“Captain Marvel” made a splash over the weekend, opening with a $455 million global box office gross. To celebrate the movie’s release, a California photographer and father of two planned a special surprise for his daughter.
Josh Rossi’s 5-year-old Nellee loves female superheroes. “Once she saw the trailer for ‘Captain Marvel,’ she became obsessed and started acting out scenes,” he told HuffPost.
To help Nellee bring her “Captain Marvel” fantasy to life, Rossi commissioned a costume from designer Julie Whiteley and then captured his daughter in a themed photo shoot.
“I’ve been wanting to portray her as a strong little girl and [help her] be able to feel empowered, so whenever there is a superhero that she connects with, I do a shoot with her,” the dad explained, adding that Captain Marvel is “the baddest of them all.”
“Woman are so strong and I think Captain Marvel portrays how amazing they are. I love that she is Earth’s protector,” Rossi said.
Nellee apparently had a blast recreating scenes from the movie ― something she’s done with “Wonder Woman” and “Beauty and the Beast” in the past. Once he’d edited the photos, Rossi organized a surprise for “Captain Nellee” when the family went to see the film on opening night.
Rossi worked with the movie theater employees to have one of the large “Captain Marvel” posters in the lobby replaced with one of Nellee’s pictures while she watched the film.
“When Nellee came out, she was in shock,” said the dad. “It was the cutest thing ever.”
That special poster now hangs on Nellee’s bedroom wall, where she loves to look at it. “She came in two days after the reveal and said, ‘Dad, Dad, look!’ I thought she wanted to surprise me with something,” Rossi recalled. “So I went into her room to find her jumping up and down yelling, ‘Look, look, Captain Marvel!’ as if she never saw it before.”
Rossi believes movies like “Captain Marvel” inspire young girls and he wants his photos to do the same.
“I hope little girls feel empowered from these and can connect to the character. I’d love to inspire dads to spend more time with their daughters as well,” he told HuffPost.
“We get so busy with work sometimes and forget to spend time with our kids when they are young. Then, when they get older and things slow down, they have their own lives and friends,” he added. “I’m just so happy that these photo shoots have allowed me to spend quality time with my kids.”
Keep scrolling to see more photos of Captain Nellee:
