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that-shamrock-vibe · 5 years

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Movie Review: Captain Marvel (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: I am posting this review the weekend following the movie’s release in the U.K, so if you have not yet seen the movie then go and see it and then read on.

Stan Lee:

Before going into the actual characters in the movie, I want to briefly talk about Stan Lee and his continuing posthumous tributes from the studio that he built from the ground up. After Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I did not feel they could top what they did with his cameo in that store selling the Spidey suit to Miles Morales. But here, not only did the many cameos of Stan become the images you see in the Marvel Studios logo with a touching add-on saying “Thank You Stan” which had my audience whooping and applauding but also Stan himself appears on the train scene where Carol is searching for a Skrull and the two simply smile at each other, very touching and very well done.

Characters:

Alright so as per usual in my character analyses, I will be talking about these characters in order of my favourites and...I am quite surprised about the order of my favourites from going into this movie to coming out of the movie.

Nick Fury:

By far and away, Nicholas Joseph Fury, or just Fury, is by far and away the best character in this movie. I love Samuel L. Jackson and he has always been a fantastic supporting and lead actor in whatever movie he is in. Yes he is a supporting character here to Captain Marvel but he supports her so well and does so without pulling focus away from the fact it is Brie Larson’s movie.

The movie does drag a lot towards the start with more exposition than action but it isn’t neccersarily descriptive exposition and is instead “Here’s this character (Carol Danvers) and here’s this character (Yon-Rogg) and now they’re with these characters (Starforce)”. All of that changes when Carol comes to Earth and first interacts with Fury.

As I said in my non-spoiler review, the de-aging technology is in full effect with Jackson and it really pays off because not only do you believe you are looking at a young Fury but also it’s the thrill of finding out just how Fury lost his eye.

I loved the dynamic between the two characters, more-so than I feel any other partnership Fury has been with. I just enjoyed that aliens were still an unknown variable to SHIELD and so Fury was pretty much learning from scratch about how aliens work. From the interaction in the diner about the difference between Kree and Skrulls to the turbulence gag about the reconfigured aircraft towards the end of the movie.

I also found it fun that this wasn’t Director Fury and was simply Agent Fury...to the point where Coulson called him “Mr. Fury”. Yet he still commanded the respect and strategic planning he has in the present day. However, he is shown to make mistakes at the level of agent he is at particularly when he called in Ben Mendelsohn’s human character Keller who at this point in time is the Director of SHIELD and therefore Fury’s boss without realizing that it was in fact Talos in disguise. To be fair I don’t see how Carol can blame him for that as he’s never met a Skrull before this day but I did like it when she confiscated his pager.

Some critics are saying it’s Fury’s interactions with Goose that sold Goose’s performance and in some respect I do see the argument for that, however, I believe Fury’s interactions are simply the reactions to what the cat does. Both in her cuteness but also in what she does and what is revealed from her.

I thought the fact it was Goose who made Fury lose an eye to be absolutely fantastic. Yes, Fury has mentioned before that the last time he trusted someone is when he lost the eye and I do not feel previous stories of the eye loss add up here but I do believe Fury is the type of character to try and save face rather than the embarrassment that a space kitty with infected claws is the reason. It was great

I felt the fact that the movie’s events are what led Fury to create and push forward the Avengers Initiative, to the point where Carol’s nickname of Avenger is what gave him the idea for the name, is something I don’t agree with. Firstly, chronologically Captain America is still the first Avenger so anyone saying this movie creates continuity issues there is wrong, but the fact that the title Avenger...which up to 10 people have shared in present day...comes from a single person rather than just a thought is slightly inconsiderate of the individual team members and instead puts Carol on a pedastool with Fury recruiting these other members to try and reach her power level.

Goose:

Speaking of the space kitty, it is confirmed that Goose is in fact a Flerkin which is from the comics so is authentic. I was happy that being an alien kitty was not so much important to the movie but not just a throwaway aspect and was somewhat a plotpoint to the movie.

