Captain Marvel Release Thread *Spoilers*

[Vendetta]

The bystanders on the train were pretty stupid, attempting to restrain Danvers even after the 'little old lady' she was apparently attacking was revealed to be far stronger and faster than her disguise suggested. While a departure from the norm, the fact they don't notice there was something amiss about her enemy is most odd.

Little old lady is secret ninja master is probably not the weirdest thing you see on LA public transport though.

[GuppyShark]

She probably has the shortest learning curve most overt power use of anyone in
the mcu. I don't dislike that but it was noticable and it didn't feel as triumphant as it could have done.

I'm nitpicking, but I'd have liked if her coming into direct contact with the Tesseract had been part of her power up. Make it really clear that she is powerful because she is connected to an Infinity Stone so trolls can't use the ambiguity of her power source to plant seeds of doubt in the general audience.

I think Ronan was overkill though. And I laughed at that last scene before the credits. I bet that triggered the alt-right as much as anyone.

I liked the appearance of Ronan - it's a nice bit of foreshadowing that the Kree aren't necessarily the heroes Veers claims they are.

[FaxModem1]

She probably has the shortest learning curve most overt power use of anyone in
the mcu. I don't dislike that but it was noticable and it didn't feel as triumphant as it could have done.

I'm nitpicking, but I'd have liked if her coming into direct contact with the Tesseract had been part of her power up. Make it really clear that she is powerful because she is connected to an Infinity Stone so trolls can't use the ambiguity of her power source to plant seeds of doubt in the general audience.

You underestimate them.

"Don't you see guys? If a man had been piloting that ship, he would be just as, if not even more powerful. And would have defeated Thanos before the snap even happened."

I bet that'll be the 'logic' used.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Something a friend of mine said that got me thinking was that because like Scarlet Witch, Marvel got her powers from an infinity stone, does this mean that she also has the ability to destroy one (unique now Wanda turned to dust)? Wanda was able to destroy the Mind Stone (with considerable effort), can Carol do the same? Thor couldn't destroy the Aether with Mjolnir, but could he do so with Stormbreaker since his powers have increased?

I'm sure we'll find out in a couple of months.

[Vendetta]

Something a friend of mine said that got me thinking was that because like Scarlet Witch, Marvel got her powers from an infinity stone, does this mean that she also has the ability to destroy one (unique now Wanda turned to dust)? Wanda was able to destroy the Mind Stone (with considerable effort), can Carol do the same? Thor couldn't destroy the Aether with Mjolnir, but could he do so with Stormbreaker since his powers have increased?

I'm sure we'll find out in a couple of months.

I'm not sure that's relevant any more.

Because Thanos already won the first time, destroying the stones now is too late.

Punching Thanos better this time is too late.

Fundamentally in Endgame Thanos has to be proven wrong to the point that he undoes the damage himself. (Probably after Nebula has made everything worse).

[Agent Fisher]

Just saw it, don't really have any major gripes, was an enjoyable movie, and it was good to see Coulson back on the big screen. But, wait, ok, I do have one gripe!


There is no way that Carol Danvers, Air Force Pilot, would ever end up with the callsign 'Avenger'. No, just no. No one gets the cool, awesome call sign. You get something stupid, or insulting, or an inside joke, but not Avenger!

[FireNexus]

Just saw it, don't really have any major gripes, was an enjoyable movie, and it was good to see Coulson back on the big screen. But, wait, ok, I do have one gripe!


There is no way that Carol Danvers, Air Force Pilot, would ever end up with the callsign 'Avenger'. No, just no. No one gets the cool, awesome call sign. You get something stupid, or insulting, or an inside joke, but not Avenger!

Avenger could be an inside joke about how she’s never going to fly in combat. Which fits with the movie, actually.

[LadyTevar]

Avenger could be an inside joke about how she’s never going to fly in combat. Which fits with the movie, actually.

Or what she does to the guys after she gets back up out of the dirt. We see she never stays down.

[Gandalf]

That was a really safe film. Black Panther in its attempt to have the first black lead role created an entire world in Wakanda, and committed to the idea. They didn't shy away from discussing colonialism, slavery, and black people's place in the world. In contrast, this film felt like it's main objective was not to fuck it up, like they did with Black Widow's backstory.

