Review: Captain Marvel

Captain Marvel (12A)

USA 2019  124 mins  Dir: Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden  Cast: Brie Larson, Gemma Chan, Jude Law, Mckenna Grace, Samuel L. Jackson, Lee Pace

The day I went to see Captain Marvel, it was International Women’s Day. Earlier that day, I had seen a tweet from a woman who was dedicating IWD day to all the “totally mediocre women who just about get by”. So, when in the first 10 minutes the main character’s male mentor tells her “I want you to be the best version of yourself”, my mind immediately went back to that tweet, and how it juxtaposed with the central themes and values of the film. How, if at all, can a film about a superpowered and super capable woman further the female cause in 2019?

Captain Marvel’s story starts, without a shred of exposition, on Hala – the capital planet of the Kree Empire, where an elite team of warriors known as the Starforce live and train in their fight to overcome their enemy, the Skrull. Vers (Brie Larson) is an elite Starforce member, and in the opening scene she awakes from a recurring nightmare involving a mysterious older woman (Annette Bening) from a life that she cannot remember. Being flung directly into a part of the Marvel Universe that hasn’t previously been shown onscreen can be jarring enough, but I imagine casual viewers and those who haven’t religiously read or watched the previous canon could find it incredibly confusing. Vers and her mentor Yon-Rogg (an impressive superhero film debut by Jude Law) along with the other team members of Starforce are amusingly but briefly introduced (or reintroduced in the case of Djimon Hounsou’s Korath) before launching immediately into an action scene shootout. Consequently, the first 30 minutes felt pretty useless aside from being a plot conduit to get Vers to Earth, after she is separated from the rest of the team. This is definitely not the strongest opening to a Marvel film.

Once ‘Vers’ does end up earth (or C-53 as she knows it), things start to improve. There have been several “figuring out how to behave on planet Earth” subplots in other superhero films (Thor, Wonder Woman) that have worked well for comic effect, and this is another one, aided by Larson’s appealingly frank delivery. Brie Larson and a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson as ‘90s Nick Fury play off each other superbly – you can almost see the relief in Jackson’s performance from finally having some fresh character material to work with after 11 years in the role. We are properly introduced to the ‘bad guys’ – the Skrull, who use the guerrilla tactic of camouflaging as any being they lay their sights on to infiltrate the enemy at will. The Skrull leader Talos is an absolute gift thanks to Ben Mendelsohn’s performance, and the entire main cast have a fantastic chemistry that is a joy to watch. Coupled with a sterling soundtrack of 1990s nostalgia, and more solid and entertaining storytelling, the main body of the film really comes into its own.

One recurring problem for me with the Marvel films, however, is that when it comes to the inevitable final showdown, it’s often not pulled off successfully. It’s less of a problem with Marvel’s bigger ventures, such as the Avengers films, but plaiting together good action with a storyline that is engaging and nuanced is a difficult thing and can very easily devolve into ridiculous and/or predictable plotlines. This wasn’t so much the case here, but with the decision by writer-director team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to lean into the  ‘we’ve all done bad things’ school of morality, I don’t think a climactic head-to-head was really necessary at all, and although it definitely wasn’t a typical things-smashing-into-things action scene showdown, I felt they could have pushed it to an even more radical and subversive ending. Ultimately, the winning aspect of the film’s climax was the satisfaction of getting to see Captain Marvel in all her full, psychedelic glory as she realises the true extent of her powers.

There are some lines that knowingly nod to preconceptions of gender and sexism (“She can do a lot more than make tea with those hands”), as one would expect from a historic first in Marvel cinematic storytelling, but overall I didn’t find the film to be grinding the neofeminist axe in any way that might anger the fanboys, despite the backlash the film has garnered during its press tour. If anything, I appreciated the montage of flashbacks to times in Captain Marvel’s life when she failed, and fell, and hurt herself. It makes her inevitable rise to her full potential more worthy and more realistic, avoiding the encroaching Mary Sue trope all together.

When it comes to that concept of being ‘the best version of yourself’, Vers/Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel may not be a relevant role model for the average woman doing her best with what she’s got. But the most feminist lesson I got from the film was this: as a woman, listen to your own intuition, and don’t allow others (even Jude Law) to dictate what your limits are, or what you are capable of.