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 (030919)
The opening of Captain Marvel is genuinely surprising – if a bit confusing. It
begins with a dream, but the opening act’s mood in general is decidedly
dreamlike as we meet Brie Larson’s Vers, a blue-blooded warrior hero who’s super
strong and can shoot fireballs from her hands. She’s part of a starforce unit
led by Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg. They fight on behalf of their people, the Kree, who
are under attack from green-faced shape shifters called the Skrull – or
something.
Vers lives on a shiny planet of glass and steel, but she keeps flashing back to
earlier times on Earth (or C35 as she knows it) where she was basically a female
version of Maverick from Top Gun (a character called Goose makes an appearance
later in the film, confirming the homage). The opening suggests indie
writing-and-directing team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Half Nelson, Mississippi
Grind) are making a Tarkovsky-influenced Star Trek movie, which isn’t half as
fun as it sounds. Things pick up no end when Vers eventually arrives on C35 with
a bump: she crash lands through a Blockbusters' roof and into the acquaintance
of Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson, who's received a reasonably convincing CGI spit
and polish to shave a few decades off). If the presence of a thriving VHS rental
shop hasn’t already clued you in, this is LA in the mid-90s.
Vers' memory may be MIA, but she hasn’t lost her funny bone. “Humour is a
distraction,” Yon-Rogg warns her during a late-night training session, and don’t
Marvel know it. What the MCU film series lacks in thrilling action scenes it
makes up for in LOLs, and this installment is no different. When we’re in the
company of Larson and Jackson, this warm-up to the more serious-minded Avengers:
Endgame is a hoot, with Vers a sarcastic wind-up merchant who enjoys teasing her
minder.
Jackson’s character has been little more than an exposition delivery system in
the Avengers film so far, but he feels like a rounded human being here. As well
as the unavoidable fan service moments, like discovering how Fury lost his left
eye, we also learn more whimsical details about the character, like his aversion
to diagonally sliced toast and his soft spot for cute felines.
Pleasingly, nostalgic gags around the 90s setting are kept to a minimum, but the
period is nicely evoked through the soundtrack, which is heavy on bands fronted
by fierce women (Garbage, No Doubt, Hole, Elastica). When Larson isn’t
cracking-wise with Jackson, she’s reacquainting herself with other strong women
from her past, including a fellow pilot played by Lashana Lynch, who brings a
soulful humanity to the picture, and a mysterious science genius played by
Annette Bening, who’s seriously underutilized (Bening's statuesque peers
Michelle Pfeiffer and Glenn Close were similarly wasted in their bit-part Marvel
roles).
As enjoyable as Larson and Jackson's mismatched buddy act is, we know the
mandatory Marvel third act carnage is coming, and like many directors before
them, this is where Boden and Fleck falter. There isn’t a single interesting
action set piece in the entire movie, just generic car chases, a poorly
choreographed fight on a commuter train and seen-them-a-million-times-before gun
battles in cobalt colored spaceship corridors. By the time Vers eventually
discovers her true identity (turns out she’s really Earth pilot Carol Danvers)
and embraces her inner flying superhero goddess, it feels like the directing duo
have given up entirely and simply handed over the reigns to Marvel’s animators,
who’ve cobbled together a dull, bloodless and unresolved space battle as the
finale.
How this seeming omnipotent superwoman is going to slot into the Avengers team
will be interesting. Maybe Captain Marvel will handle all the bad guys by
herself while the likes of Hawkeye, Ant Man and Captain America hold her cool
leather jacket? That would really get the fanboys' knickers in a twist.
“I have nothing to prove to you,” Danvers says in one of the best scenes of the
movie – and it feels like a message to the wider world. The weight of
expectation on Captain Marvel was a lot to live up to. And while it doesn’t shy
away from the responsibility it carries in the context of the current climate,
it just doesn’t quite thrill as a superhero origin story. A mild recommendation.
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