Captain Marvel: A Review
I finally had the opportunity to see Captain Marvel in movie theaters. I saw it at the Marcus Coral Ridge Mall this past Friday with Phil Kopp.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Captain Marvel explores the ever rotating dynamics of the Kree-Skrull war. Two races of aliens. We as an audience are invited to believe that the Kree are the beleaguered hero warriors.
We believe that they are noble because Vers is among them.
Vers is who Sam Jackson, er, Nick Fury tried to contact by way of an outdated pager in the after-the- credits sequence of The Avengers: Infinity War, my 5th favorite movie of 2018.
So it's been a long ten-month wait to see exactly what protection this Captain Marvel has to offer the Avengers. And what kind of superpowers she has to face down Thanos. According to my friends, who are bigger Marvel buffs than I am, Captain Marvel has multiple superpowers combined. Ability of flight. Ability to leap higher than a building in a single bound, faster than a speeding locomotive... so basically, she's the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Superman.
Opening in about a week from now, I am sure that The Avengers: Endgame will pack an emotional punch with awe-inspiring action sequences. But I'll tell you, Captain Marvel balances out the titular protagonist's brushes with greatness and epic action sequences with some scenes of people talking to each other in the room, in the car, or in the archives. And I liked that... I liked that a Marvel movie took these kinds of chances. Thor: Ragnarok did that with humor. Black Panther did that with humanizing backstory and internal conflict. Now Captain Marvel, like Black Panther, gives us a protagonist torn between two worlds. And wondering if she is supposed to hate a third world as much as her people have been instructing her too.
We learn that Vers, an alien of the race of Kree, has her origins as one Carol Danvers. Played, or I should say, downplayed, by Bree Larson, we see her as a little girl in the 1970's, under immense pressure from her father to not take risks and put herself in harm's way as a girl. Or she'll get hurt go-cart racing. Or she'll strike out at the plate in softball. This of course adds up to an adult Carol Danvers more committed than ever to proving herself in the U.S. Air Force. That's where she meets Maria Rambeau.
They fight and serve together. And while flying a super-secret mission with Dr. Lawson (Annette Bening), Danvers' jet has to bail out. They are pursued by the aliens that Lawson's alien race fought. Oh yeah, Dr. Lawson is an alien.
And when Danvers blows up some Kree energy core, among the wreckage of one such alien ship, +lo and behold, she develops the genetics of the Kree. Sara and I have been binge-watching Blue Bloods, the CBS cop drama over my Spring Break. But no, literally, Kree develops blue blood. After a big fight sequence, or a bail-out, crash, or exertion of her powers, she ends up with a cut, bruise, or nosebleed spewing blue blood.
It was after her bailout mission with Dr. Lawson that she's recovered by aliens and brought to the Kree planet. And her memories of life on earth are wiped.
Or so we think...
Vers has dreams of Maria. She has dreams of serving in the Air Force. After an epic battle with the Skrull, she's jettisoned to planet C-53. That's earth.
And when she crash lands on planet earth in 1995, after a battle between the Kree and Skrull, through the ceiling of a Blockbuster Video store, she starts to encounter people from her past life as an earthling.
One of the first things she does is contact her Kree people through software at a Radio Shack store in the middle of the night.
Then she's approached by Agent Nick Fury (a digitally younger Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Phil Colson (Clark Gregg). They work for S.H.I.E.L.D. She has to find the Skrull jack-ass who's running around on LA public transit. They realize they could use her help with S.H.I.E.L.D. Through her amazing Air Force skills, she finds the Skrull spy, disguised as an old lady, and a hilarious fight ensues. Including a rooftop train chase and a little bit of kickboxing down in the train car.
When the Skrull Kree conflict gets uncovered (along with the history of Dr. Lawson, when they find Kree writing in a book by Dr. Lawson in records), we start to realize the history of the Kree is not a little nefarious- and the history of the Skrull as warmongers is perhaps misinterpreted. In other words, like the Black Panther, everything she has known about her history with this alien race may be to blame for the Skrull race's transformation to villain.
Like how Erik Killmonger could easily make a court case that T'Challa's dad, T'Chaka, was a murderer and was leading Wakanda down a dark path in Black Panther.
Earth didn't ask to be the battleground between two alien races pitted against each other, with narry a hero race side to be found. So Vers is to arise as Captain Marvel, to settle the conflict without either side settling the score, to set the record straight about her upbringing as a human, her acculturation or assimmilation to the Kree alien race, and her conscription to; or maybe that's not the right word; compliance with the SHIELD organizagion, and subsequently the Avengers initiative.
Look, is SHIELD suspicious of her? Of course! At a dive bar outside the Air Force Base, Nick Fury has a discussion with Captain Marvel about whether she's a Kree or a Skrull. If she's Skrull, she's responsible for bringing that war to earth, right? She smashes the jukebox in the corner with a fireblast out of her right fist. "A Skrull couldn't do that," she says.
