Marvel’s fast approaching the end of something. Infinity War started the end, and Avengers: Endgame will finish this amazing run for the comic book turned movie studio. However, to get from point A to point B we have to dot some I’s and cross some T’s. Fortunately for my intro, there’s an “I” and a “T” in Captain Marvel, the origin story of the last superhero to be introduced before Endgame.
We open on Vers (Brie Larson) having a dream in her homeland about her previous life she doesn’t remember. Vers is Kree, a blueish species of people run by Supreme Intelligence (Annette Bening) hunting down Skrull, a shapeshifting alien race that can impersonate anyone. On her first big mission with her superior Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), Vers gets accosted by the head Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn). She escapes, but lands on 1995 Earth, where she runs into the 2 eyed Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and an early version of SHIELD. The pair attempt to figure out what the Skrull are looking for on C-53 (aka Earth), as well as help Vers track down all those places in her memory she is experiencing.
Watching Captain Marvel reminded me of watching Solo: A Star Wars Story. That other Disney film about a year ago felt like an exercise in checking off fan related Easter egg boxes instead of giving us a really fun story that has Easter eggs. In preparation for Endgame, Captain Marvel is giving us a history lesson of pretty much the entire universe so we are ready when terms like Skrull and Flerken get thrown at us. That’s not enough though, cause Nick Fury and Phil Coulson are in this movie, so we need origin stories for Marvel heroes and bad guys (Remember Ronan, Guardians fans?), like how Fury ended up with his eye patch. Oh yeah, might as well throw in the Marvel movie history callbacks too, like the macguffin in the first Avengers movie or where the term “Avengers” actually came from. On top of that, let’s period piece this thing up, bringing out our Nerf Guns, Alta Vista Search Engines, and TLC. There are so many eggs distracting us from learning about Vers and her friends that it left my brain scrambling from time to time to catch up. See what I did there? *wink*
It’s too bad the studio’s hands appear all over this movie, because there’s enough of a really interesting story in here that it could have turned into something really hilarious and inspiring. Captain Marvel is the final product of Vers’s identity crisis, which is teased out just enough that the big third act climax for the character it more emotionally rewarding that I was expecting it to be. I will say though, that the Skrull/Kree conflict is much more interesting than Captain Marvel’s identity crisis plot. Here are two civilizations at war with one another, where the leaders are awash in shades of gray, particularly Ben Mendelsohn’s Talos, who is one of the more interesting alien creatures Marvel has introduced to us. This conflict is clearly designed to foreshadow the next big bad guy the Avengers will face, but the origins of that conflict open up Marvel to new worlds yet unexplored. The aged down Nick Fury (probably the most amazing feat in the movie) has all the pieces of our favorite modern pirate, but also a lighter touch since this world is new to him. Jackson helps Brie Larson loosen up and remind us why she’s more than just a generic leading lady, especially since the rest of the movie she’s in full fleged hero mode. Complementing all this heavy handed storytelling is a steadying comedic and calming force….and Sam Jackson. Giving Jackson a cat sidekick he’s totally into reminded me of an unlikely Parks n Rec pair that never found an end to the audience laughter, and is by far the best part of Captain Marvel.
I hope we get a second Captain Marvel movie. Carol Danvers’s origin story is bogged down by multiple other origin stories and a finger snapping incident that happens a few decades in the future. I asked a couple people why they wanted to see Captain Marvel, and they said “So I can see the end credits scene.” Here’s hoping Brie Larson gets a real storyline that can better use her skills instead feeling like a part of something corporately mandated to give us information for a better movie coming out later this year.