Also, it did seem like it was an ad for the US Air Force. The MCU really has a thing for the US military industrial complex it seems.

Otherwise it was a fun film, if hamhanded in its nostalgia. The refugee twist was awesome, and the cat was fantastic.

[Lost Soal]

Also, it did seem like it was an ad for the US Air Force. The MCU really has a thing for the US military industrial complex it seems.

Carol and Maria were the only two Air Force personel who were portrayed as decent people, the rest were assholes. The Air Force itself did nothing, accomplished nothing but was instead infiltrated by a Kree, used for her own purposes and as a result managed to lose posession of the Tesseract.
The closest the military itself has ever been shown as even remotely competent was when they managed to damaged Starks armour in the first Iron Man. OK, also the army when Rogers himself was leading them.
You have a strange idea of what an advert is.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, it did seem like it was an ad for the US Air Force. The MCU really has a thing for the US military industrial complex it seems.

Carol and Maria were the only two Air Force personel who were portrayed as decent people, the rest were assholes. The Air Force itself did nothing, accomplished nothing but was instead infiltrated by a Kree, used for her own purposes and as a result managed to lose posession of the Tesseract.
The closest the military itself has ever been shown as even remotely competent was when they managed to damaged Starks armour in the first Iron Man. OK, also the army when Rogers himself was leading them.
You have a strange idea of what an advert is.

The MCU follows the general pattern of the Western action genre, really, which no doubt grows out of both out of the custom of centering a story around a single heroic protagonist, and the general cultural tendencies in Anglo-European society towards libertarianism and glorification of that outlaw- that being that the institutions are at best ineffectual and at worst corrupt and traitorous, with the exceptional lone vigilante hero being the only one who can save the day (the Craig era Bond films are a particularly blatant example of this genre convention, with every single film after Casino Royale featuring Bond having to go rogue in opposition to some corrupt element within British or American intelligence, and Spectre in particular being best described as "a James Bond 911 Truther film"). Occassionally of a late a film has tried to subvert it, as The Last Jedi did by setting up Holdo vs. Poe as a classic "incompetent/corrupt commander vs heroic hotshot pilot" and then turning it on its head, but given how poorly such attempts have tended to be received, I doubt its likely to catch on any time soon.

[LadyTevar]

Also, it did seem like it was an ad for the US Air Force. The MCU really has a thing for the US military industrial complex it seems.

Carol and Maria were the only two Air Force personel who were portrayed as decent people, the rest were assholes.

The rest were typical male pilots of the era, who did believe that a woman shouldn't be flying ANYTHING, much less top-of-the-line experimental airplanes. All the shit Carol and Maria were putting up with was NORMAL... and sadly is still NORMAL for a woman in the military. Hell, they actually toned it down as it was all verbal, neither Carol nor Maria were shown having to deal with hands on their asses or outright rape.

If it was a commercial, it was to say "HEY GIRLS! YOU CAN BE MILITARY TOO!"

[The Romulan Republic]

Apparently the media companies waged a fairly aggressive, and seemingly successful, counter-troll campaign for this film:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/why-t ... for-trolls

NEW YORK — Captain Marvel possesses superhuman strength, cosmic awareness and, it turns out, the ability to vanquish trolls.
Marvel’s “Captain Marvel,” the superhero factory’s first movie fronted solely by a female hero, last weekend notched the sixth largest global opening ever and in five days of release has already sold $524.1 million tickets worldwide, Disney said Wednesday. That was despite the efforts of a vocal minority to sabotage the movie’s release in a campaign to lower audience scores and disseminate false information about the film’s star, Brie Larson.
It’s a playbook borrowed from the political realm and brought into the movie theater. And the movies that have drawn such attention have, more times than not, starred women in franchises previously dominated by males. But after similar campaigns against “Ghostbusters” and “The Last Jedi,” Hollywood studios are fighting back, as are sites like Rotten Tomatoes and YouTube.