I don’t believe Goose was ever Carol’s pet as promoted but instead went from being Mar-Vell’s to Nick Fury’s. Although I am curious to know what happened to Goose from this movie to present day but I do hope Fury actually kept Goose as a pet and not just until she coughed up the Tesseract.

Oh yeah, the Tesseract is surprisingly in this movie and has multiple reasons to be, but I do believe it’s last use in this movie is to give Goose a home at the end of the movie.

The reveal of Goose’s Flerkin tentacles were fantastic. The first time when Goose ate the Tesseract was definitely a shock but the second time when Goose either ate the Kree or simply threw them around...Fury’s reaction said it all and the roar of laughter in the cinema added to the brilliance of it.

Also on a side-note, when the Kree captured the heroes and muzzled Goose in that cute little cat muzzle was both adorable and tragic.

Carol Danvers:

Brie Larson is a very polarizing actress for me in this role. On the one hand, I don’t think she’s a comedic actress and for that matter that Carol Danvers is a comedic character. But on the other hand, this was the first time I was willing an actress to have her moment in this movie where she finally clicked with the audience because, as an Oscar-winning actress, I know she has it in her.

That moment for me came when she found out about her connection with Wendy Lawson and started to regain her identity, because until that point I thought she was slightly robotic and a little bit like Evangeline Lilly as Hope in Ant-Man and the Wasp in that she was being the angry soccer-mom who was ruining Fury’s fun.

That being said, I did enjoy this movie’s take on a fish out of water story. The MCU has of course done this before for male characters like Thor and Cap technically, but to take the journey as a supposed alien with 6 years of military training and therefore knowing how to gather her bearings and track what she needs was very good to see and moved the story along quickly.

Also the fact she pretty much arrived on Earth and the first thing she does is steal a motorbike and clothes because she knows how to blend in is both military survival and reconnaissance 101. By the way side-note, that jerk biker who was leching on Carol is in fact Rob Kazinsky aka Sean Slater from EastEnders, random I know but I was very surprised to learn that.

That’s kind of where my admiration for her character went away though, yes she was funny with her budding friendship with Nick Fury but...not only is she ridiculously overpowered, but she seems to know what she wants and it’s almost as if the movie just gives it to her. There’s no trial and error as we are led to believe in the trailers with that theme of “Getting knocked down but getting back up”, she does do this particularly at the start in her training session with Yon-Rogg but there’s then no learning curve and simply she doesn’t know something and then all of a sudden she can do it.

I didn’t understand her “Kree name” Vers, I get it was taken from the broken dog tag piece she had with her name on it but it really got annoying after a while because I know her as Carol or Danvers or Captain Marvel or Ms. Marvel, I do not know her as Vers. It may have been a ploy by the Kree to say “You’ve always been Kree, this is your Kree name” but come on you have names like Minn-Erva, Yon-Rogg and Mar-Vell but then you have Vers? Not even Dann-Vers?

I did like the reason why she changed the colour of her suit. Yes seagreen is Kree colours and the movie definitely didn’t make the suits look as bad as the set photos lead to believe but when Monica helps her find a new colour theme and she goes through several different options, including Mar-Vell’s colours from the comics, it was a nice sentiment to choose the same colours as Monica’s top so they could basically be on the same team.

The fact her powers, it’s hard to say her Kree side because she was human and then enhanced by the ship core, but the fact these powers came from the Tesseract is something 1) Die-hard fans kind of guessed but I feel before Infinity War fans guessed she’d be powered by the Soul Stone rather than the Space Stone and 2) Was a good shocker moment for the movie because it kind of explains how the Tesseract came to be in SHIELD’s possession because I always thought Steve Rogers had it with him when he was saved from the ocean in present day but in actuality it disappeared when Red Skull did and so must have somehow come into Mar-Vell’s possession.

It does lead to an interesting match-up in Endgame as Carol is now the only living hero with any sort of Infinity Stone enhancement that can combat Thanos but I will be interested to know if the gauntlet is still working will he be able to somehow control Captain Marvel?

