Summary: Set in the 1990s, Marvel Studios' Captain Marvel is an all-new adventure from a previously unseen period in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that follows the journey of Carol Danvers as she becomes one of the universe's most powerful heroes. While a galactic war between two alien races reaches Earth, Danvers finds herself and a Set in the 1990s, Marvel Studios' Captain. Mar 05, 2019 Captain Marvel review – Brie Larson kicks ass across the universe Marvel’s superhero adventure veers from boomingly serious to quirkily droll as.
When you're done here, be sure to also check out to Thor and meeting in the Avengers: Endgame trailer, the in Captain Marvel, our, our explainer piece on, and our. The MCU's newest hero, Captain Marvel, has entered the fray literally swinging, with a cosmic-flavored origin story that feels like a much-needed fresh approach to the classic Marvel Phase One formula. With a soundtrack packed full of vintage ‘90s earworms and a delightfully unselfconscious sense of humor, Captain Marvel pulls off a satisfying introduction to the hero who may be our trump card.The bulk of Captain Marvel's standard two-hour runtime is focused on Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), and begins with her as a human far from Earth trying to figure out just who (and what) she is. She's been living among the alien Kree for years and has earned herself a position on an elite commando unit under the leadership of Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) – but she has no memory of her life before. In public, Carol is a take-no-prisoners soldier wanting to prove herself worthy to her comrades-in-arms – but in private, she's not so certain. This duality keeps the memory-loss tropes to a minimum. She never feels properly lost or floundering, just frustrated that she's up against a problem she can't use her Kree-granted powers to punch her way out of.
Though she certainly gives the impression that if she could brute force her own memories into the proper order, she definitely would, which is absolutely delightful. Law's Yon-Rogg manages to encapsulate everything about the haughty, holier-than-thou Kree species. He's threatened by Carol's unusual power, but rather than working to better himself he seeks every opportunity to keep Carol down by manipulating her into believing her abilities aren't gifts, but crutches she leans on that make her less legitimate as a Kree warrior. In that way, he's almost more insidious a villain than any of Carol's overt enemies. This smarmy creep is definitely fun to watch, if only because Law plays the archetype so honestly. Loading Carol's struggle against forces that want to delegitimize her becomes the recurring theme of Captain Marvel. Everywhere she turns, she’s facing down someone who doesn't think she's worthy of the power she has or doesn't think she belongs in the position she's in – and yet, again and again, Carol finds a way to prove them wrong and keep fighting regardless.
Higher, further, faster, as the film's tagline goes. Unsurprisingly, the mysteries begin to unravel as Carol starts to question her past more and more, which sends her following a trail of breadcrumbs that lead her back to Earth, circa 1995 – more than a decade before Tony Stark would shock the world with his Iron Man confession. There, she's forced to work alongside newly minted SHIELD agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, with the aid of shockingly solid de-aging effects – seriously, no creepy Uncanny Valley here) to uncover the truth, all while full-on exalting in the ‘90s nostalgia.
Toss some shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls led by a general named Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and an intergalactic conspiracy into the mix and you've got yourself a proper superheroic party. Mendelsohn's Talos will be a surprise to Marvel comics die-hards, but a welcome one – he's a far cry from a traditional MCU villain, but what he lacks in deviousness he makes up for in a genuinely charming sense of humor. He doesn't quite fall in line with other recent villains like Zemo with his devious plot and tragic past or Vulture with his take-no-prisoners family loyalty, but he's cut from a very similar cloth with motivations that stem from complicated, surprisingly nuanced places and give him a real depth of character. Like Jackson's impeccably executed de-aging, the visual effects that accompany the Skrulls and their shape-shifting transformations are all incredibly well done, with animation that blends seamlessly in with the practical effects used on the Skrulls’ natural green-skinned forms.
Meanwhile, the Kree have their own style and aesthetic in the effects arena, one that’s defined by blocky spaceships and color-changing military uniforms that set them apart from both the Skrulls and the humans at a glance. Loading Thankfully, for as relatively high-concept and cosmic as Captain Marvel's story engines are, the plot itself doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it relies pretty heavily on the greatest hits of Phase One movies like and, digging into the deeply flawed but still wonderfully sympathetic motivations behind Carol's burning need to uncover the truth.
It's a refreshing return to the origin story formula that allows Carol to gleefully occupy the same spaces that the MCU has previously reserved exclusively for men. She even gets her own personal soundscape made up of ‘90s hits like No Doubt's 'Just A Girl' the same way Iron Man weaponizes classic rock favorites like 'Back In Black.'
The end result is fun and thrilling, even if it's not always the most surprising. The action scenes are playful and engaging to watch with Larson's physicality and choreography really taking center stage during every fight. Carol is not a hero who relies on weapons or armor to make due - she's more than happy to charge into the thick of it with her hands tied behind her back if she has to.
And she'll probably win, even if she ends up a bit worse for wear. That said, the Phase One nostalgia does seem a bit jarring at times. It's strange to feel the MCU suddenly pivot back to the pure origin story routine after the last two years have been so experimental, and it's hard not to walk away wishing that Carol would have gotten the Black Panther or Spider-Man treatment with an introduction built into a previous movie to help add a bit more narrative weight.
