Captain Marvel should have been the MCU’s first true jock

polygon.com:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe can’t escape the quippy protagonist. Throw a stone at any of the series’ 33 movies and you’re bound to hit a sarcastic hero with a tough(ish) exterior but a heart of gold underneath. It’s a good archetype, but fill a universe (and a superhero team) with just one type of person and it’s bound to get a little stale. One disappointment of the franchise’s latest entry, The Marvels, is that it comes so close to giving us a totally new kind of hero. But in the end, Carol Danvers never quite becomes the well-meaning but slightly dense super-jock that we deserve.

Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel has never really gotten to show off her personality on screen. In 2019’s Captain Marvel, she’s not herself for most of the movie, with her head full of Kree brainwashing, and her true power and personality only assert themselves late in the movie. But even though the glimpses we see of her in Captain Marvel are reminiscent of the Avengers’ other cocky-but-lovable assholes, we didn’t spend enough time with her to cement her in the mode. There was still time for The Marvels to make her something a little different.

And The Marvels has all the right building blocks. Carol can’t quite realize on her own that she was so busy saving the galaxy that she neglected the people who loved her. She convinces herself that failure in a mission exempted her from the love of her family. She’s had her powers for three decades and never figured out that she can restart a sun. These are all perfect traits for a lovable meathead who’s never lost a fight.

The most interesting version of Carol would have been the Air Force pilot that she’s suggested to be in Captain Marvel: talented, powerful, competent, and confident, but not