I love my special effects and I did think her Binary mode power-set was brilliant to behold however as has been said by numerous people I do think she is overpowered and particularly when it comes to the rest of the Avengers. I don’t see how she can be part of the same team and not simply defeat foes single-handed. Particularly if they reshape the team after Endgame so the roster consists of her, Black Panther, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and Wasp. I mean yes, Doctor Strange may also hold his own with her but the rest are pretty much enhanced by technology.

I didn’t like the end battle, I thought it wasn’t as epic and grand as it should have been and the fact 1) Captain Marvel was pretty much all the time a CGI construct took me out of the movie and the fact that also 2) She pretty much whooped at the fact she took on missiles was a little bit of a jerk move.

I will also say that in the context of this movie I do understand the origin of the character they’ve told, however I really wish they had showed somewhere in her history that she had been Ms. Marvel, Binary is someone she can easily become as her full powers at the end of this movie have been dubbed her “Binary Mode”, but without being Ms. Marvel it does close a lot of doors for certain stories like, for example, Rogue getting her powers.

Yes they can still do the origin story where Rogue absorbs Captain Marvel’s powers, but if Carol has been off-world since 1995 and only comes back in Endgame, Rogue would have to discover her powers in a present day movie.

I did appreciate the fact that Carol showed a deep appreciation for both her female and male superiors, despite having a type of banter-style relationship with Yon-Rogg he was still her superior and she blindly listened to his instruction until she learned the truth. Then as for her admiration for Wendy Lawson, I mean the Supreme Intelligence takes on the appearance of the person you admire most and it chose her so it speaks for itself.

I will talk about Captain Marvel’s future when I talk about the end-credits scenes but I am both excited and hesitant for her future in the MCU.

Yon-Rogg:

Jude Law;s character has been the subject of much debate since he was announced to be in the movie. At first fans speculated he would be Mar-Vell aka the original Captain Marvel, but then when his name was revealed as Yon-Rogg, despite being a character from the comics, fans thought it may be a red herring for some reason. The fact he was Yon-Rogg and the changes they made to Mar-Vell I think is slightly a missed opportunity for the actor but also this is one of the only occasions where I have seen Jude Law portray a villain.

In terms of his villainy, I thought Jude Law did rather well. He wasn’t a formidable opponent and instead just was the hero’s former mentor turned enemy. He was an MCU standard villain and in terms of good guy turned bad, he wasn’t really ever established as a good guy per say but I’d say he’s on the same level as John Garrett from Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 1 just with a better motivation.

I don’t know much about Yon-Rogg as a character, I know he was Mar-Vell’s commanding officer but when Mar-Vell turned against the Kree he became obviously his enemy. Basically Yon-Rogg’s story here is the same as it was in the comics just with Carol Danvers rather than Mar-Vell, also Mar-Vell was born Kree whereas Carol became enhanced as Kree.

There’s not really a lot to say more about his performance or character here, I don’t know what would have become of him when Captain Marvel took him back to Hala because the Supreme Intelligence is also an enemy but as to whether or not he could come back I would say he could in a future Captain Marvel sequel but we shall see.

Starforce:

Starforce in this movie were about as well developed as STRIKE from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Both teams were military/law enforcement and both included kind of focussed on secondary characters as well as the main heroes. In this case those secondary characters as Yon-Rogg and Minn-Erva. I mean Korath the Pursuer from Guardians of the Galaxy is also on the team but he is really just there as an Easter-Egg and it isn’t at all established how he ends up working directly for Ronan away from Starforce, unless the Kree soldiers are Starforce.

As for Minn-Eeva, I love Gemma Chan, I think she is a great actress and really lends herself to this type of authoritative role. I know Doctor Minerva in the comics is an enemy of Captain Marvel who sought out Mar-Vell on Earth to mate with him to further the Kree genetic line but I do not see that happening here for numerous reasons, the main of which is that Minn-Erva apparently dies at the end of this movie and unless she has somehow pulled a Nebula I don’t see her coming back.

Talos:

Talos is a conflicting character for me because while I do believe this is the best performance I have seen of Ben Mendelsohn’s I don’t know how to react to the fact that Talos and his Skrull followers are good guys.

