough to understand the importance of the trauma in Saroo’s life and that if we didn’t understand well what the protagonist lost we wouldn’t properly understand the character’s mistakes or what he is looking for.
They were also wise enough to trick the audience into thinking this is a plot driven story. A boy sleeps on a train and wakes up far away from home is substituted for a man reconnecting with his origin. Instead of being a story about things that have happened to Saroo, a passive protagonist, it becomes a story about a man who is set on finding his biological family, an active protagonist.
Here Davis built a story that is centered around a character’s mindset and the changes he goes through. it is essential to invest time in letting us know who the character is. Lion was not afraid of taking big risks to show us exactly who Saroo is and the intensity of his desire.
The inciting incident, the event that moves the plot forward, is in the plot-driven section of the story, waking up on a moving train. It is enough to make the viewer patiently go into Saroo’s journey to perceive the real inciting incident: a traumatized man finds memories that bring back his past and identity.
In the script, the moment he tells Lucy he is accepting the mission to find his biological family has a much longer dialog. It is interesting to see so much has been cut, because in analyzing previous scenes I can see why we no longer need over-explanations. We already know how lost Saroo is because we were shown this in his friend’s house, in the train station and now, finally, in his fight with Lucy, his girlfriend.
LUCY: You have to face reality.
SAROO: What do you mean, “reality”?
LUCY: The reality that you’re ruining your life! That you’re not even here!
SAROO: Do you have any idea what it’s like, knowing my real brother and mother spend every day of their lives looking for me?
LUCY: (genuinely bewildered) What?
SAROO: How every day they scream my name. (beat) And I feel their touch. I see their faces. Can you imagine the pain they must be in, not knowing where I am? Twenty-five years, Luce. Twenty-five!
In the script, the scene goes on a lot longer while in the movie he can just say: “I need to find them.” And we know exactly what he means. Lion is a complex journey of a dialog between two different people (two different Saroo’s) and amidst their journey to find each other we end up finding ourselves as well.