Captain Marvel, released on March 8 of 2019, is the twenty-first installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. More specifically, it's the nineth chapter of Phase 3 of the MCU. Phase 3 is set to end in April with the release of Avengers: Endgame. This movie acts as Captain Marvel's origin story and is meant to familiarize the audience with the character before we see her fighting in the Endgame conflict. It was directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, and it was written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet along with Boden and Fleck. It stars Brie Larson in the title role, which is a casting choice that proved to be pretty divisive to say the least, but I'm not here to talk about the politics behind the film. I saw a movie, so I'm gonna talk about a movie. Simple as that. Also among the cast is Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Anette Bening, Clark Gregg, and Ben Mendelsohn, among others. As Avengers: Endgame quickly approaches, how does Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel fare in her first solo bout? Let's talk about that. This is your official spoiler warning.
Let's start with the visual effects. As per the usual with a Marvel production, this is a beautiful movie to look at. The CGI is excellent in this movie, making the fight scenes some of the most thrilling in the entire MCU up until this point. The Skrulls look fantastic, their shapeshifting animation looks creepy and natural, Captain Marvel's classic red-and-blue suit looks awesome on the big screen. Special mention goes to the CGI de-aging of Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg. There's no uncanny valley at all, it looks perfect. De-aged Samuel is especially impressive, because he doesn't look like a younger Samuel L. Jackson. He looks like a younger Nick Fury, with a different hairstyle and build. It's so good, major props to the people involved with bringing it to life, especially given the amount of screen time he had. I can imagine that it couldn't have been easy to pull off, which makes just how good it is even more impressive than it already was. The scenes towards the end where Carol goes full Super Saiyan look awesome! Yeah, I'll admit it was kinda lame that she destroyed, like, seventeen Kree ships in the span of two seconds, but it was still a pretty effective way of showing how downright scary Carol can be at her full power. I'm sure she's gonna curbstomp Thanos, which is gonna be fun to see. Let's just hope it isn't as one-sided as Superman vs Steppenwolf was. That would be pretty disappointing. Carol making Ronan shake in his boots was great, the fight between Carol and her Kree crew from earlier in the film was awesome (and the use of "Just a Girl" by No Doubt made it better, if you ask me), the Krees look very good. Visually, this is one of the best films in the MCU. It's smooth, it's colorful, it's really pretty to look at. The time we spend on Hala, as boring and uninteresting as it was, was at least fun to look at visually because of just how intricately detailed the world was. It's a beautiful planet, and the 1990's Earth scenes look great, too. I was born in '99, so I in no way can know what the 90's looked like, but what this movie showed us felt natural. I'll go with that.
Let's start with the visual effects. As per the usual with a Marvel production, this is a beautiful movie to look at. The CGI is excellent in this movie, making the fight scenes some of the most thrilling in the entire MCU up until this point. The Skrulls look fantastic, their shapeshifting animation looks creepy and natural, Captain Marvel's classic red-and-blue suit looks awesome on the big screen. Special mention goes to the CGI de-aging of Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg. There's no uncanny valley at all, it looks perfect. De-aged Samuel is especially impressive, because he doesn't look like a younger Samuel L. Jackson. He looks like a younger Nick Fury, with a different hairstyle and build. It's so good, major props to the people involved with bringing it to life, especially given the amount of screen time he had. I can imagine that it couldn't have been easy to pull off, which makes just how good it is even more impressive than it already was. The scenes towards the end where Carol goes full Super Saiyan look awesome! Yeah, I'll admit it was kinda lame that she destroyed, like, seventeen Kree ships in the span of two seconds, but it was still a pretty effective way of showing how downright scary Carol can be at her full power. I'm sure she's gonna curbstomp Thanos, which is gonna be fun to see. Let's just hope it isn't as one-sided as Superman vs Steppenwolf was. That would be pretty disappointing. Carol making Ronan shake in his boots was great, the fight between Carol and her Kree crew from earlier in the film was awesome (and the use of "Just a Girl" by No Doubt made it better, if you ask me), the Krees look very good. Visually, this is one of the best films in the MCU. It's smooth, it's colorful, it's really pretty to look at. The time we spend on Hala, as boring and uninteresting as it was, was at least fun to look at visually because of just how intricately detailed the world was. It's a beautiful planet, and the 1990's Earth scenes look great, too. I was born in '99, so I in no way can know what the 90's looked like, but what this movie showed us felt natural. I'll go with that.