I did like the fact he was still shown as an enemy of the Kree, which at the time included Carol, but then when she learned the truth he became quite the reliable ally.

I loved his humour particularly when they were examining Carol’s mind and she had his Kree scientist guy tap her head again like he was adjusting a TV signal, the 90s jokes in this were fantastic. Also when Fury was worried about the turbulance and Talos was the only one to be honest with him about it, this never felt like it was the men supporting the women and simply just bouncing off them well.

Skrulls:

I think the fact Talos has a family, particularly a daughter, raises hope for the future of the Skrulls in the MCU in regards to being a threat and specifically adapting Secret Invasion. In the comics, it’s a female Skrull who leads the way as she adopts the identity of Spider-Woman so it could easily be adapted in the MCU that the Skrull Queen is in fact Talos’ daughter who saw the threat in the world and, despite her parents preaching peace, wants vengeance.

I want the Skrulls to be formidable but to my imagination the Skrulls have usually been footsoldiers or grunts for bigger threats rather than being the big bads unless the Kree have been involved or Secret Invasion is the story.

I still really enjoyed the Skrulls when they were shapeshifting here and particularly the now infamous old lady on the train scene, but come on...no disrespect to the old lady but as soon as she hit the floor you could tell it was a stunt double.

Mar-Vell:

Okay so this was my biggest problem with the movie, some people will say making Mar-Vell a woman is a good and interesting thing for MCU...I say that Mar-Vell in the comics is an underrated superhero and someone whose origins I was hoping to see explored in the MCU. Not only is Mar-Vell a lover of Carol Danvers and how she chose her superhero names in the comics but also he is the father of Young Avengers member Hulkling when he had a forbidden affair with a Skrull princess...again something that could have been explored in a Mar-Vell movie.

Also, like Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne, Mar-Vell could have easily been introduced either in Phase 1 or 2 as a superhero, which would have made only introducing Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel at the end of Phase 3 more organic as she would have been introduced as Carol Danvers in that movie.

Unfortunately though, this is what we have. Now to be fair, Annette Benning was really good in this role. She did fill that Glenn Close, Sylvester Stallone, Beneicio Del Toro role of not being the main villain but also being the big name on the cast list.

As Mar-Vell, I do like the fact they did simply “genderflip” the character by making the alias Wendy Lawson as opposed to the comics-accurate Walter Lawson. As I said with Carol, I did also like how they established her admiration for Mar-Vell before of course realizing who she actually was. I would have loved to have seen her in her orbiting laboratory or obtaining the Tesseract but there was so much in this movie I guess they couldn’t fit it in.

I do however think, as Feige knows how to play the long game with these movies, that if they had introduced the idea of this version of Mar-Vell way back when in a Captain America: The First Avenger post-credits scene, maybe with the Tesseract appearing on a beach or something and Mar-Vell obtaining it, then it would have been more organic than just having her have it here.

Also in regards to Mar-Vell being the personification of Carol’s version of the Supreme Intelligence was rather interesting. Particularly when you consider that when she knew Mar-Vell she had brown hair but the Supreme Intelligence construct quite clearly has grey/white hair.

I did enjoy her dimension as this almost virtual reality setting and the fact she could manipulate quite literally everything was rather cool.

I wish they didn’t destroy her so easily for the pure and simple reason of I feel she has a lot more to give going forward. In the comics she is part of the Intergalactic Council which also features Lilandra of the Shi’ar which may have been a good way to introduce them outside of the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Maria Rambeau:

I wasn’t massively a fan of Maria despite how much she had been hyped up in the promos, I did feel she was more of a gateway for her daughter who will become Photon later in her life.

I did like the actress Lashauna Lynch in the role. I thought she fit the bill of being a sassy, strong-willed single mother and I believed the friendship between Maria and Carol despite the fact we only really see that one scene in flashbacks and then after that it’s Maria coming to terms with how Carol has changed after her Kree enhancement.

