Carol Danvers has always been one of my favorite characters in the marvel universe. She is confident, funny, a great leader, just to name a few. And I am more than happy to have her lead her own movie. But there is one thing that I do have a bit of a problem with: It is her as Captain Marvel. When that was announced, I was incredibly Underwhelmed. It should be, in my opinion, Ms. Marvel.
OK, right off the bat, I am not by any means saying Carol is a bad CM (Hell, she's arguably the best). But for me, Carol was always Ms. Marvel. For the most part, when you say Carol Danvers to almost any comic book fan, they would think Ms. Marvel. She has been Ms. Marvel for many years and many fans, myself included, still refer to her as such, though we do acknowledge that her run as CM is pretty good in its own right. But that being said, it just seems like a pretty poor choice to have her be CM right off the bat in her film debut. She has only held the title for less than 3 years but has been Ms. Marvel for more than 30. Having her film debut be her most recent role vs. her most famous and iconic role does not make sense to me. It would be like if they made a Dick Grayson movie with him as Batman during his brief run as The Dark Knight rather than as Robin or Nightwing.
When you make a comic book movie about a specific character, you always what him or her to be his most iconic role, and the hero have his or her most iconic alter ego. Imagine how different Iron Man would be if it was Rhodey and not Stark. Tony is Iron Man, and likewise, Carol is Ms. Marvel. So having that character be another hero would be rather odd. To this day, I still think Ms. Marvel when I hear the name Carol Danvers. Sure, she is a pretty good Captain Marvel, but it has not sunk in long enough to have me fully accept her in that role. Plus on a side-note, having "Captain" in a superhero title sounds very dated, generic, and cliche'. It works for Captain America, but Captain America is from WW2, an era where superheroes were still being defined and the Captain title was mainstream. He is essentially a person from that time and that is why being called "Captain" sounds more natural. Now it feels pretty cliche' and if you notice, there are no real new superheroes with a "Captain" title in their name.
So, like I said, I think having a Carol Danvers Movie being called Captain Marvel right off the bat is very underwhelming. Especially since one of the best aspects of Carol is how the original CM left a huge impact on her. If they made a Flash movie (which they are), Wally West is the best Flash in my opinion, but it doesn't make sense to have him be the first in the Flash's film debut, largely because Barry Allen left a massive impact on Wally before he took the mantle himself. And that applies to Carol for me the same way: sure she is a great Captain Marvel, but having her be the only one in a world where several other superheroes took the title* themselves kind of takes away from the uniqueness of her film debut. I am not saying a future Carol Danvers CM movie would be terrible, but there will always be that one aspect about it that I cannot really look past.
*I acknowledge that Several Characters also took the title of Ms. Marvel themselves, but they either had a brief run (Sharon Ventura), were secretly villains (Moonstone), or more recently are legacy characters (Kamala Khan), so I really don't count them. Plus Carol was always right around the corner.
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