Before I dive into this review, I have a bone to pick with the internet. There are a lot of people who are legitimately angry with Brie Larson and are thus trying to destroy "Captain Marvel" because they claim Brie Larson was sexist towards white males in a recent interview she did Keah Brown of Marie Claire. I have that original interview right there for you to read yourself. In that interview, here are her exact words, "About a year ago, I started paying attention to what my press days looked like and the critics reviewing movies, and noticed it appeared to be overwhelmingly white male." That's the only comment in the interview about white males. She didn't say she hated them or didn't care about their opinions, like some people have spun it as. She made an observation, and an accurate one at that, that there were a lot of white males who were doing most of the reporting and the critiquing. She then says, "Moving forward, I decided to make sure my press days were more inclusive," which is why she reached out to Keah Brown, a black female reporter with Cerebral Palsy, who was absolutely thrilled at the opportunity because she's never had something this big as she says that usually people don't want to take a chance on a disabled journalist.
I think that's an absolutely fantastic thing for Brie Larson to do. She realizes that she now has the spotlight with being Captain Marvel and she's taking advantage of that by trying to make a real difference. And now a large segment of white males on the internet are extremely offended and are trying to sabotage her film? That's gross. Even if she was being sexist towards white males, do you know how long women have had to deal with sexism and oppression towards them? Basically as long as humankind has existed. And now the second a female makes a sexist comment towards a white male, all the white males are going to revolt and try to ruin her career as if its been their gender that has been oppressed for centuries? They can dish it out, but they can't take it? Hypocritical and soft are words that don't even begin to accurately describe this. But that's the thing. She's NOT being sexist. She's being inclusive. Which is why this whole thing is ridiculous. However, Brie Larson and Marvel are going to be the ones with the last laugh as "Captain Marvel" is poised for an opening weekend of at least $135 million based on Thursday night preview totals of $20.7, which isn't too far behind the $25.2 million that "Black Panther" scored before opening to $202 million.
That said, I wasn't sure what to expect with "Captain Marvel." It's Rotten Tomatoes score is settling around an 82 percent, which is a solid score, but also on the lower end of things with the MCU. It's way above "Thor: The Dark World," "The Incredible Hulk" and "Iron Man 2," but right in line with "Captain America: The First Avenger," "Iron Man 3," "Ant-Man" and "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." Movies that are generally well-liked, but are also a lot more mixed than some of the top tier MCU films. A lot of the YouTube critics I follow were very meh about the film, which had me worried, but at the same I know a lot of people who watched the trailers and were very disinterested. I saw the trailers and thought the movie looked like a blast. I never expected it to be a top five Marvel movie, but I expected to have fun with it. So all of this combined together to make me very confused as to what my expectations were supposed to be, thus resulted in me essentially having no expectations one way or the other. I honestly think that helped me to enjoy the film because I was able to accept it for what it was rather than demanding the film to live up to some sort of preconceived notions of what it was supposed to be. It's a light-hearted, fun superhero movie set in the 90's.
As far as specifics of the movie, I'm going to tread lightly here because there's a lot to talk about here, yet the majority of that constitutes spoilers. The very basic premise is that there is a war going on between two alien races called the Kree and the Skrulls. Carol Danvers is a member of the Kree race and they're out to hunt down the Skrulls, who are shape-shifting aliens that are very evasive. Certain things happen in an early battle that has Carol crash-landing on Earth with several of the Skrulls, who manage to escape. Thus she's out to hunt them down before they do too much down. This captures the attention of SHIELD agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, who have both been impressively de-aged to look like younger versions of themselves. They decide to help Carol in her effort to hunt down the Skrulls, thus we have a bit of a buddy cop adventure, focused mainly on Carol Danvers and Nick Fury teaming up to fight the enemy. Again, that's a very basic plot, but I'm not going to say much more. This is a very mysterious, complex story as we're thrown in right in the middle of Carol Danvers' story as she can't even remember who she is. She thinks she might have a history here on Earth, but she doesn't know for sure because all she remembers are flashes of her past.
