Brie Larson Reveals Why ‘Captain Marvel’ Addresses Smile Controversy

When the “Captain Marvel” trailer was released last year, a vocal group on social media said that star Brie Larson should be smiling. In the actual movie, out March 8, Larson’s character Carol Danvers is told to smile, but Larson says that wasn’t in response to the controversy.

“That was just in the movie already. We’d already shot that,” she confirmed to Yahoo.

However, when the interviewer asked if it was art predicting life, Larson explained that they didn’t really predict anything. Being told to look happy for the benefit of other people is pretty typical for women.

“That’s just a depiction of the female experience,” Larson noted. “That’s just what it’s like. So it didn’t really bother me that much when I saw that that was the reaction because that’s just how it goes.”

She hopes that the scene and the controversy will be enlightening for audiences. “This is part of why art that depicts the female experience is so important,” Larson emphasized. “On the one hand, for women and girls, it allows us to go ‘Oh, I have that experience too,’ and for those that aren’t in our bodies, [they] can look at it and go, ‘Wait, that happens to you? We’ve got to do better.’”

When trolls first started complaining about Larson’s serious face, the actress took to Instagram to address it. She posted three posters of “Doctor Strange,” “Iron Man 3” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.” However, smiles were photoshopped onto the faces of Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans, showing how the calls for her to smile in her own poster were ridiculous.

“Captain Marvel” is a superhero origin story set in the 1990s in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Carol Danvers is a former Air Force pilot who gets superpowers and starts working with the Kree, an alien race. They want her to fight their war against the Skrulls, alien shapeshifters who are invading Earth. Carol is ready to end their war. The movie has been receiving positive early reactions.

“Captain Marvel” will release on March 8.