So that's the type of dry humor that carries this movie. A lot of people heaped praise on Thor Ragnarok for it's sleek, futuristic yet retro look and it's coy humor. I didn't hate Thor: Ragnarok, but I found some dissonance in there, between the concerted effort to crack jokes and the truly dire straits that the Cate Blanchett villain provided for the people of Aasgard in its sprawling apocalyptic (hence the title) finale.
Captain Marvel was a much quieter movie than Thor: Ragnarok. It was less busy than Thor: Ragnarok. And that's part of the reason I liked it better than Thor: Ragnarok. Its humor was subtle enough it didn't try to upstage the high-stakes drama of its intergalactic battle sequences with the "villain" Skrull, or the person vs. self battle Vers/Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel has as she tries to reconcile herself with the sacking and maiming her acquired Alien race have enacted on the Skrull counterparts. No. There was a place for the drama and the humor and everything was in harmony. The comic relief was timed perfectly to punctuate and break up the battle. And Bree Larson never missed a beat with her jokes. Like in The Office, when Steve Carell as Michael Scott was funniest when the actor led his character into situational comedy as if it were dramatic, Bree Larson's humor was at its best when she was kind of taking herself seriously! Hard to explain. Get a comedian or a psychologist to try to analyze her performance.
Excellent supporting work by Jude Law as Yon-Rogg, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos/Keller, Annette Bening as Wendy Lawson/Supreme Intelligence (oh hey...so this secret mission... is supreme intelligence for Kree?!), Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson (looks like he's thirty years old, it really looks like he achieved this young look without digital effects, same with Sam Jackson), Djimon Hounsou as Korath, Lee Pace as Ronan (those two were in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 as the same characters), Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, Akira Akbar as Monica Rambeau (she was able to really steal some scenes and convince her mom to go on the mission to help Vers save thir planet), and the cat!
And the soundtrack! It seems like a long three year wait until we get Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and its Awesome Mix Tape Volume 3. So it was great to get a '90's mix tape out of the soundtrack for Captain Marvel, featuring Garbage, No Doubt, Nirvana, REM, Salt 'n' Pepa featuring En Vogue, and TLC. Grunge rock, hip hop and pop from when I was in junior high. I was wide awake through this movie.
I have Scholastic Bowl and Spanish Club obligations that will complicate my making it to Avengers Endgame this coming weekend. So this is my goodbye to the internet for a short period of time. But I'm returning here briefly to announce that Captain Marvel is better, by far, than the trolls are trying to sell you on it being.
Three and a half stars.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Captain Marvel explores the ever rotating dynamics of the Kree-Skrull war. Two races of aliens. We as an audience are invited to believe that the Kree are the beleaguered hero warriors.
We believe that they are noble because Vers is among them.
Vers is who Sam Jackson, er, Nick Fury tried to contact by way of an outdated pager in the after-the- credits sequence of The Avengers: Infinity War, my 5th favorite movie of 2018.
So it's been a long ten-month wait to see exactly what protection this Captain Marvel has to offer the Avengers. And what kind of superpowers she has to face down Thanos. According to my friends, who are bigger Marvel buffs than I am, Captain Marvel has multiple superpowers combined. Ability of flight. Ability to leap higher than a building in a single bound, faster than a speeding locomotive... so basically, she's the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Superman.
Opening in about a week from now, I am sure that The Avengers: Endgame will pack an emotional punch with awe-inspiring action sequences. But I'll tell you, Captain Marvel balances out the titular protagonist's brushes with greatness and epic action sequences with some scenes of people talking to each other in the room, in the car, or in the archives. And I liked that... I liked that a Marvel movie took these kinds of chances. Thor: Ragnarok did that with humor. Black Panther did that with humanizing backstory and internal conflict. Now Captain Marvel, like Black Panther, gives us a protagonist torn between two worlds. And wondering if she is supposed to hate a third world as much as her people have been instructing her too.
We learn that Vers, an alien of the race of Kree, has her origins as one Carol Danvers. Played, or I should say, downplayed, by Bree Larson, we see her as a little girl in the 1970's, under immense pressure from her father to not take risks and put herself in harm's way as a girl. Or she'll get hurt go-cart racing. Or she'll strike out at the plate in softball. This of course adds up to an adult Carol Danvers more committed than ever to proving herself in the U.S. Air Force. That's where she meets Maria Rambeau.
They fight and serve together. And while flying a super-secret mission with Dr. Lawson (Annette Bening), Danvers' jet has to bail out. They are pursued by the aliens that Lawson's alien race fought. Oh yeah, Dr. Lawson is an alien.
And when Danvers blows up some Kree energy core, among the wreckage of one such alien ship, +lo and behold, she develops the genetics of the Kree. Sara and I have been binge-watching Blue Bloods, the CBS cop drama over my Spring Break. But no, literally, Kree develops blue blood. After a big fight sequence, or a bail-out, crash, or exertion of her powers, she ends up with a cut, bruise, or nosebleed spewing blue blood.
