“Captain Marvel is perfectly acceptable and definitely worth seeing.”
Captain Marvel is a victim of Marvel’s release schedule. It is a perfectly fine and entertaining entry into the MCU but releasing it six weeks before Avengers: Endgame just can’t help but permeate my review of it. I am here for the end of the Avengers as we know them and while Captain Marvel is good enough, I found myself looking for easter eggs and Avengers tie ins instead of focusing on this story on its own. I assume I won’t be alone in how that taints my review.
Captain Marvel is the story of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a fighter pilot who is injured in a test flight where she is exposed to the power of the Tesseract (the cube from Loki’s staff) and rescued by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) and infused with Kree blood to give her even more power. After six years training and performing missions with Yon-Rogg’s Star Force crew, think Seal Team Kree, Carol’s memories start becoming more and more powerful. When Carol is captured by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) a Skrull who is using her mind to hunt something on Earth she escapes his ship and lands on Earth. Once on Earth, Carol meets Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and they work together to uncover the mystery of who she is while preventing a presumed alien invasion by Skrulls.
This is standard Marvel origin story fare. We have a likeable protagonist learning the limits of her powers and discovering what kind of hero she will be. On a whole Brie Larson’s performance really worked for me. She was cocky, funny, and badass all at the same time. I am very excited to see how she works with the Avengers in 6 weeks. Samuel L. Jackson gives his best performance in the MCU to date. For once Nick Fury actually seems to be enjoying himself and has personality and a relationship with Carol that I thought was the perfect counter to how he treats the other Avengers. The de-aging CGI was pretty dang incredible and not distracting even once like its been in previous movies like Ant-Man & The Wasp. The real scene stealer for me was Ben Mendelsohn as Talos who delivers a layered performance that is menancing, funny, and charming.
The 90s nostalgia aspect was fun with songs like ‘Waterfalls‘ and ‘I’m Just a Girl‘ used in scenes very similair to how they would be used in a Guardians of the Galaxy film. Along with that Guardians flair is alot of space battles and ships that don’t seem to employ the same level of CGI detail as previous MCU movies. They didn’t look bad but they didn’t look as crisp as some other entries in this series.
Overall, Captain Marvel is perfectly acceptable and definitely worth seeing. It has enough twists and interesting reveals to justify its runtime. It doesn’t focus on the infinity stones or quantum realm the way many of us anticipated and while that is disappointing, I wonder if removed from the proximity to Endgame I will grow to like this movie more. I am certainly excited to see Captain Marvel join up with The Avengers and they left plenty of time to explore endless sequel possibilities that take place with Carol between 1995-2018 that I can’t wait for. So there you have it. Its there. We will consume it like a dinner. It tastes ok but we know there is a big old steak coming in six weeks so this well prepared meal doesn’t hit the spot enough for me.
PS: Stay after the credits. Duh.