Captain Marvel (2019)
The online controversy surrounding Captain Marvel is... it's hilarious in all the wrong ways, and it's just multiple cases of pouring oil on top of fire. I'm not going to mention it at all other than recognizing it briefly, because I don't care to talk about the politics of actors or review sites. Let's just say both the sides of the rabid defenders and rabid haters are extremely, extremely subjective.
But let's talk about the movie. This will a spoiler-heavy review since a good portion of Captain Marvel's plot is solving the mystery of the titular captain, so expect to be spoiled on all that. Not being familiar with the character other than what I've seen in games, X-Men comics and Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, I know... glimpses of Captain Marvel's backstory, but not enough that the movie actually did take me for a ride as to the exploration of Captain Marvel's identity and who she truly is. The movie's essentially divided into three main arcs, with the first one focusing on Veers and her life on the Kree planet of Hala and her role as a loyal soldier. The second arc is her escaping a Skrull ship after being subjected to experiencing some of her own memories, and then her just running around Earth with a young Nick Fury, trying to figure out this whole alien war thing. The third arc is her befriending Talos the Skrull, and going up into space to finally deal with the Kree as a whole.
And honesty, I actually do think that the movie does do a pretty great job at showing and presenting this world of Kree and Skrull to us, particularly the first arc, which is filmed mostly from Veers' point of view, where she is all gung-ho at seeing the Kree as the enlightened, superior race. Plus, her superior officer Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) is a pretty supportive, likable character, and the rest of her unit can easily fall into the "lovable bunch of roguish characters" that many other groups in fiction would fall into. Korath from Guardians of the Galaxy is part of it, which is nice. Ronan, the big bad form Guardians of the Galaxy, make a couple of cameos in the first half of the movie as part of the Accusers, before being super-relevant in the climax.
And while the Kree-centric scenes does go a bit quickly and indulges a bit too much in showing us flashbacks, I do like the brief bit with the Supreme Intelligence and how she's portrayed as taking the form of the person you respect the most, instead of the floating organ-with-a-face. I was kind of disappointed, admittedly, that we never saw the true form of the Supreme Intelligence, but what can you do.
Then during a space mission in a planet apparently infiltrated with Skrulls, Veers gets captured by the Skrull commander Talos, which is where the trippy flashbacks start. I do get that the flashbacks are very central to the plot of the story, but I also wish that we didn't get as much as we got. The only thing making these flashbacks -- particularly the ones that are just Carol as a kid -- not feel redundant is Ben Mendehlson's Talos and his snarky, confused commentary running in the background as we go through these flashbacks. At this point, though, it's clear that Carol's a human or lived life as a human, so.
I'm not as enamoured with Veers breaking out of the Skrull ship as the other action scenes in the movie. I'm not sure why -- it felt like it dragged on, and I'm usually someone who likes action scenes. Whatever the case, though, Veers lands on C-53, which is our good old planet Earth. And... it's supposed to be the 90's, and we do get some random cameos of old technology from that era like the Blockbuster video rentals, Game Boys, pagers and the like, but I do kind of appreciate that we don't spend too much time trying to act like this is a period piece. Veers quickly gets into contact with Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, featuring a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg. And it's... it's wonderful. Coulson ultimately doesn't do a whole ton, but he is still fantastic.
All of these awkward fish-out-of-water misunderstandings end up turning into a shoot out when a bunch of Skrulls, who have shape-shifted into humans and are clearly happy to just swap faces at a whim, attack our heroes. Captain Marvel (because it's a pain to type Vers or Veers or whatever, which is just awkward) gives chase to one of them, involving that pretty badass scene we've seen from the trailers on the train. Meanwhile, in a nice bit of misdirection for the audience, turns out that one of the Skrulls has impersonated Coulson, forcing Fury to deal with the Skrull next to him. That was pretty well-done, and even more well-done is the conversation Fury has with Director Keller, who later turns out to be Talos himself. This segment of the movie, acrobatic-grandma aside, is probably my favourite segment of the whole movie, and I would love to watch an entire movie of shape-shifting aliens without all of this "figure out Captain Marvel's backstory" baggage.
