When Marvel Studios hired Nia DaCosta to direct the upcoming sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, she’d already proven her mettle with her widely acclaimed debut feature Little Woods, a small-scale, character-focused crime thriller starring Tessa Thompson and Lily James. But after the release of her second movie – the new Candyman reboot starring Teyonah Parris and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II – it’s clearer than ever that The Marvels is in safe hands with DaCosta.
Candyman and The Marvels are two very different movies – one being a blood-soaked supernatural slasher and the other being a lighthearted superhero space adventure – but the visual flair, focused story, and balance of genre thrills and social commentary in the former prove that DaCosta will do a great job with the latter.
The new Candyman movie leans more into the social commentary than the 1992 original. When this has been pointed out in the press, it’s commonly being attributed to Jordan Peele, but he was just the producer; his job was to bring DaCosta’s directorial vision to life.
While the MCU’s movies are often criticized for failing to explore their themes in depth (or lacking thematic substance altogether), the first Captain Marvel movie was really about gender inequality. Throughout the film, Carol is constantly undermined, manipulated, and discriminated against by men. A male fellow fighter pilot says, “It’s called a cockpit for a reason.” A biker tells her to smile. Yon-Rogg pretends to be a caring mentor, but is actually a vindictive puppet-master.
But the first Captain Marvel movie touched on issues of sexism and gender inequality and the patriarchy without really digging into them. DaCosta’s Candyman reboot has been noted for focusing more on the themes of racially charged violence and modernizing the social commentary by incorporating shocking scenes of police brutality. Just as DaCosta shed more of a light on racial issues in her sequel to Candyman, she could shed more of a light on gender issues in her sequel to Captain Marvel.
The most obvious way that Candyman has prepared DaCosta for The Marvels is that she clearly has a terrific working relationship with Teyonah Parris. Parris stars in Candyman as Brianna Cartwright, the “final girl” of the story who remains skeptical of the titular urban legend until the chilling climactic sequence. After Parris’ brilliant work in Dear White People, Chi-Raq, and If Beale Street Could Talk made her a star, she collaborated with DaCosta to bring out one of her finest performances in Candyman.
Parris will reunite with DaCosta when she reprises her role as Monica Rambeau in The Marvels. Monica was introduced as a kid idolizing Carol in the ‘90s-set Captain Marvel, but she didn’t become a beloved MCU superhero until Parris played an adult Monica in WandaVision. Monica was one of the breakout stars of the curious sitcom-style superhero series, and it’ll be interesting to see where her newly acquired superpowers, her work with S.W.O.R.D., and her partnership with Carol will take her.
The house style and abundance of CG-heavy sequences in the MCU mean that the aesthetic of its movies and TV shows is often bland and unengaging. It’s difficult to capture beautiful, cinematic shots in front of a bluescreen. If 90% of the frame’s composition is added in post, then the actual camera work will inevitably be limited.
Creating memorable shots and captivating cinematography in spite of a boatload of CGI has been achieved by a few key MCU movies whose directors had a singular vision: James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther, and most recently Destin Daniel Cretton’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.
Based on her work in Candyman, DaCosta could easily join this pantheon of Marvel filmmakers with a clear enough vision to avoid falling under Martin Scorsese’s “not cinema” label. She made a lot of interesting shot choices in Candyman. There’s a locked-off wide-angle shot through an art critic’s apartment window as her throat is slit and the blood is smeared against the glass by an invisible Candyman, all while her neighbors sit in their own apartments, oblivious to the blood-soaked horrors next door.
DaCosta includes a brief but haunting flashback in the midst of a dream sequence. It’s a tracking over-the-shoulder shot of what appears to be young Brianna watching her father committing suicide. Instead of using an extravagant, bloody moment that aims to shock, DaCosta’s direction is chillingly understated as Brianna’s dad calmly tells her he can fly and then quietly jumps from the window and disappears off-screen.
In Candyman’s extravagant, bloody moments – like the massacre in the girls’ bathroom – DaCosta has an almost sixth sense-style instinct for what to leave off-screen and what to include on-screen. There’s plenty of blood and gore, but always at the fringes of the frame. DaCosta knows what to leave to the audience’s imagination in horror, which could easily transfer to the action genre with tension and clarity of movement.
Marvel has been knocking it out of the park with their recent director hires. Cate Shortland brought a grounded Bourne-style sensibility to Black Widow. Kate Herron kept the mind-bending storytelling of Loki focused on its characters and their relationships. Destin Daniel Cretton struck a pitch-perfect action-comedy tone for the entirety of Shang-Chi. DaCosta will surely join these ranks when The Marvels hits theaters.
Alongside DaCosta, other directors joining the MCU include Chloé Zhao, who won both Best Picture and Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards, and Sam Raimi, the legendary filmmaker behind The Evil Dead and Drag Me to Hell, who will helm Marvel Studios’ first ever horror movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
After Avengers: Endgame arrived in multiplexes and felt like an immensely satisfying three-hour series finale episode, some fans worried that the MCU was past its prime and could never reach those heights again. With visionary directors like DaCosta, Cretton, Zhao, and Raimi leading the way, the franchise’s future is bright. In fact, the MCU might just be hitting its stride.
Candyman is in theaters now.
The Marvels is set to be released on November 11, 2022.