The obvious comparison to "Captain Marvel" is to DC's "Wonder Woman" as both movies are the first major female-led superhero films in their respective franchises and both characters are arguably the most powerful in the Avengers and the Justice League. Both movies start with a fish out of water sequence as Carol and Diana are trying to figure out their exact place Earth and are not familiar with the culture. Diana is from the secret Amazonian land while Carol is from the world of the Kree. And if we move forward with this comparison, we get to make the very rare claim that DC did it better. Because, yeah, "Wonder Woman" is a far superior film than "Captain Marvel." But that's not necessarily an insult on "Captain Marvel." It's more of a compliment towards "Wonder Woman," which is on a completely different level in terms of superhero films and is better than just about everything in the MCU, in my opinion. However, the "Wonder Woman" comparison is not what my mind gravitated towards. Oddly enough, the first thing I thought of was Star Trek, which is what I wasn't expecting. But the Kree vs. Skrull battle felt like a Star Trek storyline with Carol Danvers and the Kree feeling like our main crew, with Jude Law's character acting as captain.
In addition to story parallels, a lot of the style and themes are quite similar. Both are fairly political, especially with the feminist messages, but not in a way that bothered me. "Supergirl" is super political, especially in this current fourth season. But I don't care. I suppose "Captain Marvel" isn't super political in terms of the issues "Supergirl" tackles, but I would say it carries a much more feminist message than "Wonder Woman." There's even a scene where Carol is fighting a whole bunch of male villains while the movie plays the No Doubt song "Just a Girl." I didn't roll my eyes and complain. I was rather amused. But that said, I don't think the approach of the movie is that men are dumb and useless. It just showcases the power and independence of a female character who is more than able to hold her own without having to have male characters run to her rescue. I think seeing more female characters like this in superhero movies is a very positive thing. You look at the power that Wonder Woman had for young girls across the world and I think Captain Marvel is another female superhero that can have the same effect, especially since Brie Larson's excellent portrayal of her showcases her in a very normal, human way that will make her that much more relatable.
I think the biggest flaws of the movie lie with an issue that Marvel is going to have to continue facing as they move forward and introduce more new characters. Where was Captain Marvel when everything else was going down? If Nick Fury knew about her since the 90's, why didn't he call out for help sooner? The movie tries to insert her into the timeline as if she's always existed and it's not a perfectly smooth process as it raises certain questions about continuity. When Marvel officially decides to introduce the X-Men into the MCU, this will be the same issue. Where were all the X-Men during the events of "Infinity War" and "Endgame"? Why didn't they come to help? There's also a couple of moments that reminded me of "Solo" last year where they tried to explain things that didn't need explaining. I won't say what those were, but it reminded me of when "Solo" explained how Han Solo got his name. It was kinda dumb. But at the same time, it didn't negatively effect the movie, which is the same case here. Sure, trying to pretend that Captain Marvel always existed and trying to explain certain things that didn't need explaining were a bit rocky, but neither of those aspects bothered me enough to think less of the movie as a whole. Just minor nitpicks.
As a whole, yeah I was entertained. The movie had an upbeat, fun vibe to it that had me smiling the entire time. I liked Brie Larson as Captain Marvel. I think she did excellent. She portrayed a very human character who was trying to figure out who she was and what her place was with everything going around her. It was a solid arc. There was also a whole lot more to the story that I found myself really enjoying that I refuse to dive into. I'll just say the movie took me in directions that I wasn't expecting, but I enjoyed those directions. Like most origin stories, this is the very beginning of Captain Marvel. Now that she's established, there's a whole lot more that we can do with her character in the future and I'm excited about that because there's a lot of ground and world-building established in this first film that I think was done pretty well. While the movie is not a straight-up comedy like a "Guardians of the Galaxy" or "Thor: Ragnarok," there was a lot of well placed Marvel humor that cracked me up. No, this is not quite on the level of the top tier Marvel films and is more in the middle of the pack in regards to Phase III, but this is still a perfectly fun adventure that introduced me to a character and a world that I think has a lot of potential. I'm going to give "Captain Marvel" an 8/10.
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