After similar campaigns against “Ghostbusters” and “The Last Jedi,” Hollywood studios are fighting back.
Paul Feig’s 2016 female-led “Ghostbusters” remake, which Donald Trump himself spoke out against, was among the first films to be targeted by users rating it lowly on sites like the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) before the film was even released. On YouTube, it was the most disliked trailer ever.
A similar strategy was employed on Rian Johnson’s “Star Wars Episode VII: The Last Jedi,” which — like “Ghostbusters” — had, and continues to have, genuine detractors who simply didn’t like the movie. But there were concerted efforts to amplify criticism of “The Last Jedi,” which notably expanded the “Star Wars” universe with new heroes like Laura Dern’s resistance leader and Kelly Marie Tran’s maintenance worker. Tran eventually deleted her Instagram account after months of harassment.
So when Johnson and Feig saw similar attempts being made ahead of the release of “Captain Marvel,” they recognized the handiwork.
“Pretty much the new ‘Certified Fresh’ badge,” said Johnson, linking to an article about review bombing on “Captain Marvel.” ”What a sad, sad pathetic group of people are who organize to do things like this,” said Feig.
The amplified backlashes to both “The Last Jedi” (which opened strong but faded) and “Ghostbusters” (which disappointed altogether) appeared to hurt the films’ bottom lines.
But the tide may be turning. The same Facebook group that organized to vote down “The Last Jedi” also went after Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther.” That time, though, both Facebook and Rotten Tomatoes moved to counter the group, which was removed from Facebook. “Black Panther” became the third highest grossing film of all time domestically, not accounting for inflation.
And “Captain Marvel,” which drew a majority male audience (55 percent), similarly showed no signs of any ill effect.
“If those trolls had any negative impact on the box office, somebody point it out to me because I just don’t see it,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “The trolls, they’re not going derail a movie like this. For the fans, they love Marvel, they love the brand. Other than a terrible movie, nothing would dissuade the Marvel fans and the movie fans from coming out and seeing a film.”
Marvel, whose 21 films have earned a combined $18 billion in global box office, is indeed about as unassailable as any studio ever has been. “Captain Marvel” was also cunningly positioned as a need-to-see appetizer to “Avengers: Endgame,” due out April 26.
But “Captain Marvel” found itself in the crosshairs with some largely in response to Larson’s advocacy for diversity in film and in those who write about it. A USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study last year found that, for the 100 top grossing films in 2017, 77.8 percent of the critics counted on Rotten Tomatoes were male and 86 percent were white.
At the time of the study’s release, Larson said: “I do not need a 40-year-old white dude to tell me what didn’t work for him about ‘A Wrinkle in Time.'” Larson later said she, after noticing that critics reviewing movies “appeared to be overwhelmingly white male” decided to make her press interviews “more inclusive.”

“Captain Marvel” found itself in the crosshairs with some largely in response to Larson’s advocacy for diversity in film and in those who write about it.
“This film is about trying to put in as many little revolutions as possible,” she told AV Club. “And as many little nods to what that experience is like, being a woman, so that other people could feel less alone.”
Online critics exaggerated her words in videos like one titled “Brie Larson hates white men.” Others said her character didn’t smile enough in promotional materials. Larson responded with a photo of giant grins superimposed on previous male Marvel heroes.
But perhaps more importantly, steps were taken to mitigate any troll effect on “Captain Marvel.” Two studio executives who spoke anonymously because they weren’t authorized to speak about their about their anti-troll efforts, said they’ve become more adept and prepared for combating organized negativity around a release. There are no more sneak attacks.
And the avenues for manipulating audience perception are dwindling.
YouTube, where anti-Larson videos proliferated ahead of the film’s opening, chose to categorize “Brie Larson” as a news search, not a general one. The algorithm tweak, first initiated to combat conspiracy videos after the 2017 Las Vegas music festival shooting, pushed videos from news and entertainment outlets up, and rants like “Brie Larson is Ruining Marvel!” down.
Rotten Tomatoes, which ranks both critic and audience scores, removed the potential for audience scoring before a movie is released. Though an initial wave of negative audience ratings pushed the score for “Captain Marvel” down, by Wednesday it was at 63 percent — almost exactly the film’s average on Metacritic.
Dana Benson, a representative for the Fandango-owned Rotten Tomatoes, said the site is exploring more adjustments to prevent the gaming of its audience scores including a “verified purchase” component to reviews, similar to Amazon’s system, so to audience reviews come from those who have seen the movie.
“We’ve seen it with enough movies that we know we have to evolve our system,” said Benson of the trolling. “Anyone that has an open system like we do has received this type of attention. Moving forward, we want to make sure our users can trust our audience score and that we find different ways to verify the reviews.”

