Captain Marvel is a really fun, yet flawed and messy film.
Captain Marvel is another origin film in the MCU, but Marvel tries to slightly shake up the formula for their origin films this time. When we meet Captain Marvel, she is known as Vers and living amongst the Kree, a noble warrior race who are locked into a constant struggle with shape shifting Skrulls. Unfortunately, Vers has no memory of her life prior to living with the Kree. This detail of a hero without a memory is where they get to play with the origin movie formula as information is doled out in small pieces and in fragmented memories. While this less than straight forward approach is refreshing at times, it is also equal parts confusing.
The movie really finds itself when Captain Marvel crashes onto mid-1990’s Earth and meets up with a younger Nick Fury, thanks to some stellar de-aging CGI. Seriously, this is some of the best de-aging work I’ve seen in a movie and it is flawless. Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson have phenomenal chemistry straight away and the movie shines when it’s the two of them together. They are also joined by a cat named Goose, who is a true scene stealer. Unfortunately, the movie falls into issues the longer it goes on due to a jumbled story and some truly bad dialogue at times. The third act is right on the cusp of being a truly great and rousing finale, but it falls just short.
Captain Marvel is a mixed bag of great to bad moments. The supporting cast of Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Benning, Lashana Lynch, and Clark Gregg are really good in their roles and all seem to be having fun. The humor works well here, and Brie Larson gets to have powerful and badass moments. The negatives come in the form of a lackluster script, a messy narrative, and the feel of this being more of a stepping stone movie to get to Avengers Endgame.
Still, this is a really fun movie and should leave you feeling great as you walk out of the theater. It certainly had an effect on the two girls sitting in front of me with their parents who were playing on the way out and clearly filled with excitement. They were both fighting over who got to be Captain Marvel (eventually their parents said “You can both be Captain Marvel.”) and that was super cool to experience.
Grade: B
(Matthew Bledsoe)