Carol Danvers has a great deal to carry on her shoulders, as the first female to headline a Marvel Cinematic Universe film and a spotlight role in next month’s Avengers: Endgame. Does her solo film provide a worthy introduction to the character that gets fans excited for her future in the MCU? Does it go higher, further, faster?
Please note that this review will contain minor spoilers.
Marvel’s approach to an origin story has taken different routes over the years. Sometimes it’s a straight origin story, like last year’s Black Panther. Other times, it eschews the traditional approach to building a world and an origin and places viewers right in the action, like Tom Holland’s Spider-Man movies. With Captain Marvel, Marvel takes what I can best call a hybrid approach: placing viewers right in that action from the get-go and revealing the true origin moment much later in the film. For the theme of Captain Marvel – – Carol’s search for her identity between a human and an alien world – – the concept makes sense. It brings the viewer along with Carol’s journey, so we discover her as she discovers herself. The idea doesn’t always work at times, and more than once I wished the movie did just a bit more in terms of outright exposition (rather than assumptions placed on the audience), but what we got worked well.
Brie Larson leans hard into the no-nonsense personality of Carol Danvers throughout this film, embracing the frustration and anger that is not just a hallmark of the 1990s, but also borne out of the bumps and bruises one takes on that self-discovery journey. She’s a war machine fighting in a Kree-Skrull war, but also tormented by flashes of a past life she struggles to remember – – a puzzle with too many missing pieces that only starts to come together when she finds herself on 1995 Earth. But this Carol Danvers is not all mission-focused. There are touches of heart and humor throughout, those becoming more prevalent the more time she spends on earth and connects with her past, and most evident in Carol’s pairing with Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. The two clearly enjoy each other’s company, and what a team they would have made had they stayed together.
What we don’t get here – – and what I crave – – was getting to know the human side of Carol Danvers just a little bit more. A good majority of the film is devoted to her Kree background and tenure with them as a warrior, which does what it needs to do to set up the second half of the film. And that humanity is there, particularly in the second half when Danvers discovers not just her human past life, but the identity and nature of her true enemy. However, this aspect of character development felt too little, too late. You don’t want to rely heavily on flashback to tell your story, but there was just too much of Danvers’s backstory left for the audience to assume. Of course, the choice in making this personality shift when it took place in the film makes sense; it’s indicative of the hero’s journey. But the tough as nails with her heart on her sleeve Carol Danvers that I see in the comics is the one I know best. This was the Carol Danvers I was looking for most on screen, and only got to see in partial form. Perhaps more developments on that side will come in Avengers: Endgame. We shall see.
Where this nuance of Carol Danvers is sometimes lost is picked up in our supporting cast. Lashana Lynch provides the heart of Carol that is missing as Maria Rambeau, Carol’s connection to Earth. She’s the one tasked with bringing Danvers back to Earth (literally and figuratively), the guiding light in her storm, and does this effortlessly. Our Skrull leader Talos provides charisma and comic relief, and you can tell is having fun embracing both. The same is said for Samuel L. Jackson, who revels in showing us an early Nick Fury: casual, fun, witty, certainly not jaded by his job just yet (and yes, with both of his eyes). And I would be remiss if I did not mention the true star of this movie is not one that walks on two legs.
Continued belowThis movie leans heavily on its 90s nostalgia: Carol’s grunge wardrobe, clunky computers, a greatest hits of 90s pop with No Doubt to TLC and everything in between. For someone like me who’s not ready to be nostalgic for what were my college years, it felt like I was being hit over the head repeatedly with the cultural touchpoints, but audiences who may not be as close to the era as I will find the charm within these references. The one time Captain Marvel embraces its era to great effect is within our standard Stan Lee cameo. Seeing it is naturally bittersweet as we know just how few of these are left, but what we get works within the tone of the film quite well.
What Captain Marvel doesn’t lean heavy into are its special effects. The Skrull shapeshifting looked a bit unfinished, and the de-aging process done in post-production for both Jackson and Clark Gregg (as Agent Coulson) looked awkward. Assuming these characters are in their late 30s/early to mid 40s in Captain Marvel, their skin was too smooth, their hair just too perfect. Combat is choreographed well but just too quickly. The closest we get to a grand epic fight scene on the likes of the airport hangar scene in Captain America: Civil War or Wonder Woman’s walk through No Man’s Land comes in the final third of the film, and that sequence is itself a sequence of quick cuts. It shows off Carol’s strength and power, but no one else’s – – and you need the latter to provide the context for the former. One may wonder if that is just a lower effects budget, but it should be noted that directors Anna Boyden & Ryan Fleck are known for lower-key, character driven stories.
And is a lower-key character-driven MCU film just what we need right now, as we stand on the precipice of Avengers: Endgame and the end of this first phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Perhaps. This was by no means a perfect attempt at merging such a style with the Marvel house style of filming, but here, it’s executed decently. There’s nuance missing, but there’s still a lot Captain Marvel does right. It has its moments for comic book fans and longtime MCU fans to smile. It makes it connections to the larger universe and what awaits us in Endgame in logical (if not already anticipated) ways. And it gives us a message of female empowerment and representation that superhero films still sorely lack and can use right now.
Did Carol Danvers go higher, further, faster in her silver screen debut? There are some bumps and bruises, but she’s certainly gone far and laid groundwork for what the next phase of the MCU can be. It’s not groundbreaking, but her journey is just beginning. And I can’t wait to see what’s next.