[Civil War Man]

I do agree with Gandalf that it felt like a very safe movie. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like it was trying to do anything ambitious. It was like the people making it thought "Girl Power" was already pushing the envelope so much that trying to go any further would be too much for the white guys in the audience to take.

I do have a few little nitpicks, some of them not even really about the movie itself. For starters, their decision to release it now makes it feel a little rushed, since the movie introducing the character to us for the first time is released literally the month before the giant crossover movie where she presumably plays a really big role. It might have been better to have this movie come out last year or two years ago, so it doesn't feel like she's just showing up out of nowhere.

Also, I don't feel like writing Danvers as a wise-cracking smart-ass really worked all that well. She makes a lot of quips, but a majority of the moments where I laughed (or heard other people laugh) were with Fury, Goose, or when Danvers was being an otherwise serious fish out of water. I know being quippy is an MCU protagonist stereotype, but Captain America and Black Panther have managed to succeed while being played relatively straight, and I think the same might have been better here.

Third, while I like the idea of making the Skrulls a bit more sympathetic, I think they overcompensated here, to the point where the war between the Kree and the Skrulls feels very black and white. One of the things I thought was interesting about the war in the comics is that neither side of the fight were really good guys and Earth was just caught in the middle of a grudge match between two unfriendly factions.

Still, my view is that even the absolute worst MCU movies so far at least rise to the level of watchable, and this was still better than them. I think a lot of it is that it's a bit like Ant Man and the Wasp, where it's in an awkward position of being a pretty standard superhero movie surrounded by ones that were much more ambitious, like Black Panther, Infinity War, and the upcoming Endgame.

[Crazedwraith]

I agree the female protagonist is the riskiest thing about it, I think the positioning just before Endgame is similarly to BP coming out before Infinity War but your risky movie with the unconventional protagonist right before the tentpole movie. So any loss/underperformance of one is washed away by big profits from the other.

[The Romulan Republic]

I do agree with Gandalf that it felt like a very safe movie. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like it was trying to do anything ambitious. It was like the people making it thought "Girl Power" was already pushing the envelope so much that trying to go any further would be too much for the white guys in the audience to take.

And the sad thing is, if the troll campaign is any indication, those fears were not entirely misplaced.

Then again, maybe it doesn't matter. The people who will hate this movie for all the wrong reasons will do so regardless, and the people who accept a female protagonist would have been open to more risks. So maybe they didn't need to play it safe. Fury Road, for example, took plenty of "risks" when it came to women and minorities in film, and while it didn't make as much money as Captain Marvel will, it also wasn't as big a franchise to begin with.

Then again, Fury Road also had at least one screening shot up.

[FaxModem1]

Well, I generally liked the movie, but I didn't love it as I did Wonder Woman. I'm not sure if that's because I'm more a DC guy, I've always loved Wonder Woman as a character, I find the era of World War I more compelling to see on-screen than the 1990s, Wonder Woman is a much better movie than Captain Marvel, or if it's because Wonder Woman is a much more compelling character than Captain Marvel.

I think part of the problem, as others have stated, is that we don't really get a lot of who Captain Marvel is before she goes to Earth. Additionally, we don't see a lot of her squad, or the Kree Empire in general, aside from Jude Law being her friend/CO who is saying that she is being too emotional.

Seeing more of her life as 'Vers', with an additional ten to twenty minutes of her with her squad would have made the climax more fulfilling. Seeing the 'good' parts of the Kree, and then having the dark reveal later on.

But that would mean less showtimes, meaning less box office.

[Civil War Man]

I agree the female protagonist is the riskiest thing about it, I think the positioning just before Endgame is similarly to BP coming out before Infinity War but your risky movie with the unconventional protagonist right before the tentpole movie. So any loss/underperformance of one is washed away by big profits from the other.

The thing with Black Panther though is that the solo movie wasn't our introduction to the character. We first met him in Civil War, which came out a couple years before. So the only characters we were first introduced to in Black Panther who then showed up in Infinity War were relatively minor characters like Okoye, Shuri, and M'Baku. By contrast, the closest we've gotten to a Captain Marvel introduction before this movie was Fury's pager in the Infinity War stinger.