As I mentioned before, Brie Larson being cast as Captain Marvel split most Marvel fans in half. A lot of people were happy about her taking the role and a lot of people didn't approve of Brie for whatever reason, whether it be lack of faith of her as an actress, not liking her as a person, or something like that. Personally, I think she did a good job with the character. Yes, her lack of facial emotion throughout most of her scenes is very noticeable, but she pulls off the action scenes very well and she really excels in the more comedic moments. I'm willing to give her constant bored facial expressions a pass because she gives a good performance the rest of the time. I believe she is this character. I think Brie did a good job, and so did most of the rest of the cast. Sam Jackson once again proves that he is perfectly cast as Nick Fury, Clark Gregg didn't miss a beat as Agent Coulson (I haven't seen Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., so I'm basing that solely off of the movies), Jude Law was great (cause he always is), Lashana Lynch completely stole the show, Ben Menselsohn was good, Anette Bening nailed it. Not all of the actors were up to par, however. Child actors, same for a few exceptions here and there, usually aren't that good, but it was no surprise to me that Akira Akbar's performance as Monica Rambeau wasn't on the same level as most of the rest of the cast, although I'll give her a pass cause it's clear that she's doing her best. She has a cool name, too. Lee Pace returns as Ronan the Accuser, but, unfortunately, this is his weakest performance as the character. It didn't look like he was invested in the role. The people portraying Jude Law's posse (Gemma Chan as Minn-Erva, Algines Perez Soto as Att-Lass, Rune Temte as Bron-Char, and Djimon Hounsou as Korath) weren't that good, either, honestly. They have good chemistry together and they work decently off of each other, but, individually, they were kinda lame. I can't think of where else to mention the Stan Lee cameo, so I'll talk about it here. It was great! That knowing smile Carol have him was sweet, Kevin Smith's reaction to his shoutout was very heartwarming, but this cameo kinda breaks the universe. Stan Lee appears as himself rehearsing his lines for his cameo in Mallrats, in which he talked about creating characters like The Hulk and Spider-Man, yet here he is in the world where The Hulk and Spider-Man exist. It was a really cool moment, but it's probably for the best if we don't think too much into it. Still a nice way of paying tribute to a legend, though.
This movie was decently funny. The comedy wasn't the best, but it also wasn't bad. Remember that scene from the trailer that showed Captain Marvel clobbering an innocent old lady? Turns out, she was a Skrull that was taking the form of an old lady. It led to a pretty cool fight between the two, and seeing this old lady doing kick flips was really funny. Carol had a few good quips here and there, Sam Jackson had the best lines, Fury's interactions with Goose (the cat) were great. I think that Larson's bored facial expressions added a lot to the early fight scenes against the Skrulls, mostly cause I like the visual that she's done this so many times that she's become bored with it. When Goose opened her mouth and tentacles flew out to kill a couple Kree agents, she became the best character in the movie bar none. It was set up that the Skrulls were afraid of Goose earlier in the movie, and the explanation was great. CM wears a Nine Inch Nails shirt to try to fit in among the Earthlings for a good bit of her screentime, which I thought was funny. Carol and Fury have good chemistry, cracking jokes and playing off of each other. It leads to some very funny scenes. The jokes missed more than they hit, though, sadly. More on that in a moment. I think the more dramatic scenes were when this film was at it's best. Lashana Lynch has a powerful scene when we first meet her where she talks to Carol about losing her best friend. The Skrull autopsy scene takes a much more depressing tone when it's revealed that the Skrulls aren't evil, and the scene in which that reveal happens was very well done. A predictable twist, yes, but it was handled fairly realistically (which I enjoyed). Monica showing Carol pictures from her time in the Air Force was sweet, and was one of the better moments from Akira Akbar. Monica's interactions with Carol in general were really lovely. I especially liked that Monica chose the color scheme of Captain Marvel's suit towards the end. The level of mutual love and respect between the two was great. And, of course, if I'm gonna talk about dramatic moments in Captain Marvel, I need to mention the end credits scene. It's presumably a scene from Endgame in which Carol responds to the distress signal Fury left before he became a victim of the snap at the end of Infinity War. It was a very good scene. It was well-paced, well-acted, well-shot. You feel the distress in Captain America's voice as he looks at a computer screen saying that the number of missing people is in the billions. It gets dark. When CM shows up and asks "Where's Fury?", it gives you the sense that she's ready to kill someone. The scene ends before Black Widow can tell her about what happened to Fury, and something tells me she won't be too happy when she finally does find out.
