All sass, little ass
Directed by: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Written by: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Cast: Brie Larson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Samuel L. Jackson
Swift shot: I look forward to watching the real Captain Marvel next month, Shazam. I wasn’t thrilled with the third-wave feminism shoved down my throat by a character with the personality of a space slug. What was more infuriating is the fact she was played by an Academy Award winning phenomenon such as Brie Larson. They took a cool character and made her pretty lame.
Captain Marvel was terrific in some spots and terrible in others. This is a film that was shoe-horned into the fabric of much better films that have come before it and will undoubtedly follow it. Carol Danvers is almost void of real personality. If they were going for some big transformation from Vers to Carol Danvers, I didn’t notice it.
[Swift disclaimer: Here is all I knew about Captain Marvel before I watched this movie. She was a black chick who looked like she was straight out of Jackie Brown who was incredibly powerful, but we almost never played her in Marvel RPG. Then, years later I was playing Ultimate Alliance II on XBox and she was a white chick who once you unlock her character in the game, you are almost guaranteed to beat it. She’s damned powerful. That’s my point of reference, before you come at me, bro . . . er, sis.]
Vers (Larson) is an elite, Kree “Starforce” warrior who is unable to escape her past, even though she can’t remember it. As the film starts, we see her waking up from a nightmare that she can’t quite piece together where she is bested by a Skrull.
This moment in her life seems to be her origin, but she has no idea what any of it means. This uncontrolled anger is a constant block that stifles her training. Her mentor, Yon-Rogg (Law) works with her to hone her instinct but also control her emotions seemingly brought on by her amnesiatic rage.
Because Vers’ unknown past plagues her constantly, she seeks out the counsel of a sort of deity to the Kree, an AI that contains all of their knowledge, fittingly called the Supreme Intelligence. Each Kree sees a different avatar whenever they visit with this AI, and Vers sees Annette Bening. What starts out as a simple mission to retrieve a Kree spy turns into a hero’s journey where Vers will discover what makes her special . . . and dangerous.
As the mission unfolds on Torfa, she is separated from her unit and is captured by the leader of the Skrulls, Talos (Mendelsohn). He then uses a device to peer into her past. He invades her private memories as he searches for clues to a mysterious device that he feels can help his people in their war with the Kree.
Of course, Talos underestimates Vers. That becomes a kind of running joke that isn’t really all that funny in Captain Marvel. In fact, there are a lot of really terrible “jokes” that are so lame they barely merit a mention.
It’s almost like they got DC writers on staff for this one. Yes, I fucking went there.
During her escape, she crashes onto Earth in 1995. We are given tons of pop-culture throwbacks to that year. I must admit, I enjoyed watching her log onto Alta Vista (Google that) and wait for dial-up Internet.
What I didn’t like was how she just kind of walked around Earth like she owned the place. There were times she was supposed to be a fish-out-of-water, with no memories of her USAF human past, and there were times she was so locked on to being human that she might as well have been a Skrull infiltrator. Her character was emotionally dyslexic.
The whole movie was like that. I was trying to gauge her personality, and at one point I thought she might be in love with her old wingman . . . wingwoman . . . wingperson, Maria (Lashana Lynch). Nope, they were just really great friends. I guess that’s like a sismance?
Anyway, she meets young Nick Fury (Jackson) and they form a reluctant partnership to get to the bottom of the Skrull plans for Earth. Oh, and of course they have a young Coulson (Clark Gregg) as the rookie to help tie in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. crossovers you can bet will be forthcoming.
As the film moves along with “hilarious” banter between all the characters, there are a few twists for Vers to discover. I guess I shouldn’t reveal them here, but I will say the writers decided to interject some Palestinian propaganda and anti-wall bullshit into this film. That’s the new reality, where terrorists are just misunderstood. Whatever.
Remember when I said there were some parts that were terrific? I lied! No, I am kidding. Of course there were some great things about this film. I enjoyed the nods to the nineties, the authentic frustration with dealing with the Internet in its infancy. I liked her grunge look, and everyone in the MCU fanverse loved Goose the cat.
[Swift aside: Why Goose? Why is the USAF using character references from a USN/USMC Top Gun movie? Don’t you have your own characters?]
I also loved the action and special effects. I mean, again, this is Disney and ILM working together to give us the bleeding edge of film-making. I expect nothing less.
The girl who played Maria’s daughter Monica (Akira Akbar) did a fantastic job, and if you know about her character you know why they picked a kid who can carry her weight in every scene.
Finally, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos was the real scene-stealer of the film. Truth be told, he’s the only one in the cast who really grasped the correct tone of the story.
So, after all the hype and build-up, all the anti-man crap in the press, and all the speculation, what we ended up with was an ok film from a franchise and studio that doesn’t really settle for “ok.” I will admit though, that as this was an origin movie, I do have hopes that the next Captain Marvel will flesh out this character quite a bit more. Say, give her more posterior?