And the sad thing is, if the troll campaign is any indication, those fears were not entirely misplaced.

Then again, maybe it doesn't matter. The people who will hate this movie for all the wrong reasons will do so regardless, and the people who accept a female protagonist would have been open to more risks. So maybe they didn't need to play it safe.

This is generally my view. Black Panther didn't try to play things safe to avoid upsetting entitled white men, and while there was an attempt at a similar troll campaign with it, it was very quickly drowned out by the praise.

Well, I generally liked the movie, but I didn't love it as I did Wonder Woman. I'm not sure if that's because I'm more a DC guy, I've always loved Wonder Woman as a character, I find the era of World War I more compelling to see on-screen than the 1990s, Wonder Woman is a much better movie than Captain Marvel, or if it's because Wonder Woman is a much more compelling character than Captain Marvel.

I think she sometimes runs into the problem where she's often significantly more powerful than the people around her, so it requires more work to really go anywhere interesting with it. With Wonder Woman, she couldn't just punch Man's inhumanity to Man into submission, and when it got to the punching part of the movie it was against someone who was on equal or greater footing to her power-wise. For Captain Marvel, when she breaks the thing regulating her powers, she's taking out entire fleets on a whim.

I've seen Superman run into that problem a lot, along with Thor and the Hulk, though at least the Hulk has the trait where his power is often a liability so Banner has a reason not to just have the Hulk try to solve everything.

[Gandalf]

I do agree with Gandalf that it felt like a very safe movie. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like it was trying to do anything ambitious. It was like the people making it thought "Girl Power" was already pushing the envelope so much that trying to go any further would be too much for the white guys in the audience to take.

I think it was also an attempt not the get the "girl power" part of it wrong. When they tried to give Black Widow the sort of depth befitting a major character, they fouled it up so badly that it's never come up again. She went from being the equal of the cast around her to the personification of some of the worst parts of Joss Whedon's writing.

[Crazedwraith]

I do agree with Gandalf that it felt like a very safe movie. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like it was trying to do anything ambitious. It was like the people making it thought "Girl Power" was already pushing the envelope so much that trying to go any further would be too much for the white guys in the audience to take.

I think it was also an attempt not the get the "girl power" part of it wrong. When they tried to give Black Widow the sort of depth befitting a major character, they fouled it up so badly that it's never come up again. She went from being the equal of the cast around her to the personification of some of the worst parts of Joss Whedon's writing.

I'm still not sure I understand people's issues with BW in AoU.

The impression I got was people heard the line about her saying she can't have kids makes her monster as saying all women who can't have kids are monsters. Is that a fair interpretation of people's issues? It seemed to be the big issues.

Whereas I saw it as more as 'being sterilised to make it easier is one of the many things about spy training that make me a monster'

That said, BW's plot mostly being about romance with Bruce/controlling the Hulk and getting captured and rescue isn't exactly brilliant on the feminism front either.

[Gandalf]

I'm still not sure I understand people's issues with BW in AoU.

The impression I got was people heard the line about her saying she can't have kids makes her monster as saying all women who can't have kids are monsters. Is that a fair interpretation of people's issues? It seemed to be the big issues.

Whereas I saw it as more as 'being sterilised to make it easier is one of the many things about spy training that make me a monster'

That said, BW's plot mostly being about romance with Bruce/controlling the Hulk and getting captured and rescue isn't exactly brilliant on the feminism front either.

She specifically says that being sterile makes killing easier, and then characterises herself as a monster. So if sterility makes for monstrousness, which would be consistent with other things Whedon has said over the years, what are we to make of women who (for whatever reasons) are also unable to conceive? Does this affect sterile men too?

But this could have been made okay if there was a scene where this mindset is shown to be wrong. But that's not the end lesson. Instead the lesson seems to be that she looks after the Avengers and gets to be an aunt to Hawkeye's children.

[Crazedwraith]

I'm still not sure I understand people's issues with BW in AoU.

The impression I got was people heard the line about her saying she can't have kids makes her monster as saying all women who can't have kids are monsters. Is that a fair interpretation of people's issues? It seemed to be the big issues.

