Captain Marvel, set in the 90s and directed by Ryan Boden and Anna Fleck, is the story of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a pilot, who finds herself with extraordinary powers and in the middle of an alien civil war. She crashes on Earth and encounters Nick Fury (a de-aged Samuel L. Jackson), who accompanies her in the latest entry to the MCU.
I really wanted to like Captain Marvel more than I did. By no means is it a bad movie, and there are a few enjoyable sections, including some exciting action sequences, but nothing in this movie stuck out to me. The alien world that we find Captain Marvel on at the beginning is nicely designed, but we barely get to see it. The movie has glimmers of ideas that could work really well if they were fleshed out, but none of them are, and the plot is too unfocused to succeed. One on hand, you have her other life of being a pilot playing out at the same time as the Kree/Skull politics, with the buddy-cop aspect with Nick Fury sort of there for the first half.
But most of all, Carol Danvers felt flat. I couldn’t really feel her personality. Brie Larson tried, but a lot of her dialogue, and just general dialogue in the whole movie came out far cornier than the script intended. It’s hard to connect with her character, and overall, sign on to the movie when the titular character is one of the least interesting parts of it.
The script on this is probably the weakest thing here. In a lot of Marvel movies, when the plot isn’t working, the movie’s entertainment value is still present in the witty banter between the characters, but here, neither were really present. Some jokes worked, but a lot of them faltered. The whole setup with her team when she was a Kree did not work one bit for me, and Jude Law’s character fell flatter than any attempted character arc in this.
As far as highlights, the score was interesting, the de-aging on Sam Jackson, and his performance in general were nice, and Goose the cat (pictured above) was surprisingly funny. Ben Mendelsohn, surprisingly enough, was probably the best performance, getting to do his usual evil businessman villain but with a fun twist. There is also some fun camerawork used here that gets repetitive pretty fast.
The 90s vibe felt cool and nostalgic, but added very little to the story. More than anything, it made Captain Marvel feel like a Phase 1 movie done poorly with an retro filter on it and 90s songs that would play during action sequences. On that note, the last act falls apart, and I couldn’t find myself caring about what was going on in most of it.
Overall, there was fun to be had in this, from Goose the cat to either of the post credits scenes, but the cons outweigh the positives in this one.
Rating: 5.5/10
