Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame star Brie Larson has been an outspoken advocate for diversity in the film industry, and she's now shared her thoughts on a more diverse future for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
On Variety's Big Ticket podcast, host Marc Malkin expressed that he never thought he'd see an LGBT hero when he was growing up. “That breaks my heart to hear that, because there’s no reason," Larson responded. "I don’t understand how you could think that a certain type of person isn’t allowed to be a superhero. So to me it’s like, we gotta move faster. But I’m always wanting to move faster with this stuff.”
“It wasn’t enough for me to just look strong on a poster; it needed to extend further than that,” she added. “I feel like I can’t at the end of the day go to sleep at night if I didn’t do everything that I possibly could.”
Larson also addressed the success of Captain Marvel, which has grossed over $1 billion at the box office. “I’m happy to be on the forefront of the normalization of this type of content and to prove once again that representation matters. Diverse storytelling matters, the female experience matters, and these are markers,” Larson said. “So it’s something I’ve always known and I think a lot of people always knew, but this is just normalizing.”
The box office success of Captain Marvel makes it clear the superhero will get another solo film sooner rather than later. Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige has been adamant that the future of the MCU will be more diverse. Considering the upcoming Shang-Chi film, Eternals and Black Panther 2, it seems likely the amount of diversity in the MCU will increase going forward.
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Karen Gillan as Nebula, Danai Gurira as Okoye and Bradley Cooper as Rocket, with Gwyneth Paltrow Pepper Potts, Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Benedict Wong as Wong, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Josh Brolin as Thanos. The film is in theaters now.