Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden: ‘We learned a lot making Captain Marvel’

Captain Marvel directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden “learned a lot” making their first superhero movie but insist it’s fundamentally not that different from their other films.
The filmmaking couple were best known for making dramas like Half Nelson and Mississippi Grind on a modest budget before venturing into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) to helm Captain Marvel, the MCU’s first female-led superhero movie, starring Brie Larson.
While they admit they took a big leap in terms of scale and the project is very different from their past work, they insist that the fundamental elements of filmmaking were still the same.
“The scale is obviously huge and there are lots of bells and whistles and visual effects in a movie like this but at the end of the day, it’s storytelling and it’s working with actors and it’s saying ‘action’ and ‘cut’ and it’s just filmmaking, and so yes, we learned a lot on this journey but it’s surprising how it’s not that different from the other movies,” Fleck told WENN at the film’s London premiere on Wednesday (27Feb19).
Speaking to premiere host Edith Bowman, Boden added that it was a little daunting having hardly any constraints in terms of time, imagination and budget compared to their independent films.
“At first it’s daunting as we’re used to making movies that are very naturalistic and reality-based, where we walk into a space thinking, ‘OK, how can we fit our scene into this space.’ But now we have a movie where we’re starting from a blank slate and really the sky is the limit,” she commented. “It’s really exciting to be able to exercise that new muscle.”
The duo, who have also helmed episodes of TV shows The Affair and Billions, signed on as directors after Larson was already onboard, and they explained that having the Oscar-winning actress attached had huge appeal.
“She was a real draw for us, and she was why we wanted to make this movie with her. She brings such humanity to all of her roles, there’s this access to emotion that she has,” Boden gushed.
Captain Marvel, which also stars Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, and Gemma Chan, hits cinemas from 6 March.