The exposition, especially in the first act, feels a bit breakneck at times as it rushes to try and get out of its own way. This leads to a couple of moments of, 'Wait, what just happened?' Or, 'Why would they believe her?' That could have been avoided with a more carefully paced script, or, in a perfect world, a more thoroughly constructed preamble in another movie altogether.
Larson's performance and chemistry with Jackson is the obvious highlight in a strong supporting cast. Larson manages to capture a fiery but playful sense of humor in her character that deftly avoids the tropes associated with naive, superpowered outsiders making 'first contact' with humans. Make no mistake, Carol's superpowers have nothing to do with empathy or warmth – her strength is completely derived from a perfect Molotov cocktail of spite and stubbornness, which is an absolute joy to watch unfold. Carol Danvers is as unapologetically brash and bold as a hero could be, even when it gets her into trouble, and it's oh so satisfying.
On the flip side, Carol's dynamic with her human friend, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), provides the emotional core. Lynch manages to ground the movie with a serious and poignant throughline and perfect counterbalance to Carol's brash heroics and her sometimes slapstick buddy-cop relationship with Fury. All told, Captain Marvel is a joyful, bright, and competent new entry into the MCU that proves the franchise can still return to its roots in interesting ways. Larson and Carol are both welcome additions to the massive shared universe with what we can only hope are bright futures ahead of them. VerdictCaptain Marvel manages to take the best ideas of early MCU origin stories like Iron Man and Thor and use them to form something that feels both familiar and fresh. It can be a bit on-the-nose at times, and occasionally has to fast-track its exposition in ways that can feel slightly clunky, but what it lacks in grace it makes up for in charm.
Brie Larson's stellar performance gives Carol Danvers a vibrant, joyful life that will fit right into the future of the MCU, whatever that future may hold.
![Captain Captain](/uploads/1/2/5/5/125570698/901409267.jpg)
“Captain Marvel” is like a political commercial—it packs a worthy message, but it hardly counts as an aesthetic experience. The message of the film is conveyed less through the story than through its casting: women and people of color need to have starring roles in major Hollywood productions, which, at the moment, mainly mean big-budget superhero movies, the most profitable films in the industry. Its implicit subject is more than representation—it’s also the redistribution of power in Hollywood. There are some secondary (but still significant) messages, too, but the movie itself is, for the most part, trivial.
Its significance is what it promises for movies to come.Brie Larson plays Vers, a warrior from the Kree, a humanoid population from a distant galaxy, centered on the planet Hala, that is in age-old war with the shape-shifting Skrulls. Vers (pronounced “Veers”) lost her memory in the battle that also gave her superpowers; she does not know who she is, and she tries to piece her identity together from disjointed recollections. (The theme is in the air—it’s also the premise of “” and isn’t handled any better here than there.) She’s haunted by nightmares (urging her to “let go of the past”), but she’s also remanded by her high-handed mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), to the authorities, an A.I. System called the Supreme Intelligence, where she’s placed on a pod, surrounded by blue tentacles, and mentally teleported to virtual realms in which the woman haunting her dreams (a commanding character played by Annette Bening) orders her back into battle: “Put your people’s needs before your own. Master yourself.”Vers’s main weapon is her hot-glowing fists, which issue explosive proton blasts. In her new battle with the Skrulls, she blasts a hole through the spaceship where she’s being held and ends up crash-landing on Earth—right through the roof of a Blockbuster Video store.
The action, it’s soon revealed, is set in 1995, and the videotape-filled store (featuring a standing display for “True Lies,” among other contemporaneous titles) inaugurates a skein of nineties-nostalgia objects that figure in the plot, including a RadioShack, a quaint AltaVista search engine, the foot-tappingly fitful loading of a CD- ROM, a pager, and also the soundtrack, which includes tracks by Nirvana, Heart, R.E.M., and others. Yet the most significant nostalgia element is cinematic, planted by the presence of Blockbuster: all of this action is set in an age of superhero innocence, prior to the big-bang birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “Captain Marvel” positions its protagonist as the virtual mother of it all.
(Captain Marvel she may be, but, if memory serves, no one calls her by that name in the course of the film—only a title card does so.)In a parking-lot showdown outside the Blockbuster, Vers encounters the S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L.
Jackson, whose face is digitally de-aged), explains her battle against the Skrulls, and (after showing off her proton-blasting powers) soon follows him into official archives to read her case file and discover her identity: Carol Danvers, nicknamed “Avenger” (hint hint), who was part of a joint Air Force and NASA flight team that included Dr. Wendy Lawson (Bening).
Fragments of Carol’s identity appear to her throughout the film—scenes of frustration throughout childhood and adulthood, struggles at sports and military training, amplified by discouraging and insulting remarks by men. It’s no spoiler to say that what she recovers of her memory is her will to pick herself up, fight on, and succeed—in a climactic, colossal battle in space.