Saved events

Captain Marvel (12A) + Will Women Save the Day? Panel Discussion

Shot of Brie Larson as Captain Marvel

Taking us back to the 90s, Captain Marvel follows Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as she becomes one of the universe’s most powerful heroes, and fights to protect Earth from an interstellar war.

Eleven years after Iron Man, Larson is the first female Marvel superhero to lead a film. Twenty films have already been released, featuring many female superheroes – from the Scarlet Witch (Elisabeth Olsen, Avengers) to Okoye and Shuri (Danai Gurira and Laetitia WrightBlack Panther) – but this is the first time a female hero takes centre-stage.

After the film, critic and author Helen O’Hara (Empire Magazine), comic book artist Rachael Stott (Doctor WhoShuri) and academic Dr Lisa Purse (University of Reading) discuss the cinematic journey of the female superhero, raising questions around representation within the genre and beyond. 

How is a female-fronted superhero film different and does it shift the genre? Do things change when women are behind the scenes of a production? What can the film world learn from how comic books depict women?

Please note: This event will begin promptly at 6.10pm and we will be screening the 2D version of the film.

US 2019 Dirs Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck 124 min

About the speakers

Helen O'Hara is an author, film journalist and editor-at-large for Empire, the world's biggest film magazine. She’s covered events from Comic-Con to the Oscars, visited the sets of some of the most exciting films of the past few years and written for titles like Time Out, Grazia and Heat. In 2018, she published her first book, on 80s movies, and will be following that with a look at comic book films this year.

Dr Lisa Purse is Associate Professor of Film at the University of Reading. She is the author of Contemporary Action Cinema (2011) and Digital Imaging in Popular Cinema (2013), and the co-editor of Disappearing War: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Cinema and Erasure in the Post- 9/11 World (2017). She has published widely on action cinema, digital visual effects and questions of representation.

Rachael Stott is a London-based comic book illustrator, currently approaching the five year anniversary of her debut book- the IDW Star Trek/ Planet of the Apes crossover. Since then she has worked with a variety of publishers on a wide range of characters both old and new- most notably long runs on Titan's Doctor Who range, and Motherlands for Vertigo- a creator owned book about a mother/daughter bounty hunter team in a parallel universe where a lot of people’s heads explode. She is currently working on the Shuri books for Marvel. 

See more film for less

Get 20% off tickets and pay no booking fees. Plus, enjoy priority booking and £6 Members’ Screenings of the latest films every Sunday (T&Cs apply)

Barbican Cinema 2