Captain Mavel
[info headline="Release date"]7 December 2018[/info]
[info headline="Language"]English, Hindi[/info]
[info headline="IMDb Rating"]7.4[/info]
[info headline="Genre"]Action, Fantasy, Science Fiction[/info]
[info headline="Cast"]Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Patrick Wilson[/info]
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It’s finally here: the first film in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe with a female superhero at its center and a woman serving as a
co-director and writer. These are unprecedented, exciting and long overdue
achievements all around within a pop-culture powerhouse that’s long been
dominated by male stories and storytellers.
So why does “Captain Marvel” feel like a bit of a
disappointment? It’s fine and often quite funny. It fits securely within the
MCU but also functions sufficiently as a stand-alone entity. But the character,
and the tremendous actress playing her in Oscar-winner Brie Larson, deserved
more than fine. They—and the girls and women everywhere looking to “Captain
Marvel” with wide eyes and high hopes for seeing themselves on screen—deserved
a game-changer along the lines of “Black Panther” or even “Guardians of the
Galaxy” or “Doctor Strange.”
“Captain Marvel” mostly takes place in the mid-1990s, and
feels like it was made then, too, in terms of its technical prowess and
emotional depth. This is not a compliment. As for the former, perhaps that was
intentional—yet another example of wallowing in period nostalgia alongside the
grunge chic and girl-power anthems. The prolonged intro in space and the big
action sequences have a cheesy, retro feel to them that can be amusing but also
inscrutable.
But co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have made their
names writing and directing indie dramas featuring richly drawn characters
facing real stakes. “Half Nelson” (2006), about a drug-addicted middle school
teacher, is the movie that put Ryan Gosling on the map and earned him his first
Oscar nomination. “Sugar” (2008) is one of the most intimate and insightful
movies ever made about baseball. You’d rightly expect that their depiction of
the title character—real name Carol Danvers—would be complex, compelling and
abidingly human, despite her otherworldly superpowers. But while Larson is
tough, plucky and skilled with a well-timed quip, her chief character trait
seems to be rebelliousness. That’s a little limiting. (Boden and Fleck co-wrote
the script with Geneva Robertson-Dworet, and all three share story-by credit
with Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve.) Additionally, she has forgotten who she
really is, so her interior life is as much of a blank to her as it is to us.
Despite her fighting spirit, Carol often finds herself as a
pawn trapped between various worlds where she feels as if she doesn’t belong.
At the film’s start, she’s living and training as a warrior on the Kree planet
of Hala. Her mentor, Jude Law’s Yon-Rogg, is constantly reminding her not to
let her emotions get the best of her—a pointed commentary on the sexist notion
that women are too emotional to handle tough jobs. And “Captain Marvel” is full
of such less-than-subtle messaging. But after the shapeshifting enemy Skrulls,
led by the swaggering Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), take her prisoner during a
battle, she escapes and lands on a different planet: our own. Specifically, she
finds herself a fish out of water within the urban sprawl of Los Angeles.
It’s here that “Captain Marvel” leans hard on the humorous
kitsch of its decade-specific detail: Blockbuster Video! Two-way pagers!
Dial-up Internet! We were so lame. It’s the cinema of empty recognition—a ‘90s
version of the way “Ready Player One” relies heavily on ‘80s pop culture to
provoke a warm, knowing response. “Hey, Captain Marvel ties her plaid flannel
button-down around her waist the way I used to in college! Cool.” These moments
and images are good for a chuckle and not much more.
But as Carol begins to piece together her history as an Air
Force test pilot, “Captain Marvel” begins to feel like a female version of “Top
Gun.” This actually is a compliment; the sections on Earth in which Carol
grasps at her memories of the past and discovers her strength and bravery in
the present (and in the cockpit) are the film’s highlights. The always
formidable Annette Bening is a tantalizingly fleeting presence as a mysterious
mentor figure in Carol’s previous life. And Lashana Lynch helps flesh out
Carol’s personality as her best friend: a fellow pilot who similarly never got
the shot she deserved because she was a woman and a young mother.
Carol’s most rewarding and consistently entertaining
relationship, though, is with young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury, played by a
magically de-aged Samuel L. Jackson in a bit of visual effects wizardry. Truly,
the result is seamless. You will forget that you are looking at a 70-year-old
man. (Clark Gregg, reprising his revered role as Agent Coulson, isn’t quite so
believable, but it’s always good to see him.) Larson and Jackson play off each
other beautifully, trading snappy banter and affectionate zingers with ease.
Their mission is to find a glowy space cube thingy—you know what it is and why
it matters if you’ve been following these movies—and keep it out of the wrong
hands, but that’s the least intriguing component of “Captain Marvel.”
But her camaraderie with Jackson—and later with a
quick-witted Mendelsohn and a fantastically scene-stealing orange kitty named
Goose—ultimately serves as a reminder of just how little there is to Larson’s
character. Not unlike Captain America’s role within the Avengers, Captain
Marvel functions here as the straight woman, the steady anchor in a sea of big,
swirling personalities. Sure, she eventually comes into her powers in full and
is literally the kind of girl on fire that Alicia Keys sings about. But if
we’re not invested in who she is at her core, how are we supposed to care about
what she’s burning down?
Speaking of music, the folks behind “Captain Marvel” spared
no expense on the film’s soundtrack, including songs from such female-driven
'90s acts as TLC, Garbage, Elastica, Salt-n-Pepa and a painfully on-the-nose
use of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” during a particularly elaborate fight scene.
The girl power (and grrl power) ring out loud and clear, if a bit hollow.
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