From a storytelling standpoint, this movie was very predictable and formulaic. It was also one of the most cliched superhero movies I've ever seen. Carol is a character with Amnesia that slowly remembers more and more of her past as the film goes along, we've seen it countless times. Carol is a powerful hothead with powers that are in some way tied to her emotions that she's having a hard time controlling, we've seen it countless times. The person that you think is the bad guy turns out to not be the bad guy, we've seen it countless times. Carol and Maria are able to step onto any ship and perfectly be able to fly it, we've seen it countless times (Yes, they were in the Air Force, but they also do this with alien ships). The first twenty or so minutes, where we see Captain Marvel (who is called "Vers" for a while) on her home planet training with Jude Law, are really boring. The movie starts to pick up the pace after Vers is captured by the Skrulls. From that fight scene onward is where the film gets good, in my opinion. I saw the "The Skrulls aren't evil, the Kree is" twist coming a mile away, but, to be fair, it wasn't badly done. I thought that the Skrulls were very well developed characters, especially Talos, so it made for good drama. The problem with the "Kree is evil" twist is that Ronan, the bad guy of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, is in this film as a member of the Kree, and yet it still tries to present the fact that the Kree aren't good guys as a twist, which I guess would fool the three people that didn't see the first Guardians of the Galaxy film. I can imagine that most people that saw this movie were also MCU fans that saw both of the Guardians films. It wasn't a well-implemented twist, is what I'm saying. The shaky cam in some of the fight scenes was a little much, and the same scenes also suffer from the typical "Marvel editing" meme that I've come to expect from these movies. Talos drinking out of a soda bottle, despite being a fun Pulp Fiction nod, wasn't really that funny now that I think about it. It was out of place, and it kinda ruined the tense scene that it was in. That's a criticism you could lob over a good bit of the comedy, too. I mentioned before that some of the jokes do work, but a lot of them don't. A lot of jokes are needlessly crammed into action scenes. We get it, Marvel. It worked well with the Avengers and Guardians movies, but you can't always make it happen.
I liked the soundtrack a lot. The original score, while not particularly memorable, was still serviceable. Carol's theme was great, the fight scene music was okay. When the score was there, it did it's job well. I also liked the usage of previously existing songs. While most of the songs really didn't fit the scenes they appeared in (which, sadly, gave me the impression that this film was trying to compete with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies), they still chose good songs. The best usage of a song was when "Come As You Are" by Nirvana played during Carol's second meeting with the Supreme Intelligence near the end of the movie. Lyrically speaking, that was the best song they could've used for that moment. I also enjoyed that "Just a Girl" by No Doubt played during a fight scene. Not only was it the best fight scene in the movie, but the guitar riff gave the action more of a groove. It reminded me of the way "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin was used in Thor: Ragnarok, except not as good as it was in that movie (cause you can't beat Led Zeppelin). Another thing I liked was the Stan Lee tribute at the beginning. The Marvel logo plays, but all the archive footage of the characters is replaced with a collage of Stan Lee cameos from the previous movies. I thought that was very sweet. The audience I was in applauded, so that's good. This movie had pretty decent cinematography, too, when it wasn't an action sequence. There was a very good use of atmospheric close-ups of the characters, some neat "turning upside down" camera tricks, a couple long takes here and there, and I thought the use of shaky cam during the scene when Carol reacts to the news that she isn't a true Kree was a very effective way to show her mindset without having her outright spell it out. Yeah, the action scenes aren't really fun to watch from an editing standpoint, but at least the choreography is nice. I just really wish that the final confrontation between Caption Marvel and Jude Law was exciting, y'know? She just blasts him once and calls it a day. Cutscene final bosses aren't satisfying.
Captain Marvel was a good, but not great, movie. It could've been better, but I did enjoy what I saw. It was fun. I'm looking forward to seeing where the character goes from here, despite this being a relatively rocky start. Now that we know just how powerful Captain Marvel is, it's making me thing more and more that she's gonna pull a Justice League in Endgame (showing up and singlehandedly saving the day). That's gonna be really disappointing, if it ends up being that way. Until then, I'm giving Captain Marvel a 6.5/10. I had fun watching it, but, all things considered, it could've been better. Goose deserves his own standalone movie, though. I'm gonna start a petition to make that happen.
