Captain Marvel Review: We Will Be Back For The Weapon… The Girl

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Well, folks, we have reached the penultimate film in the Infinity saga. This was the film that came out right before Avengers Endgame and as such there was a lot of hype leading into this with people wondering why Marvel had held off on showing us this film until right before Avengers Endgame.

The last film to come out since the previous Avengers film was not the most popular Marvel film, and yet people hope that Captain Marvel would live up to the expectations and hope regarding this film. Captain Marvel was seriously helped by its proximity to the big Avengers blockbuster and that is why in large part it made a billion dollars.

Sadly, I do not believe that Captain Marvel is the best representation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Honestly, my biggest problem with the film is that I find it boring. In some ways, the movie feels as if it’s just going through the motions and it doesn’t seem to have its own distinct style or identity.

We have talked before in previous reviews about how a lot of the movies in the MCU started to combine different genres with the superhero genre and that was a way to keep their movies fresh new and innovative. However, Captain Marvel feels more like a generic superhero film with not a lot of personality. I will start with the things I do like in this film because there are some and I feel they definitely need to be given the proper recognition.

My biggest positive with this film is actually the inclusion of Nick Fury played by Samuel L. Jackson. From the moment he enters on screen, he brings a certain energy to his scenes and just gives off a fun vibe. Even though he has to deal with the digitally de-aging special effects I feel he was able to still convey a lot of emotion on his face and his natural charm and swagger help us connect to his character right from the beginning.

Obviously, it also helps that we have known his character for many films at this point and that this is just an earlier version of a character that we already have a strong bond with within the universe. So that one is a pretty obvious positive for me and I feel like he makes the character Captain Marvel more interesting and her best scenes are when she’s interacting with him.

Ben Mendelsohn does a great job as the antagonist, Talos, and while at first, we see him as the villain his best scenes actually come when he is working with our heroes and he gets to be a little more charming which just comes with the course for a redeemed character per se.

My last big positive is that it’s just really cool to see Captain Marvel at full power at the end of the movie and her strength and powers in general are just really cool to see in full effect when she’s either fighting the Kree or when she’s like knocking out the nuclear weapons from the atmosphere. One more tiny positive is that Goose is pretty cute throughout the film and has some funny moments too.

Now for my negatives, the biggest problem is sadly our protagonist Carol Danvers. I do think that Brie Larson is a good actor and she has proven that in many roles, however, I feel that in this particular film, it was difficult for her to convey the emotion she was trying to convey. Now this is not entirely her fault as I would put some of the blame on the writing as well. It is quite tough to establish a character, especially, a character that has been said to be very important for your larger universe when this character is missing her memories.

Since she is missing her memories for the entirety of the film and even when she gets them back they’re only in fragments it is tough for the audience to connect with this character when her identity is so fluid and ever-changing due to the nature of her having amnesia. With that being said, I have seen other actors play characters with amnesia who were still able to convey a distinct character in a better way than Brie Larson was able to in this film.

I will say that I think she has gotten better with every subsequent appearance in the MCU but her initial introduction here was not the most compelling protagonist we had received so far. The same goes with our main antagonist, our true villain, Jude Law can play many different types of characters and I think he could be a great Marvel villain but I do not think that the way this character was written and acted was very interesting or engaging. He wasn’t menacing enough, funny enough, or over the top and this left him in just kind of a similar realm as Ronan fromGuardians of the Galaxy where the villain is just kind of there.

So all in all, this is not the best that the MCU has to offer and it probably wasn’t the best film to be your lead-up to your big Infinity Saga finale. It does have enough positives to make it perfectly OK. You can certainly watch it and even have a couple of laughs here and there but it is not one that I would throw on just any day of the week it is more one that I’ll rewatch when the character or characters in it are coming up in the next MCU project. So check it out for yourself and let us know what you think!