Captain Marvel Is About Female Power—Not Empowerment
If there's one line, one quote, that will endure from Captain Marvel, it'll likely be this one from Carol Danvers herself: "What happens when I'm finally set free?" It's rhetorical. Danvers says this as she's coming to realize the true awesomeness of her powers. For years, she's had her past hidden from her, been gaslighted…
Captain Marvel and the Long, Strange History of Female Superhero Names
Before Captain Marvel was Captain Marvel, someone else was Captain Marvel. And that someone else was a dude. Someone else was Captain Marvel before him, too. The nominatively deterministic history of Captain Marvel—Carol Danvers, Earth pilot with alien superpowers, hero of a Marvel movie coming out in March—in fact is also the history of women…
Marvel's Shang-Chi Movie Just Got a Director
Welcome, once again, to The Monitor, WIRED's column devoted to the pop culture world. What's been happening this week? Well, aside from Captain Marvel's continued dominance, we've got an Oscar-winning documentary landing on Hulu and some good news for Marvel's first Asian American-led movie. Strap in, it’s gonna be a bumpy (but fun!) ride. Marvel's…
The Real Reason The Meg Feasted at the Box Office
Late last week, it seemed as though the very expensive, very Stathamy underwater thriller The Meg was on its way to becoming a dead shark. Even though the film—an adaptation of the 1997 novel by Steve Alten—had an online fanbase more than 20 years old, most predictions pointed toward a relatively low opening weekend at…
The 13 Best Movies You Didn't See in 2018
Last year, folks in the US spent $11 billion going to the movies. Yet the bulk of those people, and those dollars, went to the mega-blockbusters—the Panthers, the Venoms, the Avengerseseses. Even though indies are getting a renaissance thanks to streaming services, there's just not the same thriving middle-class that there was in decades past,…
Did Captain Marvel Save Stan Lee's Best Cameo for Last?
Long before he did one of his now-famous cameos in a Marvel movie, Stan Lee appeared as himself in a film about a bunch of slackers killing time in suburbia. Mallrats was Kevin Smith's second movie after the breakout success of Clerks, and for his follow-up Smith swapped out deep nerdery about Star Wars for…
The Best Albums of the Summer Were Exercises in Reinvention
Summer is a time of intense polarities, of feverish abandon and earned languor. There’s heat and purpose waiting to be seized in those unexpected, life-altering summer nights: on the dancefloor, at the bar, among friends. There’s equal chill, though, in the loss and grief that surface: historically, fatalities spike during hotter months. Yet summer, at…
What Ryan Murphy's Netflix Show Should Say About Hollywood
There is a moment midway through the first reason of FX's Pose that, more than any before or after it, sums up the show's purpose in the pop landscape. It's the late 1980s and New Jersey everyman Stan Bowes (Evan Peters) is sitting on the couch with his transgender girlfriend, Angel (Indya Moore), and asking…
The 20-Year Journey of The Meg, the Movie the Internet Wouldn't Let Die
The shark wasn't working. It was the mid-'00s, and Jan de Bont—director of such big-screen velocities as Speed and Twister—was showing off a small sculpture of carcharodon megalodon, the ancient shark that was to be the star of his next film, Meg. Based on Steve Alten's 1997 book, about a deep-sea diver who encounters a…
There's Going to Be a Breaking Bad Movie (and Other Culture News)
Welcome back to The Monitor, Wired’s round-up of the latest in the world of culture: big casting announcements, can’t-miss trailer-launches, and other film and TV news you might have missed. Think of it as your twice-a-week catch-up on what’s happening now. (Just don’t expect any updates on the actual What’s Happening Now!!–at least until that…