The next part, featuring Fury and Captain Marvel finally setting the record straight and deciding to ally with each other is... it's done well, I guess. I'm not that huge of a fan of their interaction, but I never found Larson as 'wooden' as the detractors say. I also don't have a whole ton to say about the Pegasus base infiltration. Fury coo-cooing Goose the cat was cute, the revelation that Wendy Lawson was a Kree was kind of obvious from the flashbacks, Fury's whole dicking around with tape was fun, Talos was a fun hammy villain when he shows up and Coulson gets a pretty great moment too. This sequence takes a fair bit of time, but while I don't dislike it, I really don't have a lot to talk about.
Now convinced that Captain Marvel did have a life on Earth, she and Fury steal a Quadjet (the Quinjet's predecessor) from the Pegasus base and go off to meet a pilot, Maria Rambeau, and the best friend of Captain Marvel's human identity, Carol Danvers. And... and I get the merits of keeping Maria mostly as glimpses and fragments in Captain Marvel's flashbacks, since Carol doesn't actually have any concrete memories yet, but I really wished I actually have an attachment to Maria beyond "she's her best friend". The two actresses do a wonderful job, but I honestly feel that we don't spend enough time or have enough attachment with Maria to really care enough about her. She kinda feels like an accessory, and I really wished she was introduced to us a bit earlier. Also not a big fan of the protracted joke of a paranoid Carol threatening Maria's neighbour.
Talos the Skrull show up at this point, being as entertaining as ever, and he's easily my favourite character in the whole movie. Talos paints a different narrative about the Skrulls, telling Carol that they are refugees being oppressed by the Kree and that all they are trying to do is to find a home and live in peace. Sure, they indirectly threaten Maria's daughter, but Talos also notes that considering Captain Marvel's shoot-first-ask-questions-never attitude with the Skruls, it's sort of a necessary precaution. Talos then plays the recovered black box from the plane, and we get the flashback in full. I do think that the movie cheats a bit by introducing fake alterations of Carol's memories (most egregiously with her nosebleed having blue blood, but also things like ejecting from the plane and all that jazz), but the full story that we got is pretty satisfying.
We also learn that Carol's Captain Marvel powers is the result of the light-speed engine that her mentor, Wendy "Mar-Vell" Lawson, has developed, and that the Skrulls are allegedly after that engine to pick up all their Skrull buddies and find a homeworld. Of course, at this point I was suspecting a "all sides in a war is bad" storyline, that the Skrulls might very well want to use this super-powerful engine to amass an army to crush the Kree. Of course, after a bit of tinkering and Carol Danvers bonding with Maria's daughter Monica, she gets a brand-new costume, Talos gets scared shitless of Goose the "Flerken", and Maria gets convinced to take up the humanity-saving mission of flying the Quadjet into space.
After de-cloaking Mar-Vell's huge ship in space, they enter and find out that in probably the most unexpected cameo ever, the power source that gave Captain Marvel her powers is the goddamn Tesseract, which Mar-Vell apparently recovered from where it fell into the ocean after Captain America: The First Avenger. And... and she just leaves Steve Rogers the human popsicle behind? Mean! But where the three humans are more concerned about the Tesseract, Talos's main goal is apparently all of the Skrull refugees hiding in the ship, including his wife and child. The whale song cry is a bit silly, and while I am sort of disappointed that the movie takes the all-too-simple route of having the Skrulls be completely misunderstood and the Kree showing up as mustache-twirling card-carrying villains, it doesn't completely ruin the movie for me.
