20 movies. 807,449,100 tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada. $17.5 billion in global box office receipts. 8 different movies led by a white guy named Chris. Only two movies directed by people of color, none by women. Last I looked, only two confirmed full-time female members of the Avengers and two for the Guardians of the Galaxy, although after Infinity War half of them are dead...for now.
After all of that, Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally has its first female-led superhero movie ( Captain Marvel) and first female director, er, co-director (Anna Boden, directing with longtime partner Ryan Fleck). However, rather than give Carol Danvers - U.S. fighter pilot-turned-intergalactic badass - her own movie they've stuck her in a glorified prequel for the entire MCU meaning there are no real narrative stakes to be found.
If you've ever wondered, for example, how exactly an eye-patched Nick Fury ended up in Tony Stark's living room with a message about something called "The Avengers Initiative" or if you still have some questions about the plot holes in the first Avengers, boy is this the movie for you. If, however, you just want an inspiring story about a woman overcoming great adversity and realizing emotion and strength go hand in hand, especially when you can shoot photon blasts from your fists, then prepare to be disappointed.
That's not to say this is a failure. The Marvel Studios machine is too fine-tuned at this point to release anything which doesn't at least entertain. The period settings, 1995 California and Louisiana, leads to plenty of cheap, but effective jokes about the era (remember Radio Shack?). The cat everyone fell in love with in the trailer is cuter, yet more surprising in the movie. Once Carol realizes the true extent of her powers, hold on to your butts. (Thanos 'bout to get his ass whooped by her in Endgame.)
However, after the unmistakable stylistic touches directors Peyton Reed, The Russos, Ryan Coogler, and Taika Waititi brought to Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War, Black Panther, and Thor: Ragnarok, Captain Marvel rings as the first MCU title in quite some time to lack a real identity of its own. It's hard to use the word "generic" in relation to a movie in which Annette Bening, playing something called the Supreme Intelligence, awkwardly dances to a Nirvana song at one point, but, well, here we are.
That's not how this is supposed to go. Marvel hires people who have a strong vision and grasp for story and character even if they don't know shit about making blockbusters or working with visual effects. At worst, the inexperienced directors can worry about ensuring the movie has humor, heart, and characters worth caring about. Everything else will work itself. Not this time. Boden and Fleck seem buried under a sea of MCU easter eggs and 90s nostalgia/soundtrack choices.
Not helping matters is Captain Marvel herself, played by Brie Larson like she's constantly posing for an action figure instead of actually inhabiting a character. The script she has to work with, credited to Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, does her no favors, giving her a series of groan-inducing one-liners which seem intended to evoke the blockbusters of the era. The actors back then knew how to deliver those kinds of lines with the right balance of irony and sincerity. Larson's stab at it just falls flat. Plus, The Long Kiss Goodnight banter/vibe they try to build between Carol and a (convincingly) de-aged Nick Fury never completely clicks.
Really, the whole thing seems flawed in its very DNA. The storyline so clearly wants to break from the tedium of traditional origin stories while also still ultimately doing a traditional origin story. It's a common problem in an age in which superhero cinema has become so ubiquitous it's already been satirized in multiple live-action ( Deadpool, Deadpool 2) and animated movies ( Teen Titans Go to the Movies!, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, The Lego Batman Movie). When everyone already knows the tropes, how do you still surprise them?
Captain Marvel's answer is tell the familiar in a jumbled order. So, Larson opens the movie already powered up and living in outer space, with complete amnesia as to what her life was like longer than six years ago. She doesn't even know her name is Carol Danvers, going by Vers instead. She lives among humanoid aliens called Kree and works in an elite military united called Starforce. Her mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), preaches discipline during very Morpheus-Neo in The Matrix-like training sessions, though it sure seems like he might also be trying to simply contain her.
When a Starforce mission against an enemy race of shapeshifters known as the Skrulls goes wrong, she ends up on Earth where she runs into early-era SHIELD versions of Nick Fury and Phil Coulson. With their help - ok, mostly Fury's help - a race against Skrull leader Talas (a scene-stealing Ben Mendelsohn) for a MacGuffin turns into a search for the truth about her background.
That means an awful lot of other characters simply telling Carol who she is. While this kind of identity crisis can certainly play well in the MCU - see: Star-Lord, Winter Soldier - it just prevents us from ever truly getting to know Captain Marvel as a character. By the end, we come to understand Talas more than Carol, meaning Captain Marvel is one of the least interesting parts of her own movie.
What we know: she's a soldier who definitely has a love for the fight. She has a temper and can be sarcastic, but authority figures have taught her to suppress that. She's been told she couldn't do things simply because she was a girl, but that just inspires her to get back up and try even harder. It's quite impossible to miss that part. Captain Marvel 's feminist message is wildly apparent, which more power to them.
But I think of it this way: Diana walking into No Man's Land in Wonder Woman feels like the cathartic, empowering release the movie has been building toward. Dropped into a world she doesn't understand, confronted with human carnage on a scale she could never have imagined, and repeatedly denied satisfaction by male colleagues who refuse to take action, Diana walks into the field of battle and puts an end to suffering because it's the right thing to do.
Captain Marvel, by comparison,waits until the very end to deliver a comparable scene, and it attempts a similar trick of Carol finally defying those who would tell her no. The sequel is visually stunning, but it's not totally earned. We never get a full sense of Carol's moral outrage or call to action. Instead, in the end, the whole thing serves as an aggressively unsubtle metaphor for women breaking the chains of their oppressors and owning their own power, in particular defiance of those who say they should suppress their emotions.
It's enough to bring a smile to the face of anyone who takes their daughters or nieces to see this movie, but thanks to Wonder Woman we know how much more powerful that message can be when its paired with a well-developed story and thoughtful characters. Captain Marvel only barely qualifies.
At least now we have multiple options, and the more female-led superhero movies we get the less we'll have to compare them to each other. Captain Marvel, for its part, not only tees up Avengers: Endgame but also Captain Marvel 2. Maybe those movies will have a better grasp on what to do with this character because this first outing is watchable but mediocre.
RANDOM PARTING THOUGHTS
- Gemma Chan, Djimon Hounsou, and others are completely wasted in their supporting roles as Starforce members.
- Post-Credits Alert: There are two. The first is a mid-credits scene which can't be missed. The second comes at the very end and is in the "cute, but skippable" category.
- I have a seen a plastic human, and his name is CGI de-aged Phil Coulson.
- Fun With Publicity Stills: This much-debated shot is not in the movie:
Grew up obsessing over movies and TV shows. Worked in a video store. Minored in film at college because my college didn't offer a film major. Worked in academia for a while. Have been freelance writing and running this blog since 2013. View all posts by Kelly Konda