Whereas I saw it as more as 'being sterilised to make it easier is one of the many things about spy training that make me a monster'

That said, BW's plot mostly being about romance with Bruce/controlling the Hulk and getting captured and rescue isn't exactly brilliant on the feminism front either.

She specifically says that being sterile makes killing easier, and then characterises herself as a monster. So if sterility makes for monstrousness, which would be consistent with other things Whedon has said over the years, what are we to make of women who (for whatever reasons) are also unable to conceive? Does this affect sterile men too?

But this could have been made okay if there was a scene where this mindset is shown to be wrong. But that's not the end lesson. Instead the lesson seems to be that she looks after the Avengers and gets to be an aunt to Hawkeye's children.

I looked up what I hope is the exact quote from here:

Bruce: ...I can't ever...I can't have this, kids, do the math, I physically can't.
Natasha: Neither can I. In the Red Room, where I was trained, where I was raised, um, they have a graduation ceremony. They sterilize you. It's efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. It makes everything easier. Even killing. [she hesitates a moment] You still think you're the only monster on the team?

I can certainly see what you mean. I had forgotten the specific connection to killing and just remembered the "no pregnancies = no split loyalty" bit.

But still, Sterility is part of what makes BW a monster ( at least in her eyes) not the entirety. I'm not sure the movie intends it to be applied to all people in all circumstances ever. At least not as conscious message. I've no idea what else JW has said though to maybe it a subconscious theme with him.

It's not an unreasonable conclusion that you draw here though.

eta: okay I'm having a wicked sense of deja vu, have we had this exact conversation before? Apologies if we had and I forgot.

[Civil War Man]

I do agree with Gandalf that it felt like a very safe movie. It wasn't bad, but it didn't really feel like it was trying to do anything ambitious. It was like the people making it thought "Girl Power" was already pushing the envelope so much that trying to go any further would be too much for the white guys in the audience to take.

I think it was also an attempt not the get the "girl power" part of it wrong. When they tried to give Black Widow the sort of depth befitting a major character, they fouled it up so badly that it's never come up again. She went from being the equal of the cast around her to the personification of some of the worst parts of Joss Whedon's writing.

Can't fault them for that, and not having Joss Whedon write it was definitely a step in the right direction, but "let's try to not screw this up" is not exactly a mindset that creates something that sets the world on fire.

I think one of the other things that made the movie feel very safe is that, if you subtract the "girl power" parts, you could pretty much cast anyone, male or female, to fill that role and not have the story really change at all. In a way, that's fairly commendable, in that Captain Marvel is not completely defined by her gender in a way similar to Ellen Ripley. However, since the movie doesn't really try anything new, it also makes it feel a bit more generic.

[Gandalf]

I can certainly see what you mean. I had forgotten the specific connection to killing and just remembered the "no pregnancies = no split loyalty" bit.

But still, Sterility is part of what makes BW a monster ( at least in her eyes) not the entirety. I'm not sure the movie intends it to be applied to all people in all circumstances ever. At least not as conscious message. I've no idea what else JW has said though to maybe it a subconscious theme with him.

It's not an unreasonable conclusion that you draw here though.

That's the thing I find bamboozling in this context. Whedon knows enough about writing and gender to understand what he's writing here, and what could be inferred from it, like the thing with Loki's dick stick in the first film. He clearly likes writing these female characters and playing with ideas of gender and sexuality, so all I can offer is a profound WTF as to what his intentions were.

Also, I'm sorry I can't find the quote to which I've been referring here. The rough idea was that misogyny (effectively the biggest villain in Whedon's works) is caused by the fact that can't men bear children and as a result they get angry.

eta: okay I'm having a wicked sense of deja vu, have we had this exact conversation before? Apologies if we had and I forgot.

It's a pleasant conversation, so I don't mind at all if we're having it for the fourth or fifth time even.

[Q99]

The bystanders on the train were pretty stupid, attempting to restrain Danvers even after the 'little old lady' she was apparently attacking was revealed to be far stronger and faster than her disguise suggested. While a departure from the norm, the fact they don't notice there was something amiss about her enemy is most odd.

Little old lady is secret ninja master is probably not the weirdest thing you see on LA public transport though.

I think they were just thinking 'break up the fight' and Carol was the aggressor. It's not like they attacked her, just held her back.