At the post end-credits scene of Avengers: Infinity War, we see SHIELD Agents Nick Fury and Maria Hill in a city as they witness the result of Thanos snapping his fingers with The Infinity Gauntlet. They both are decimated, but not before Nick Fury sends a pager and we see an image on the pager, a Red and Blue background with a golden star in the front. It was the symbol for Captain Marvel. I was interested in who this character was as I have known almost nothing about her from the comics. Over the year, the advertisements for Captain Marvel began and the trailers underwhelmed me even though I knew that Brie Larson was going to portray the character. At the beginning of this year, that was when I saw something that was trending on Twitter and Facebook and learned of this so-called controversy that a lot of sensitive people were raging about, specifically something that Brie Larson said in an interview last march that was twisted around and turned into a so-called reason to boycott the film for promoting feminism. I remembered when the Ghostbusters 2016 was about to come out and it was blasted by sensitive people for promoting feminism. I can care less about this controversy and just wanted to see a good Marvel film, especially with Avengers: Endgame on the horizon and after finally seeing it, I will say that this “controversy” makes me sad for what our society has become in terms of the pre-judgement and attempting to boycott films for a cause.
Captain Marvel is the latest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it stars Brie Larson in the titular role/Carol Danvers, and she is joined by Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Benning, Lashanna Lynch, Clark Gregg playing a young Phil Coulson and Samuel L. Jackson as a young and eye patchless Nick Fury. In the film, we see an amnesiac Carol Danvers AKA. Vers on the planet of Hala, where the society of Kree resides. She is sent on a mission with her mentor Yon-Rogg and elite team of Kree heroes and is kidnapped by the villainous Skrulls, beings who can shape-shift into anyone they see with their eyes. The Skrulls sedate Carol and look deep into memories for a set of coordinates that will lead them to something called a lightspeed engine. Carol awakens, breaks out of her chains, fights the Skrulls and later escapes onto the below planet, Earth. After crashing, she tries to communicate with her mentor and is told to wait on Earth until she is picked up. While investigating, she stumbles onto a group of SHIELD agents, two of them being Phil Coulson and Nick Fury and then finds that the Skrulls have followed her on earth. Carol goes on a series of weird adventures with Nick Fury and learns more about her past, including the fact that she was an Air Force pilot and had a close friend, Maria Rambeau. Every conflict that goes on is due to past events that Carol Danvers witnessed and was then later embodied with fantastic powers that she is trying to control.
This film was okay, disappointing, but okay. It wasn’t one of my favorite Marvel films and it reminded me of early MCU films like Thor, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 & 3. I think the biggest problems lie within a few factors; Brie Larson is very wooden and has no major character development from beginning to end, the plot being told out of order doesn’t help the overall conclusion, this film is very paint-by-the-numbers, meaning it uses other ideas from other Marvel films and gives no new ideas except for comic-book lore and answers to a few MCU questions. I honestly don’t know who’s to blame for Brie Lawson’s acting in the film, was it herself, was it the directors, was it a rushed production, who knows, either way, Brie Larson was very boring and bland as Captain Marvel and I really hope she is a lot better in Avengers: Endgame. Throughout the film, Danvers is trying to remember her own past and we are shown all of the flashbacks in just a few scenes, that to me, was a huge storytelling problem. I’m all for telling the story out of order, but just I didn’t like how Captain Marvel told it. It would’ve been very beneficial to see the plot in a more sequential structure and maybe give Danvers an actual character arc. Other reviewers have said this, so I’m saying it too, I thought that Wonder Woman was the better female-led superhero story than Captain Marvel in terms of character development and storytelling. I will also say that there are a few returning characters from other MCU films but they honestly feel wasted and only serve to hook MCU fans into the film.
I’ve rambled on the negatives, but are there positives? Yes, there are. I liked the various MCU references throughout the film, including one item that makes it clear on how Captain Marvel could beat Thanos in Endgame, I won’t spoil it. I liked the scenes with Danvers and Fury. It felt like a buddy cop story and his reactions to certain events made me laugh. I liked the scenes with Maria Rambeau, to me, she was better developed than Danvers and her actor, Lashanna Lynch, does a much better job than Brie Larson. Goose the Cat, I love cats, I have a cat named Pepper Ann, the cat had the funniest scenes, I like Goose the Cat. I liked the de-aging visual effects on Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg, these effects are to the point of perfection and I wasn’t thrown off unlike Tron: Legacy and other films that poorly De-age their actors. There is one twist that I won’t give away, but thought it was well executed and it involves both Ben Mendelsohn and Jude Law.Overall, this film was a mess to me but had its moments. I know that Brie Larson can do so much better than she did in this film, and I have some hope for her in the future. It’s easily one of my least favorite Marvel films and it was more of a filler story and doesn’t seem to have much of a connection to Avengers: Endgame except at the first post-credits scene. The controversy is stupid, nonexistent, and only serves the purpose to further the delusional agendas to these groups, whether it’s SJW or Toxic Fandom, and honestly, there was nothing in the film that promoted feminism, I saw it as a bland superhero origin story. Captain Marvel does have it’s fans and I will say that she can be a role model to young women, but if she can be a role model, she needs to be better developed in future films.
6.5 out of 10
