Captain Marvel – Review

A Marvel film? Set in the 90’s? Brie Larson as Carol Danvers? A young Nick Fury and we learn how he lost his eye? Yes please!

The sheer thought of a Captain Marvel film got me excited; Carol Danvers is essentially Marvel’s Wonder Woman. She is one of the most powerful Marvel characters with a strong personality and a superhero that young girls can look up to and feel empowered by. She is easily one of Marvel’s greatest heroes.

I remember being sat there in the cinema after watching Infinity War, feeling absolutely defeated after the iconic “snap” moment, and anxiously waiting to see what the end-credits scene had in store for both myself, and all the other nerds sat around me. Then, it happened – Nick Fury turns to dust, dropping the device in his hands, and it displays Captain Marvel’s logo. It was happening. A Captain Marvel movie was happening. And I was excited. Now, the film has been released, I’ve watched it and I’m reviewing it.

I won’t lie, Captain Marvel was rather underwhelming. Not a terrible film, but definitely the most middling of the now 21 Marvel movies, and this was mainly due to the lack of style and the film having the inability to do anything new.

By now, I would say a standard has been set for modern Marvel films in terms of style; James Gunn’s classic soundtrack in futuristic settings combined with a great sense of humour, Taika Waititi’s bizarre comedy and stylish set pieces and costumes, the Russo brothers bringing a suitable sense of dread and hopelessness to Infinity War without it feeling overly “gritty” like many superhero films do nowadays, the list goes on. Unfortunately, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck fail to bring anything of any real flair or flavour to this movie, making Captain Marvel feel completely bland compared to Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy. The colour palette especially is very murky and just downright dark in certain scenes, making them just difficult to watch, which seems strange seeing as the protagonist represents the last source of hope for the Avengers, and literally flies around in a bright red, blue and gold costume.

Even story wise, Captain Marvel just feels like a typical fish-out-of-water, amnesiac rediscovering who she is, way more powerful than she or anyone else realises kind of film. Certain scenes act as exposition dumps where we learn anything and everything about Carol Danvers and her backstory, with even certain lines feeling like they were ripped straight out of a superhero film handbook.

Not only the lines themselves, but the way they were delivered by Brie Larson felt weirdly wooden at times, even to the point where they just feel like they were coming from the mouth of an inexperienced actor, which seems very strange to me as Brie Larson is a very talented actress.

One performance I was pleased with was Samuel L. Jackson as a younger Nick Fury, who had a larger presence in the story than I realised, but it was a welcome presence. One massive praise to this film would be the impressive work de-aging Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg, which blended nicely into the film. The special effects in general were pretty good, aside from a few shots that looked slightly bad, especially one close-up shot of a CGI Brie Larson which didn’t hold up at all.

Another compliment for this film would be the fact that I didn’t actually mind the Skrulls; the concept art for the Skrulls looked very comic accurate, and I was happy with it. Then the official set photos were released and they looked horrible. Having watched the film now, I didn’t actually mind their design and they looked pretty good with some decent prosthetic work.

Captain Marvel also contains some nice humour sprinkled throughout, often involving Nick Fury or Goose the cat (who was a nice addition to the film) and there were a few scenes that actually made me laugh, as opposed to a small chuckle here and there which Marvel films are guilty of. However, there are a few revelations in the film which were sacrificed for comedy, and this is now a trend in Marvel films that is actually starting to get annoying. Without spoilers, this film basically reveals how something came to be in the Marvel Universe; this scene could have had some dramatic heft, and instead it was sacrificed for a quick joke, which was one of my least favourite moments in any Marvel film.

Despite having some enjoyable moments and some decent twists here and there, Captain Marvel comes off as a bland origin tale which only exists so we know who “that one” is when Endgame comes out. Despite not being Thor: The Dark World levels of bad, Captain Marvel is one of the franchises’ most disappointing ventures, and wastes a lot of potential it had.