Captain Marvel Review

Non-Spoiler Review

Captain Marvel served as an MCU prequel introducing us to one of the most powerful MCU characters who is going to play an important role in Avengers: Endgame. It recaptured the tone of the MCU's Phase One origin stories to give us a movie as good as 2008's Iron Man. While it had potential the task of juggling too much sank its chances of being as good as DC's female solo movie Wonder Woman. It's still an entertaining movie with great performances from the cast giving us different takes on favourite characters and introducing us to new memorable characters.

WARNING: Spoilers below! You've been warned, continue at your own risk.

The Good

First of all, that is how you do a tribute. Replacing the characters in the MCU's new logo with all Stan Lee's cameos was brilliant. Not to mention Stan's actual cameo in the movie. Stan shows up as one of the passengers on the train where Danvers is searching for the Skrull she was pursuing. The great thing about the cameo is that it is a reference to the cameo Stan made in the movie Mallrats. For those of you who don't know Mallrats released later in the year that the movie is set in. What makes this cameo touching was Danvers smiling at Stan knowing that he was a good guy. Not to mention when Stan smiled back it was almost as if he was smiling down at the audience. We miss you, Stan.

Giving credit where credit is due the cast did a great job. I know some people were skeptical about Brie Larson portraying Carol Danvers but, I think she did a great job with the role. Samuel L. Jackson was great as Nick Fury once again. Although playing a younger Fury, Jackson portrays some familiar characteristics as well as some traits the older Fury we know doesn't show (his love for cats for example). Speaking of the younger Fury, Marvel's de-aging technology, used to make Jackson look younger, was incredible. After seeing a de-aged Robert Downey Jr. in Civil War I was a little skeptical but Jackson looked just like he did in the '90s. Fury and Danvers had a great friendship (perhaps due to the actors being great friends in real life) and I hope to see more of their dynamic in Endgame or future movies.

Clark Gregg also made a comeback as a younger Phil Coulson (again great work with the digital de-aging), and although he was barely in the film Gregg did a great job playing his well-known character at the start of his S.H.I.E.L.D. career. Most people don't know but Gregg has actually been playing an older Coulson for the last five years on the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which has seen the character constantly evolve, so having Gregg go back to his movie portrayal of the character way before we meet him in 2008 was great.

Ben Mendelsohn's Talos was one of my favourite characters. Well, he was after the big twist where the Skrulls were revealed to be the good guys. For the Skrull's commander, he was very laid back, even with everything he had on the line. His interaction with the human characters provided some great humour and the reveals of his family and innocence of the Skrulls showed us he wasn't just a ruthless killer but that he had some humanity too.

I found the big twist of the Skrulls being the victims really interesting. I was expecting the Kree-Skrull War to be like in the comics or cartoons - two huge galactic empires fighting for the rule of the universe. So it came as an unexpected surprise when Talos revealed that the Skrulls were refugees, scattered over the universe, in search of a new home. And the only reason they were being hunted by the Kree was that the Kree were egoistic wanting the Skrulls to admit defeat and surrender to them.

I also liked the adaptation of the Kree's Supreme Intelligence. In the comics the Supreme Intelligence is a giant head, floating in a large tank of water, that possesses all the knowledge of the Kree Empire. This probably would've been more complex to portray on screen and would have been very strange for audience members unfamiliar with the comics. Also, this allowed us to find out that Carol actually looked up to and admired Dr. Wendy Lawson aka Mar-Vell. It was nice that they made Mar-Vell a woman in the MCU so Danvers would have a female inspiration to look up to.

Lashana Lynch's Maria Rambeau added some great heart to the film. Danvers and Rambeau's dynamic showed us what made them great friends and gave us a glimpse at who Danvers used to be. Rambeau also served to ground the film from its fast-paced action and intergalactic feud while they try to piece together what happened the day Danvers supposedly died.

The Bad

One scene I found particularly annoying was how Nick Fury lost his eye. I get that it's supposed to serve as a joke but it was just disappointing. I mean we're talking about Nick Fury the man who's trench-coat flies indoors due to respect. Fury is one of the coolest characters and probably the most mysterious. I think I'm not alone when I say that the way he lost his eye should've been a little more epic. I was expecting that the MCU Fury lost his eye making a heroic sacrifice or something and not because an alien cat was in a bad mood.

Another annoying scene was at the end of the movie. Fury was drafting The Protectors Initiative. It was nice to know that his first draft wasn't already called The Avengers Initiative. It's more believable that it took a while before he came up with the name he mentioned to Iron Man in 2008. Truth is I would've been happier if the movie ended with it called The Protectors Initiative. That way Fury could've penned the Avengers name somewhere between 1995 and 2008. But to tie everything up, he finds out Carol's Air Force nickname was Avenger and names his new initiative after her. I get that Fury would want to name his new initiative after the first super-powered being he met but it was a letdown. Once again we were robbed of the mystery of where such an awesome name came from.

In my opinion, Coulson could've suggested the name Avengers when he came in to give Fury the box of eyes. Plus it makes it gives new meaning to his death the 2012 Avengers movie. Not only would Coulson's death have brought the Avengers together but he would've also given them their well-known name. Also, what did Carol do in the Air Force to earn the nickname Avenger? I thought she was hardly allowed to fly. Also, Carol never adopted the name Captain Marvel and the movie didn't have a title card but anyway.

I think the downfall of the movie was that they tried to set up too much, knowing that this was the earliest of the MCU that we would see. Not only were they giving us Captain Marvel's origin story but they were also setting up the creation of the Avengers Initiative, how Fury lost his eye, the naming of the Avengers Initiative (which no one asked for), how S.H.I.E.L.D. got possession of the Tesseract, why Fury had the pager he used at the end of Infinity War, etc.

Summing Up

Captain Marvel served as a good origin movie and is definitely on par with 2008's Iron Man. However, I won't say it was as good as the DCEU's female solo movie Wonder Woman. The movie had potential to be better, but it's downfall probably came from trying to handle too much. All in all Captain Marvel is still a great movie and is definitely worth a watch. I would give it a 7/10.