And then we get your typical Marvel movie climax! We get Carol facing off against the Supreme Intelligence once more and we get this whole long sequence of how Carol keeps standing up every time she falls in her life, and finally rips off the easily-accessible power inhibitor and unleashes her full Captain Marvel powers to fight the Kree strikeforce. Fury, Maria and Talos also get some pretty cool scenes, and Goose the cat is really a Flerken with a giant tentacle monster mouth. Talos and Fury whispering to each other about Havana, recalling their conversation while they were enemies, is pretty cool.
I am not impressed with the "Just A Girl" soundtrack running in the background, which honestly just feels utterly out of place and a poor musical choice for the scene of Captain Marvel beating up Korath and the other Kree strike-force dudes. The action is decent, though. Maria gets to do some badass piloting as she zips around and uses the Quadjet to shoot down one of the Kree Starforce members, Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan).
And the climax basically has Captain Marvel facing off against the Accuser ships called in by Yon-Rogg to bombard the shit out of Earth, and it's... it's pretty badass, although her genuinely Superman-tier powers shown here makes me wonder why she took so long fighting the Starforce people. I guess she's holding back? The movie never really makes it clear. But whatever the case, she drives away Ronan and his forces, goes back to Earth and zaps Yon-Rogg as he's trying to do the trope of "fight me without powers!" before sending him back to Hala with the promise that she'll come and get the Supreme Intelligence.
The epilogue ran for quite some time, setting up not Goose scratching Nick Fury's eye and apparently being the cause of him being blind in that eye, which is... eh, okay? Not the biggest fan, but I must admit I found it funny. Captain Marvel gives Fury that modified pager, before leaving to space with the Skrulls to find a new home (and maybe beat down the Kree? They are in a less-dominant position circa GOTG, after all), and Nick Fury ends up being inspired by Carol Danvers' call sign to write up the Avengers Protocol.
The mid-credits scene has Captain America, Black Widow, War Machine and Hulk looking at the weird pager that summons Captain Marvel, only for her to show up. Presumably it's a scene straight out of Endgame? The post-credits is Goose vomiting up the Tesseract, which he swallows earlier in the movie. I also think I have to mention the very touching Marvel logo, which features nothing but Stan Lee. Thank you, Stan.
So... how does the movie stand up? Taking away all of the nasty feelings thanks to the controversies, and all the knee-jerk "we must defend this movie!" it's... it's an all right summer flick. The characters are fun, if not particularly heavily-developed. The action scenes are decent, the story and twists are relatively well-done. One of the biggest complaints I've seen being thrown around is perhaps it's an "obvious adaptation" of the character, but isn't that how most first movies tend to be? It's a great origin story. I don't think this is any sort of spectacular movie that blew me out of the water, and certainly not the be-all-end-all of superhero movies. I can easily think of at least five other MCU movies I like better than Captain Marvel... but this is definitely a movie I was entertained by. It's not quite that boring that I'll call it "meh", but it's certainly not quite "great" yet, if you know what I mean.
My biggest problem with it is perhaps the execution of the whole flashback sequences and how she gets her memory back, which I thought really could've been ironed out a little bit more. Also no one probably cares about tying in to Agents of SHIELD continuity, but there's a couple of continuity snarls that I guess would just be handwaved by Coulson's own amnesia. I also mention how under-utilized Maria Rambeau is, as well as how I really wish that the climax wasn't an obvious "KREE EVIL SKRULL GOOD RAH", but there's only so much you could do with the screentime. Another pretty valid criticism is that... we don't really learn that much about the real person Carol Danvers is, since she spends most of the movie just soul-searching and slightly-cocky, but after her memories fully comes back, she's just... mostly more of the same, but since she spends so much time in action scenes, we don't really see that much of her actual character.
Overall, though? It's all right. I didn't mind this too much. I enjoyed this, even if it's not the best MCU movie by far. Would've worked a lot better if the foreshadowing in other movies actually, y'know, foreshadowed Carol. Would've worked a lot better if it was released at a different time relative to the Thanos two-parter as well. Still... bring on the Endgame!
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