Captain Marvel
Directed by: Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Written by: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, Akira Akbar, Annette Bening, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Chan, Rune Temte, Lee Pace, Mckenna Grace
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Mar 2019
Written by: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, Akira Akbar, Annette Bening, Clark Gregg, Djimon Hounsou, Gemma Chan, Rune Temte, Lee Pace, Mckenna Grace
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 124 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 5 Mar 2019
Before Captain Marvel is even released, it earned an abysmal audience score on Rotten Tomatoes followed by the site removing the comment section due to the hysteric vitriol aimed at the studio, filmmakers, and actors involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first headlining female superhero. Black Widow, Scarlet Witch, and a couple female Wakandans in Black Panther already fight alongside the big boys like Iron Man and Thor, but they are supporting characters - no defining character arcs to be found. The fanboys groan, “They already have Wonder Woman, why must there be a second female lead?” They forget Spider-Man gets a reboot every 18 months or so, surely there is room for some diversity on screen. I believe the boys are alarmed because it turns out Captain Marvel, aka Carol Danvers, may not only be one of the first Avengers, but perhaps the most powerful. Through no gadgets nor gizmos, she can take off from Earth, zoom into space, and blow up villainous starships with only her fists. Captain America can’t do that.
When we first meet Veers (Brie Larson, Room), she is a Kree warrior fighting in group known as Starforce. Recall the Kree from the first Guardians of the Galaxy film where that anarchic group came together as a team to thwart a Kree invasion. Veers trains alongside Yon-Rogg (Jude Law, Vox Lux) who habitually reminds her to control her impulses - keep those emotions in check. “Stop using your heart, use your head.” The Kree gave Veers a special power to generate enormous amounts of energy in her firsts - the laser blasts can put holes through walls but never through people I noticed. The jolts only knock them backwards. Operating in true superhero mode, the blasts are as selectively damaging as the plot needs them to be at any given time.
When we first meet Veers (Brie Larson, Room), she is a Kree warrior fighting in group known as Starforce. Recall the Kree from the first Guardians of the Galaxy film where that anarchic group came together as a team to thwart a Kree invasion. Veers trains alongside Yon-Rogg (Jude Law, Vox Lux) who habitually reminds her to control her impulses - keep those emotions in check. “Stop using your heart, use your head.” The Kree gave Veers a special power to generate enormous amounts of energy in her firsts - the laser blasts can put holes through walls but never through people I noticed. The jolts only knock them backwards. Operating in true superhero mode, the blasts are as selectively damaging as the plot needs them to be at any given time.
The Kree are at war with the Skrulls, a shape-shifting species who kidnap Veers and bring her to Earth - circa 1995. The trip down memory lane will work for everyone who remembers the era. Veers wears a Nine Inch Nails shirt, the CD-ROMs take forever to load, and Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, Glass) tells her to lose the flannel. The kids in the audience will watch the story like we watched Back to the Future - “look how funny 1955 was, oh how much has changed in 30 years.” The more Veers follows the mystery thread of why the Skrulls brought her to Earth, the more memory flashes and deja vu pings illuminate why Veers cannot remember anything from more than six years ago. The key to discovering who she was and where she came from will unlock Captain Marvel’s powers and make every chauvinistic fanboy quake in his boots - Captain Marvel looks like she could annihilate Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk at the same time, with energy to spare to take care of fleas like Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Doctor Strange.
Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck do more than create the environment for a female superhero to flourish, they include a series of knock-downs and reminders for Carol Danvers to use as energy to get back up and keep fighting. Sentences like, “Without us, you’re weak,” “They’ll never let you fly,” and the most in your face, “It’s called a cockpit for a reason,” energize Carol to keep going. Boden and Fleck are collaborators who worked together to create Half Nelson, which put Ryan Gosling on the map, and Mississippi Grind. These are films as far away from the billion dollar Marvel Universe as you can get, but being adept at crafting engaging stories transcends genres and works just as well for space adventures as it does for ultra-quiet think pieces.
Carol Danvers appears to be a transition character uniting the Earth-bound heroes born and bred on terra firma and those who exist among the stars like Thor and the Guardians of the Galaxy. We see Carol operate mostly on Earth, but after watching what Captain Marvel is capable of in Low Earth Orbit, the rest of the galaxy does not appear to offer much more of a challenge. Captain Marvel should transcend traditional boundaries like gender as much as Black Panther traversed race. Both films deliberately confront what makes them different and then they move on to display in no uncertain terms that superheroes not cut from the same cookie cutter cloth as all the rest can still save the Earth, spin a quip, and make the audience root for the good guy...or girl.
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