Rating: 4/5
(spoiler review)
In many ways, Captain Marvel is a typical Marvel movie. It’s an origin story of sorts with quips a plenty and big fights that showcase our heroine’s powers.
But there’s one significant difference to the rest of the MCU: this is Marvel’s first female lead film.
I’ve written before about female lead superhero films, so I won’t rehearse my points again here – I will say, though, that this film is long overdue.
Captain Marvel follows Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as she fights the apparently villainous Skrulls, an alien race with the power to shapeshift into anyone (as long as they’ve seen them) and access their short-term memories. It turns out that Danvers is an amnesiac with no memory of her life on earth, which explains why she’s going by Vers and fighting as part of a Kree (another alien race) squad. An accident sends Danvers spiralling down to earth, where she confronts her past and the nature of her role in the intergalactic conflict between the Skrull and Kree.
Larson’s Danvers is a delight – she’s funny, confident, tough and very, very powerful. Her chemistry with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is excellent – they banter with each other on their way to becoming genuine, firm friends by the film’s ending, and it’s believable enough that it makes perfect sense for Danvers to be the person Fury calls on when people started vanishing in last year’s Avengers: Infinity War.
Fury shines too – this is the youngest we’ve ever seen him, and his naïveté and relative inexperience make him the most endearing he’s ever been in the MCU; for the first time, we’re not invited to view him as a figure of suspicion, and this makes him incredibly likeable. His interactions with Goose the cat are also stellar (and adorable).
Ben Mendelsohn has already proved he’s fantastic at playing villains, so at first I expected his Talos to be one of the MCU’s finer bad guys. But a surprise twist renders him wonderfully sympathetic and far more compelling than he would’ve been as a straight up evil alien. I wish the film had taken the time to delve more into the complexities implied by the reveal that the Skrulls aren’t evil at all, that it’s the Kree who’ve been hunting them and leaving them refugees, that Danvers has been lied to in order to recruit her and her incredible power into an elite fighting force. We see Danvers’ angered betrayal when she learns the truth, but the political implications of such a massive and dark conspiracy aren’t fully explored. This is understandable – the film wouldn’t have time to explore this to the extent it deserves and bring Danvers’ emotional arc to a satisfying close. Danvers is the titular hero after all, and this remains her film at all times.
We simply can’t talk about Captain Marvel without discussing feminism and female empowerment. Danvers’ central relationship in this film is with her best friend, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch). We learn that Danvers found a family with Maria and her daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar), and both are instrumental to Danvers accepting herself as a hero. Danvers is very clearly a role model for Monica, as she undoubtedly will become to thousands of young girls across the world in the wake of this film.
Danvers has her own female role model in her mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening). Through Lawson, Danvers gains her immense power – and it’s in argument with a being using Lawson’s appearance that Danvers finds it within herself to break the Kree’s control and unleash the full extent of her power. And when Danvers does learn to let go, the result is incredible. She’s self-assured and unimaginably strong, a combination that leads to her handling her foes with ease.
Her more sinister mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) attempts to undermine this confidence – recognising that he can’t beat her in a physical fight, he tries to take her down psychologically. This is the film’s most satisfying moment: Danvers doesn’t fall for his tricks simply because she believes in herself. It’s the culmination of an arc that begins when we see a memory of a pilot smugly asking Danvers “you know why it’s called a cockpit, right?” and is dramatised with a sequence showing Danvers standing up every time she’s been knocked down. Danvers is probably the MCU’s strongest hero physically, and she’s all the stronger for her self-belief.
On the bad side, the film does play as a conventional Marvel film, a formula that got tiring for me years ago. Captain Marvel circumvents the typical origin story narrative by showing us Danvers as Vers, then going back in time to show us her missing memories and the events that lead her to the Kree, but on the whole the quipping and the CGI-fuelled fights were very familiar. Other recent entries into the MCU – especially Black Panther (2018) – shook up the formula enough that they felt fresh and new, so it’s a shame for Captain Marvel to feel like a slight step back.
I was also hoping for a more visually impressive film – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) is the MCU’s most beautiful entry, and I was expecting something similar to its bright, bold colours for Captain Marvel’s depiction of space. Unfortunately, the space scenes were largely murky.
On the whole, Captain Marvel is a solid entry into the MCU – it’s not as groundbreaking as I’d have liked it to be, but its message of female empowerment resonates deeply. Danvers is set to become the future of the MCU and this film proves she’s more than ready to handle the responsibility.
Molly Caroline 