Article written by Samuel Burnett
With the news that Marvel Studios will finally make a Captain Marvel film, their first (and overdue) woman led film in the MCU, many fans of the comics wondered where this could lead. Of course, like me, many people realised that this could potentially lead to Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel, taking the big screen by storm.
Inspired by Carol Danvers’ actions as Captain Marvel, Kamala creates her own superhero based on her idol, Ms. Marvel, and even fights alongside (and against) her namesake.
Further fanning speculation, Kevin Feige, the showrunner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, confirmed tentative plans to introduce the character into the MCU.
So, while nothing has been confirmed, one way or the other, it could still be fun to speculate on what might be and what we would actually want to see in a potential Ms. Marvel movie.
1. An actual teenager playing the title character
Let’s be honest, at this point, no-one bats an eyelid when twenty somethings play characters in their mid-teens, we’re immune to it at this point. Due to child labour laws as well as children lacking bankable sex appeal, it is often attractive for movie studios to just get an older person to pretend to be younger.
Acting is just pretending anyway, after all.
However, Kamala Kahn’s youth is such an intrinsic part of the character that I really hope that Marvel will allow her to follow in Spider-Man’s footsteps and cast an actual teenager to play the fanfic writer turned superhero.
When casting Peter Parker for the third time, Marvel realised that since the newest iteration of the character would be spending the entire film at high school, it would probably make sense to cast someone who looked like a student as opposed to a teacher.
Since Kamala, too, is so closely tied to her status as a high schooler, it would certainly be a step in the right direction to cast a teenager for the role. Highschool angst plays a large role in her stories and it’s going to be really hard to strain my disbelief if a twenty-seven-year-old is running down the hallways late for class. I didn’t buy it with Tobey Maguire, now Andrew Garfield in their Spider-Man movies, and I’m certainly not going to do it now.
Basically, don’t make films about teenagers if you cannot be bothered to cast actual teenagers.
In addition, it would provide a young, unknown, Pakistani actress with a nice step up, a rarity in the mostly monochrome world of Hollywood.
2. Embrace the geekiness
The first thing we are shown about Kamala in the comics is that she is a massive geek. She is involved in a number of MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games), has strong opinions regarding the relationships of fictional people and is a hardcore writer of fanfiction.
As most nerds in comics were originally limited to the dorky, unappealing portrayals of Peter Parker and Clark Kent, it is so refreshing to see the geek culture presented in such a positive light.
She is such a geek that rather than wallow in angst about having to save people, she gleefully embraces the role of a superhero, declaring, “I would wear the classic, politically incorrect costume and kick butt in giant wedge heels.”
Her words.
While many films often try to up the “cool” factor of their heroes, it would be a disservice to the character to strip away what makes her so unique.
3. Explore her cultural background
Just going to put this out there:
Ms. Marvel is a Muslim!
Outside of terrorists (and the occasional sidekick to Robin Hood), Muslims rarely get an in when it comes to screen time. Abed of Community is probably the most positive mainstream Muslim role of recent years.
So, this would be a tremendous step in diversifying the fairly lily white MCU superhero roster. Kamala even mentally quotes the Quran when making her first save as a superhero, the words driving her to do the right thing:
"Whoever kills one person, it is as if he has killed all of mankind... And whoever saves one person, it is as if he has saved all of mankind."
Since most Islamic references in popular culture are screams of “Allahu Akbar!!!” before the detonation of a suicide jacket, clearly, this would be a step in a slightly more tolerant direction of depiction.
While Kamala is obviously not solely defined by her religious upbringing, it would be a missed opportunity to ignore it all together.
Ms. Marvel has been my favourite current comic book character all the way back since Issue #1. She is such an important character to me and I really want her given the respect that she deserves from movie executives.
While many of them might be nervous, considering her to be a risky move, she is goldmine of untapped storytelling potential and I can’t wait to see her on the big screen where she has belonged from the very beginning.
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