“Captain Marvel” is a mixture of “Thor,” “Captain America: The First Avenger,” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” which is to say it’s disjointed, wooden, and messy, but you really want to like it because it’s a Marvel movie.
Set in the 1990s, Captain Marvel tells the story of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who is learning to harness her powerful energy abilities while trying to uncover a past she has forgotten from an accident.
The story of “Captain Marvel” completes the set up for “Avengers: Endgame.” The stinger at the end of “Infinity War” teased Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) clicking his juiced-up beeper to page Captain Marvel. Audiences needed an origin story to buttress a character who is clearly going to play a pivotal role in the final Avengers installment. To that end, we learn enough about Captain Marvel to make her a valuable character with real stakes rather than a freshly introduced savior for the Avengers we have built a relationship with over more than a dozen films.
By the same token, the writing itself is one of the weaker Marvel performances. On more than one occasion, audiences are told several times about a plot point in consecutive sequences (“Hey, we need those coordinates. Let’s move outside and I’ll tell you again that we really need those coordinates. As we’re reflecting in the twilight, did I mention the coordinates?”). It’s lazy, but not as lethargically laid as the joke sets, which are mainly about cats and the technological woes of the 1990s. Can you believe we used to use CDs?! The Marvel writers go to this well many, many times. Poor Samuel L. Jackson is given lines that read like “Fast & Furious” fan fiction. It’s not quite cringe-worthy, but it certainly rivals some of the cheese from the first “Captain America” flick.
The movie also leans in too much on fight sequences (like most Marvel movies) that drag to the point of boredom. Honestly, how many times can you exchange full throttle energy blasts and not tap out? It’s more of a critique of the seeming invincibility of Marvel heroes than Captain Marvel. In the final sequence, it’s hard not to wonder what in the world Captain Surface of the Sun was doing the past 30 years while Thanos was collecting his Bill Belichick gauntlet of rings.
The elephant in the room is obviously Brie Larson herself. The Internet and critics have mixed feelings, with some suggesting she lacks screen charisma while others feel she’s the victim of trolls and unequal expectations for a female lead. Overall, I found her to be great for the suit she was asked to fill.
How can you not like a woman who can get beat within an inch of her life, brush it off, light up with the energy of the sun, brush off her dirty blonde locks, and decimate the bad guys — doing it all while a highlight reel of toxic dudes from her past yell at her that she will never be enough. That’s an all-American woman if you ask me. The only thing that could have topped her solo performance would have been a photon energy power team-up with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) where they destroy Thanos before he ashed all their friends. A guy can dream.
Larson’s performance as Captain Marvel was less about her craftsmanship as an actress than it was about the material she was given to work with (though both her and Samuel L. Jackson need to work on their running form. Even moving the camera with them doesn’t disguise the fact they are slow as Christmas). It’s obvious that Larson wants to play the character more along the lines of “Thor: Ragnarok” and less like an alien landing on a distant planet as in the stoic, awkward, regal Chris Hemsworth in “Thor.” I imagine they will clean up her writing in “Avengers: Endgame” and later “Captain Marvel” installments.
The Captain Marvel storyline is just beginning; Marvel is going to get their work out of Brie Larson. For an origin story, “Captain Marvel” is above average. Hopefully, Larson and the Marvel crew can get in sync to make for exciting movies ahead, and to be sure: audiences can look forward to some lively banter between her and Chris Hemsworth in “Avengers: Endgame.”
Tyler Grant (@The_Tyler_Grant) is a Young Voices contributor, who completed a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan. He writes movie reviews for the Washington Examiner.
