Captain Marvel makes her long-awaited debut…
Carrying the burden of not only being the first female-led MCU movie and being released so soon before Avengers: Endgame takes some pretty broad shoulders. It’s a relief then that the shoulders in question are that of Oscar-winning actress Brie Larsen, making her MCU debut as Captain Marvel.
After a covert operation goes terribly wrong ‘Kree’ solider Vers (Brie Larsen) finds herself crash landing on Earth in the 1990s in pursuit of her sworn enemies ‘The Skrulls’. This soon puts her on a collision course with S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) and the pair reluctantly join forces to save Earth from an imminent invasion.
Brie Larsen is great in the role and imbues her character with a likeable charm and enough swagger to know she isn’t someone to be trifled with. It’s also nice to see Samuel L Jackson getting a little more to do with the Nick Fury character this time out, as he gets substantial screen time this round as the younger version of the S.H.I.E.L.D. boss. Digital de-ageing has been a thing in Hollywood for a while but it’s safe to say this is best use of the effect yet; you would be seriously pushed to notice any faults here and you certainly would have no clue you were watching an actor who is 70 years old.
The set pieces as one would expect are spectacular and you are left in little doubt that Captain Marvel can take names with the strongest heroes Earth has to offer (Thanos is certainly up for a more challenging fight come April). The film’s finale is brilliant and it’s great to see that the move into more overt sci-fi territory shows no signs of abating, some of the space based scenes seriously give modern day Star Wars a run for its money.
It’s not all plain sailing though. The 1990s setting is certainly charming but the constant references do get a little jarring and some of the jokes wear a little thin over the course of the film. The same too can be said of a lot of the humour on offer here, it’s not particularly bad but it does start to feel repetitive and that’s a shame as it distracts from a mostly entertaining plot.
The story itself isn’t the film’s strongest point either, it feels a little generic and at times drifts too close to the original movies’ clichés that it took so long for Marvel to leave behind. That being said, it picks up in the second half and kudos must go to the screen writers and indeed to whoever cut the trailer for the film for blindsiding the audience. Captain Marvel leads off in one narrative direction and then flips the story on its head to great effect, to be honest without this foresight the film would have likely wound up as one of the series’ weaker entries.
Not the best but certainly far from the worst, Captain Marvel doesn’t do anything particularly new or groundbreaking but much like its predecessors, it does enough right to keep you entertained and wanting to come back for more.
Author: Paul, Bath store
