New But So Very Familiar: A Review of Captain Marvel

directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
written by Boden, Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve

Much has been said about the new film Captain Marvel, and so in reviewing this movie I found myself having to tune out a great deal of noise. All told, I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.

Vers (Brie Larson) is a loyal and particularly powerful soldier of the Kree, a race of warriors who live on the planet of Hala. Even though she's troubled by dreams she doesn't understand about what may or may not have been her past, she serves the Kree Star Force under the command of Yon Rogg (Jude Law) whose primary mission is to destroy the threat posed by the Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting conquerors and the mortal enemies of the Kree. Vers possesses great power she does not quite understand, and recounts her dreams to the Kree Supreme Intelligence, an A.I. that manifests as a woman (Annette Bening) whom Vers supposedly admires and yet cannot quite remember even having known.

When a mission to rescue a Kree spy from Skrull-occupied territory goes awry, Vers is captured and wakes up, hanging upside down in a Skrull contraption meant to read her mind, with a Skrull leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) presiding over the attempts to extract the information. Using her considerable power, Vers breaks free, commandeers an escape pod, and crash-lands on the nearest planet, which happens to be Earth. With the Skrulls in hot pursuit, Vers turns to earthbound allies, like S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson) and retired U.S. Air Force pilot Maria Rambaeu (Lashana Lynch) whom she may have known in a past life. Vers realizes that it is up to her to stop the Skrulls from finding what they're after, especially since her friends in the Star Force are too far away to help her in time. In the process, she finally uncovers the truth about her mysterious past, which is not at all what she expects.

As the political statement it has far too often (and somewhat incorrectly) been described as, this film is a strangely nebulous animal; it's too feminist for the right, and not nearly feminist enough for the left. It's best, then, to take it as a bit of entertainment, which it is first and foremost. As such, it never quite scales to heights of greatness, especially not next to the more pedigreed of its stablemates in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but it definitely qualifies as good. I was expecting something along the lines of the first Thor movie walking in, and I had my trepidation considering that, to me at least, that 2011 Phase I movie has not aged well at all, and so it was with a sigh of relief that I noted that this movie was better than that one in many key aspects. It certainly wasn't as goofy as that film could get at its worst moments.

That notwithstanding, the film is unmistakably a Marvel movie, and leans quite heavily, often to its detriment, on quite a few "Marvelisms" or storytelling devices that have helped make the majority of their now-21 movie catalog box office smash hits, foremost of which the humor. This is easily one of the "quippiest" Marvel movies of recent memory, and while not all of the jokes, verbal and otherwise, work, enough of them do, largely thanks to some real onscreen chemistry between Larson's Vers and Jackson's Fury and to a treasure trove of jokes about what life was like in the 90s, with computers that take forever to load, grunge bands and actual video rental shops. As someone who came of age in that decade, this film felt like slipping into comfortable old shoes. It also makes heavy use of another narrative trope in Marvel movies that I cannot discuss at length without venturing into spoiler territory. In truth, this particular aspect I found problematic, for reasons I won't discuss here. Also, the film, like most of its predecessors leaned quite heavily on computer-generated imagery.

This is one aspect that stands out; the computer-generated imagery, which was a major pitfall of the now Oscar-winning Black Panther was, to my considerable surprise, done quite cleanly in Captain Marvel. The seams show here and there, but considering that this was an effects-heavy movie with a significant portion set in space, it was no small relief that directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck managed to pull off the more fantastical scenes, especially since this is their first-ever big-budget outing. Even the smaller touches, like the CG that de-aged both Jackson and Clark Gregg who shows up as a young Phil Coulson, worked supremely well.

What didn't work all that well, for me at least, was the somewhat generic music score by Pinar Toprak. Sure, it underscored the action well enough, but after Ludwig Goransson treated us to a delightful blend of earthy African rhythms and soaring orchestral fanfare in Black Panther I was kind of hoping for something a little more special. It was the song selection, which consisted of an interesting selection of 90s tunes, that basically carried the movie.

The writing also had a number of issues, some of them serious, which I unfortunately cannot go into because they involve disclosing quite a few spoilers. Suffice it to say that, after the sublime script that Joe Robert Cole and Ryan Coogler crafted for Black Panther, where just about everything made sense, both as a reflection of how people actually behave, and within the context of its own logic, this one was distinctly disappointing. I'll have to stop there.

Marvel has always hired actors whose talent ranges from competent at worst to sublime at best, and whatever noise she may have generated with her off-screen comments, Brie Larson was a decent choice for the role. She manages to strike the right emotional balance between someone who is both confident in her own abilities and who is fraught with doubt as a result of flashes of a past she cannot quite grasp. Also, not that it matters, but she cracks plenty of smiles throughout the movie, yet again proving the age-old adage that it's best to watch a movie before judging it for what its star is or isn't doing in the marketing materials. Apart from the rock-solid, buddy-comedy chemistry Larson gets from playing off Jackson, she gets more than able support from other players in the cast, like Jude Law, Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, Akira Akbar as her daughter Monica, who actually assumed the Captain Marvel mantle in the comics many years ago, and in a surprising turn, Ben Mendelsohn as the lead Skrull Talos. Mendelsohn's sort of been Hollywood's go-to bad guy of late, and having found him generic in films like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Ready Player One I thought Marvel had fallen into their old trap of generic villains, but Mendelsohn's performance was a pleasant surprise, even though I found it distinctly strange that he was the only Skrull with an Australian accent (no, really).

That's another, admittedly minor quibble I have with this film; Asgardians all have British accents, while the residents of the Guardians of the Galaxy's corner of the galaxy all have American accents (including the Scottish Karen Gillan), but for some reason, Jude Law manages to be the only Kree thus far with a British accent, while Talos bears the odd distinction of being the only Skrull to have an Australian accent. It makes for some oddly inconsistent storytelling, though I was gratified that the scriptwriters finally made mention of a "universal translator" to address the issue of aliens being able to speak perfect English to Earthlings.

One final note: altering the Marvel Studios logo to feature solely the late Stan Lee as an homage was a really nice touch, as was featuring him reading a script of the 1995 film Mallrats, in which he had a cameo role. We'll soon see the last of his cameos this year, either in Avengers: Endgame or in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but it's still sad to be reminded that he's gone.

Carol Danvers' inclusion in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been long overdue, and while this film has its issues, this was definitely a decent big-screen debut for the character. Comparisons to DC's Wonder Woman will be inevitable, and if I'm honest, Patty Jenkins still made a better movie overall, notwithstanding WW's completely messed-up climax and the spotty CG, but selling Captain Marvel was always a bit of an uphill battle (against their own boss, no less, before Disney gave Ike Perlmutter the boot) and I think Marvel have given us a worthy enough addition to their ever-growing library.

6.5/10