Blast from the Past

Conditions: Brittle

Film Review: Captain Marvel

Okay, right off the bat, the only reason I came to see this film was the post-credit sequence in the last Avengers film, where Nick Fury gasps, presses a button on his pager, and then evaporates.  After some googling, I found the logo he dialed up on his pager was for Captain Marvel, and so conveniently here we are, all these months later with a movie that happens to introduce and explain who Captain Marvel is.  And who is she?  Well, I dunno.  Because the thing about Captain Marvel is that she doesn't actually remember who she is.  Her name, apparently, is "Vers", and she's a super soldier on the planet Kree.  She has this weird super power where there's force coming out of her hands, and she's controlled by some super-computer type thing that can read her memories.  She gets captured by the evil Skrulls, who probe her memory and discover some secret thing on good old Earth, so off they go.  Vers escapes them but crash lands into a Blockbuster video store, because the year is 1995.  I remember 1995.  Things were cooler back then. So now we have a bit of a chase between the shape-shifting Kree soldiers and Vers.  A chase and a bit of a mystery.  Because Vers has some memories of this place, and of a life here. 

Fortunately Shield were in their initial startup phase back then and so Nick Fury is put on the case.  They've done a great job with the de-aging effects here and Sam Jackson looks like he's from the past.  He and Vers meet and decide to trust each other in this chase to get the thing, and after a bit of a road movie type montage the two discover that Vers is actually Carol Danvers, and she was a fighter pilot of the U.S air force.  This combined with the revelation that her mentor in the air force, who built a new kind of engine, was actually an alien and futhermore that she lost her memory in a test crash of said engine, which also gave her superpowers is the key scene that empowers Carol into realising she's more than just some soldier.

Pushed by a turn from her former fellow Kree soldier (Jude Law) she then discovers what the Skrulls are actually all about, and it all leads up to a very satisfying conclusion where she very much realises her true power and ability.  In the end she has become a powerful superhero, perhaps even too powerful a superhero given what she can now do, but it bodes well for her self-assigned task of policing the various warring planets out there.  This is a fine Marvel movie, a good origin story and a welcome return to form for Sam Jackson as well.  The 90's era vibe gives it a retro cool feel.  Brie Larson impresses in her strength and forthrightness.  Her Captain Marvel comes off as a little bratty at times, but always fierce and honest.  It will be interesting seeing how this character plays into the rest of the MCU.  Three grunges out of five.


- peace out