It was after her bailout mission with Dr. Lawson that she's recovered by aliens and brought to the Kree planet. And her memories of life on earth are wiped.
Or so we think...
Vers has dreams of Maria. She has dreams of serving in the Air Force. After an epic battle with the Skrull, she's jettisoned to planet C-53. That's earth.
And when she crash lands on planet earth in 1995, after a battle between the Kree and Skrull, through the ceiling of a Blockbuster Video store, she starts to encounter people from her past life as an earthling.
One of the first things she does is contact her Kree people through software at a Radio Shack store in the middle of the night.
Then she's approached by Agent Nick Fury (a digitally younger Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Phil Colson (Clark Gregg). They work for S.H.I.E.L.D. She has to find the Skrull jack-ass who's running around on LA public transit. They realize they could use her help with S.H.I.E.L.D. Through her amazing Air Force skills, she finds the Skrull spy, disguised as an old lady, and a hilarious fight ensues. Including a rooftop train chase and a little bit of kickboxing down in the train car.
When the Skrull Kree conflict gets uncovered (along with the history of Dr. Lawson, when they find Kree writing in a book by Dr. Lawson in records), we start to realize the history of the Kree is not a little nefarious- and the history of the Skrull as warmongers is perhaps misinterpreted. In other words, like the Black Panther, everything she has known about her history with this alien race may be to blame for the Skrull race's transformation to villain.
Like how Erik Killmonger could easily make a court case that T'Challa's dad, T'Chaka, was a murderer and was leading Wakanda down a dark path in Black Panther.
Earth didn't ask to be the battleground between two alien races pitted against each other, with narry a hero race side to be found. So Vers is to arise as Captain Marvel, to settle the conflict without either side settling the score, to set the record straight about her upbringing as a human, her acculturation or assimmilation to the Kree alien race, and her conscription to; or maybe that's not the right word; compliance with the SHIELD organizagion, and subsequently the Avengers initiative.
Look, is SHIELD suspicious of her? Of course! At a dive bar outside the Air Force Base, Nick Fury has a discussion with Captain Marvel about whether she's a Kree or a Skrull. If she's Skrull, she's responsible for bringing that war to earth, right? She smashes the jukebox in the corner with a fireblast out of her right fist. "A Skrull couldn't do that," she says.
So that's the type of dry humor that carries this movie. A lot of people heaped praise on Thor Ragnarok for it's sleek, futuristic yet retro look and it's coy humor. I didn't hate Thor: Ragnarok, but I found some dissonance in there, between the concerted effort to crack jokes and the truly dire straits that the Cate Blanchett villain provided for the people of Aasgard in its sprawling apocalyptic (hence the title) finale.
Captain Marvel was a much quieter movie than Thor: Ragnarok. It was less busy than Thor: Ragnarok. And that's part of the reason I liked it better than Thor: Ragnarok. Its humor was subtle enough it didn't try to upstage the high-stakes drama of its intergalactic battle sequences with the "villain" Skrull, or the person vs. self battle Vers/Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel has as she tries to reconcile herself with the sacking and maiming her acquired Alien race have enacted on the Skrull counterparts. No. There was a place for the drama and the humor and everything was in harmony. The comic relief was timed perfectly to punctuate and break up the battle. And Bree Larson never missed a beat with her jokes. Like in The Office, when Steve Carell as Michael Scott was funniest when the actor led his character into situational comedy as if it were dramatic, Bree Larson's humor was at its best when she was kind of taking herself seriously! Hard to explain. Get a comedian or a psychologist to try to analyze her performance.
Excellent supporting work by Jude Law as Yon-Rogg, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Ben Mendelsohn as Talos/Keller, Annette Bening as Wendy Lawson/Supreme Intelligence (oh hey...so this secret mission... is supreme intelligence for Kree?!), Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson (looks like he's thirty years old, it really looks like he achieved this young look without digital effects, same with Sam Jackson), Djimon Hounsou as Korath, Lee Pace as Ronan (those two were in Guardians of the Galaxy 1 as the same characters), Lashana Lynch as Maria Rambeau, Akira Akbar as Monica Rambeau (she was able to really steal some scenes and convince her mom to go on the mission to help Vers save thir planet), and the cat!
And the soundtrack! It seems like a long three year wait until we get Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, and its Awesome Mix Tape Volume 3. So it was great to get a '90's mix tape out of the soundtrack for Captain Marvel, featuring Garbage, No Doubt, Nirvana, REM, Salt 'n' Pepa featuring En Vogue, and TLC. Grunge rock, hip hop and pop from when I was in junior high. I was wide awake through this movie.
I have Scholastic Bowl and Spanish Club obligations that will complicate my making it to Avengers Endgame this coming weekend. So this is my goodbye to the internet for a short period of time. But I'm returning here briefly to announce that Captain Marvel is better, by far, than the trolls are trying to sell you on it being.
Three and a half stars.