Film Review: Captain Marvel

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable
Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable
Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

Movie critics keep telling me that audiences are about to experience "super hero fatigue."  This means that the genre of comic book movies is too saturated in the film industry and people will soon become sick of it.  This will lead to waning interest and diminished box office returns.

And they've been saying this for at least the last 5 years.

But that bubble has not popped and Captain Marvel is not the one to pop it.

Captain Marvel, like Captain America: The First Avenger, is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before the events of Iron Man in 2008.  The story is centered on Vers (Brie Larson), a warrior for the alien Kree Empire with extraordinary powers.  These Kree have been in a perpetual state of war with the shape-shifting alien Skrulls.  Vers, under the training of her mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), has a skirmish with the Skrulls and their leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn).  This leads her to crash land on mid 1990's Earth, where she encounters a younger Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) who aids her in her quest to stop the Skrulls.  Along the way, Vers begins to discover that she had a past on Earth that she does not remember and that not everything she believes is at it seems.

There was a lot of buzz going into this movie both good and bad.  I know a number of people that were turned off by star Brie Larson's comments about "white dudes."  In addition, the directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck indicated that the film was going to have politicized tone.  But I went into the film with an open mind and I found it to be highly entertaining.  The only time the movie feels off is when the filmmakers decide to be heavy handed with their material.  While our hero remembers training in the US Air Force, we hear the snickering of the men who say she won't fly because she's a girl.  We get obnoxious macho dudes who condescendingly tell our hero to smile.  And during a climactic fight scene they inexplicably play No Doubt's "I'm Just a Girl."  Wonder Woman was also a super hero movie that raised up a strong female lead, but that movie had a bit more grace and subtlety.  Each time Captain Marvel tried to score ideological points, it felt out of place and took me out of the film.

Thankfully, these moments were not as common as I was led to believe.  Most the film follows standard origin story fare.  The action sequences are fun and well-paced.  While this was one of the more modestly budgeted Marvel movies, nothing in it felt cheap.  The effects they used to de-age Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg (who reprises his role as Agent Coulson) work well and never break the suspension of disbelief.  And the film is well paced as they set out the bread crumbs of Vers' past to make the piecing of it back together the central mystery of the story.

As a card-carrying member of Generation X, I thoroughly enjoyed the look and feel of 1990's America.  The references to Blockbuster and grunge music made me nostalgic for that era.  However, the effect could have been much more immersive.  This could have devolved into a series of gags about the era, but I also can see that the directors did not really push to make a stronger sense of the period in Captain Marvel as they did in Captain America: The First Avenger.  Most of the former feels like it could take place today.  But all of the latter feels of a particular bygone era.

Larson's performance has been polarizing, with some loving it and some hating it.  I think her work is being judged through the lens of her words and actions outside of the movie.  Her character is a smug, cocky, smart Alec.  If you do not like Larson, you will find these traits insufferable.  If you like her, you will find them charming.  Based purely on the context of the movie, Larson infused her character with enough charm to make her arrogance endearing in the same way that Robert Downey Jr. does with Tony Stark.  She struts into the room full of confidence so that we buy into the idea that she is often the most powerful person in the room.

Nick Fury tends to be the person in the MCU who holds all the cards.  But it is a refreshing turn to see him almost like a wide-eyed innocent.  Jackson plays him as a skilled but slightly fumbling agent who is on his way up.  Law's performance is fine, as is Annette Benning who plays (among other things) the manifestation of the Kree AI Supreme Intelligence.  Mendlesohn still chews the scenery as he does in all his other movie roles like the ones in Rogue One and Ready Player One, but when done under Skrull makeup, it feels a little less overwhelming.

Captain Marvel wrestles with some big ideas like war, identity, and dignity.  These are very strong areas of interest for a Catholic world-view, but the movie does not go as deeply as it thinks it does.  For example, it tries to say that seeing your enemy as simply evil is wrong.  The movie thinks it enters into some deep insight.  But then it returns to this same outlook by the end of the movie, even if it doesn't mean to do so.  I am not opposed to either theme being presented, but the film is not consistent about what it wants to say. 

All-in-all, Captain Marvel is one of the better origin movies that could have been great if they avoided agenda over story.

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