‘Captain Marvel’ leaves much to be desired
By Jack Murphy// A&E Editor
Another year, another addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Captain Marvel” directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, “Captain Marvel” stars Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn and Lashana Lynch. “Captain Marvel” tells the story of Carol Devers as she crash-lands on Earth in 1995, and tries to defeat an alien species called Skrulls, while also trying to discover her own identity. This is the Marvels last film before the highly anticipated “Avengers: End Game,” and from what the trailers showed, Captain Marvel looked like the superhero to bring down the all mighty Thanos. While I’m always interested in what Marvel’s gonna do next, the trailers for “Captain Marvel” looked dull and reminded me of “Ant-Man and the Wasp.” However, I still went into “Captain Marvel” with an open mind, hoping that this would be another excellent superhero film to add to Marvels already stellar lineup. While it’s still a good superhero film, I left feeling disappointed.
Let’s get the positives out of the way first, the special effects are amazing. Disney has to have the best CG department in the world because of this along with “Avengers Infinity War” feature almost all GCI, and yet it appears mostly seamless. Samuel L. Jackson plays a younger version of Nick Fury in “Captain Marvel” and because of that, they had to digitally de-age him to make him look significantly younger, and it’s beyond impressive. I mean, Jackson looks really good for being seventy, but man. Captain Marvels CG suit also looks one thousand times better then T’Challa’s suit from “Black Panther.” It doesn’t look like a hologram’s suit, it looks like the real deal.
I also really like Ben Mendelsohn as the main Skrull, and the Skrulls in general for that matter. Their powers make sense, and the idea that Brie Larson has to find them when they can turn into whoever they want, adds a bit to the film. The final thing I liked was Goose the cat, even though there’s something incredibly dumb involving the cat and Jackson near the end of the film that I won’t spoil, but it was useless and it didn’t need to be there.
Okay, Larson is a great actress, don’t get me wrong, she’s incredibly talented and I still believe she can do a lot with this character. However, whether it was the script or something else, Larson’s performance is very monotone, uncharismatic and inconsistent. In some scenes, like a battle sequence on a space ship at the beginning of the film, she’s fantastic and adds a lot to the film and shows off her charisma. In other scenes, however, she’s very wooden, and it really brings down the movie. Her performance is similar to Henry Cavill from “Man of Steel,” as I believe the directors are more at fault here and didn’t get the best performance possible from their actors.
Jude Law is also just fine, he comes and goes and when he’s on screen, he doesn’t elevate the film much. Annette Bening is, briefly, in this film as one of Captain Marvel’s mentors and she is god awful. I was stunned they didn’t get another couple of takes of her scenes because she is not good at all.
Overall, “Captain Marvel” is a very generic superhero film in the age of superhero films. It doesn’t stand out that much from the rest, and as for female lead superhero films, “Wonder Woman” was vastly superior because director Patty Jenkins did a fantastic job and got a great performance out of Gal Gadot. Boden and Fleck didn’t give the film anything special and didn’t get the best possible performance out of an Oscar-winning actress, and the film suffers for it. If you want to watch a superhero film about a hero rediscovering themselves and having to learn to cope with their powers, I suggest “Captain America” or any of the Bourne Trilogy films, even though they aren’t superhero films. They were able to accomplish what “Captain Marvel” tried to do in a much better fashion. I’m going to give Captain Marvel a “B-.”
Brie Larson stars as Carol Danvers in “Captain Marvel.” Photo by Marvel Studios