I did also rather appreciate the fact we have not yet seen this type of family unit in the MCU before. We had Carol being bullied and neglected by her own family so she was I think taken in by the Rambeaus and she became almost a second mother to Monica as she helped Maria raise her. It did lead to my fiancé constantly saying that Carol and Maria are lesbians and to be fair unless you count the fact that Maria needed a man to create Monica there is no mention of either lady have a male love interest in this movie, but I just love that dynamic of breaking the mold of the typical “Nuclear Family”. Not only does is pave the way for the Fantastic 4 who are one of the most unconventional families in comics, but also it’s another example of female empowerment in not needing a man to raise a child.

As for Monica, I really liked this young actress, Akira Akbar. I liked the fact they had sisters portraying the two different ages because it adds realism to the character. I thought the relationship she had with both her mother and Carol was really well established and, as mentioned, her helping Carol choose her new colours was a rather sweet moment.

I do find it interesting that in Endgame we are going to the future and having an aged-up Cassie Lang as Stature or maybe Stinger depending on where they want to go with the character. So it stands to reason that while Monica is 11 in 1995, she’ll be mid-30s in this future version so could easily been shown as Photon and team-up with Captain Marvel. They made need characters to be in space and the only ones who can possibly survive that unaided are Captain Marvel and Photon.

Agent Coulson:

Oh how far Clark Gregg has fallen, from the comedic string tying all of Phase 1 together to the slapstick leading his own show. I do think there was something missing from his performance here because this is just over 10 years before the events of Iron Man and so either he hasn’t found his comedic niche yet or the actor has just lost what made Coulson such a fan favourite in the first place, either way overall he was disappointing.

Having said that he did have two great moments. The first was the reveal that the Coulson in the car with Fury was in fact a Skrull as the real Coulson was still waiting where they drove off from, that was really cool but I did kind of guess it in the acting because Skrull Coulson felt slightly too rigid. But the second part was right at the end when Fury had lost his eye and Coulson brought that box of fake eyes for him to choose from. Just that one line of “Don’t take too long, you have a big decision to make” was very Coulson and I appreciated he at least ended on a good note.

Endgame:

Alright so the mid-credits scene here is another scene taken from possibly the end of the first act in Avengers: Endgame, think the Ant-Man scene which showed a clip from Captain America: Civil War with Cap and Falcon talking about Bucky. It focuses on Cap, Bruce. Natasha and Rhodey in the Avengers Compound and the fact they have somehow obtained Fury’s pager which has apparently stopped beeping.

I can’t remember if they get it beeping again before the reveal but after Natasha says “I want to know who’s on the other end of that call”, she turns to find Captain Marvel standing there looking slightly flustered and simply asking “Where’s Fury?”.

I have to say, Brie Larson as the character was growing throughout this movie, here she reached her stride in that 10 second shot of her. Seeing Captain Marvel with the Avengers for a start was brilliant but also her hair went from the choppy bob to a more battle-beaten version of Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Obviously this is supposed to be over 20 years in time so while she may not age physically thanks to her Kree enhancement, she does of course change.

Also it is interesting to note that both Natasha and Clint aka Hawkeye soon to be Ronin share the same thought pattern when it comes to mysterious communication devices. In the first Avengers movie when Hawkeye and Fury are talking about the Tesseract acting like a portal, Hawkeye questions where this portal is leading to and here Natasha pretty much questions the same thing. I don’t know if that’s their SHIELD training or just how they both think but it was a nice call-back for me.

It is a scene directly taken from the movie but it is the right scene because it teased so much and just asked so many more questions than I had before. I cannot wait until the end of April.

Overall I rate the movie a solid 7/10, it was by no means a perfect movie as if you want to find problems you will find them easily. Maybe because this is now the 11th year and that the MCU has become so formulaic that it is just so easy to find flaws now but still, the comedy was great, the acting was great. I did enjoy the story, I enjoyed the growth of Brie Larson throughout the movie and I look forward to seeing what happens to these characters next.

So that’s my review of Captain Marvel, what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more Marvel Movie Reviews as well as other Movie Reviews and posts.

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