D.C.’s Take: Cap­tain Mar­vel

The Mar­vel Cin­e­matic Uni­verse [MCU] has given us movies based on char­ac­ters that no­body has heard of -- non-comic book read­ers went into movies like “Doc­tor Strange” or “Guardians of the Galaxy” not know­ing any back­story, but still ended up lov­ing the he­roes in the long run. Now, we fi­nally add “Cap­tain Mar­vel” into the mix. Con­sid­er­ing that it’s the first out of three MCU movies to be re­leased this year and the first fe­male-led movie in this uni­verse, we shall see if she’s truly the one to de­feat Thanos. 

Carol Dan­vers (Brie Lar­son), also known as Vers on the Kree planet Hala, does­n’t re­mem­ber a sin­gle thing about Earth. She’s a mem­ber of the Kree Star­force trained by her men­tor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) to con­trol her emo­tions. Fight­ing against a group of aliens called Skrulls, shapeshifters who can be­come any per­son, led by Ta­los (Ben Mendel­sohn), she crash-lands on Earth in 1995 while on the run from the Skrulls. 

Were my ex­pec­ta­tions high for “Cap­tain Mar­vel”? Of course they were, but the road lead­ing up to the re­lease was chal­leng­ing to ig­nore. Some say the trail­ers were un­der­whelm­ing -- Lar­son looks bor­ing in the role, and there was the fact trolls were com­plain­ing about a fe­male-lead su­per­hero movie. The amount of ridicule that “Cap­tain Mar­vel” has got­ten be­fore it even came out was dis­re­spect­ful. I went into this with an open mind and to view this from my own opin­ion. I can eas­ily say that while the lat­est MCU film is a mixed bag, there’s still some en­ter­tain­ment value found in here. 

Lar­son was the per­fect choice to play the tit­u­lar hero­ine back three years ago. Dan­vers got some sass and in­tim­i­da­tion for this fish-out-of-wa­ter char­ac­ter who’s ba­si­cally Ja­son Bourne be­cause of her mem­ory loss (with glow­ing fists). Peo­ple love the Os­car-win­ning ac­tress, and with that be­ing said, her per­for­mance was good, but I would­n’t go as far as to say it was great. Most of her line de­liv­ery comes off as a bit dull, which is dis­ap­point­ing com­ing from an ac­tress like her. There are a lot of scenes with Lar­son and Samuel L. Jack­son, with seam­less de-ag­ing ef­fects, as a young Nick Fury work­ing as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent; they have per­fect chem­istry with each other. 

As for the ac­tion se­quences pre­sented, they were above av­er­age. How­ever, there was­n’t a par­tic­u­lar mo­ment that stood out through­out this. 

Mendel­sohn, the decade’s go-to ac­tor for play­ing the vil­lain, as Ta­los was sur­pris­ingly quite good in a role that kept my at­ten­tion when­ever he’s on­screen. It was­n’t un­til later in the movie where I started to ac­tu­ally care more for Ta­los. The Skrulls them­selves are also a pretty cool race. 

The film’s real MVP: Goose the cat. Named af­ter the char­ac­ter from “Top Gun,” this adorable fe­line made me smile in every scene. Best cat fea­tured in a film? In­deed.  

Co-writ­ing and di­rect­ing duo Anna Bo­den and Ryan Fleck (“Half Nel­son,” “Mis­sis­sippi Grind”) take charge in helm­ing “Cap­tain Mar­vel,” and I could­n’t help but won­der why their di­rec­tion was­n’t all that en­er­getic. I don’t know if it’s be­cause of their in­die back­ground be­fore this, but there’s just some­thing about this ori­gin story that does­n’t feel all that unique or like some­thing we haven’t seen be­fore. We don’t get a lot of back­story about Carol on Earth ex­cept for flash­backs, which I do find as a jus­ti­fi­able rea­son enough to care about her, for the most part.

Aside from not enough grav­i­tas to­wards her, the first act was kind of a mess to get through be­cause of its pac­ing and it takes a while for the story to re­ally get go­ing. That’s what hap­pens when you have five writ­ers on a pro­ject, in­clud­ing the di­rec­tors. Noth­ing was giv­ing me the “wow” fac­tor when the ac­tion took place un­til the third act started. Since this movie takes place in the mid-1990s, it was a good idea to have the set­ting in that decade. There were a ton of ref­er­ences that ei­ther hit or just re­lied too much on nos­tal­gia.

Some are go­ing to love “Cap­tain Mar­vel,” and some will find it weak. It is­n’t the strongest en­try in the MCU with its for­mu­laic story and can some­times feel a bit messy, but it’s still ca­pa­ble of be­ing fun for fans alike. This should­n’t nec­es­sar­ily be the stu­dio’s an­swer to “Won­der Woman” and the suc­cess that brought, but it can be re­watch­able de­spite be­ing sort of a let­down. Hope­fully, we will see this char­ac­ter used more use­fully later on down the road. 

Grade: B-