Good News and Bad News - Captain Marvel Review

To preface this review, I bought the ticket for this movie to see its midnight screening the day that it became available. I went to see it with a friend I’ve seen many Marvel movies with and we continually talk about them at length. So, yes, I’m a Marvel fanboy, but above all, I’m a fan of well written, acted, and directed movies. I won’t be “review bombing” this as so many toxic users online have seemed to do lately, but will of course be giving my honest opinion about Captain Marvel.

With that out of the way, I feel like I can freely give my opinion about a movie that I didn’t hate, but didn’t quite love either. There are a lot of things that I did enjoy about the movie and I think I’d like to talk about those first. A bit of good news before I deliver bad news.

The good news is that Captain Marvel is a very interesting character whose dynamic not only with the characters around her, but with the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole are incredibly interesting and fulfilling to see as we move closer towards Avengers: Endgame. The film doesn’t really have Endgame on its mind that much, and it’s all the better for it. There are subtle nods here and there and it was very interesting to see Captain Marvel herself and what she may be able to provide when fighting Thanos or anyone else that may come along later.

Brie Larson does a great job as Carol Danvers. She imbues the character with a lot of wit and heart, and the fish out of water / amnesia story plays well off of her charisma and charm. She very much embodies what most Marvel heroes tend to be. She also plays well with Sam Jackson, as a lot of the movie becomes a bit of a buddy comedy between her and Nick Fury. It’s a fun romp that they’re able to create and I really liked getting to know Nick Fury better too.

Now there’s the medium news. The story is an enormous mixed bag. The good news is that the overall story is interesting and there’s a great amount of mystery that I was wholly invested in figuring out. I want to leave it at that because it’s a ball of yarn that wraps itself up a ton in the first few minutes and takes the next couple hours to unravel itself. That does become an issue when you’ve just watched that first few minutes though. The movie throws a ton of information at the viewer early on and while you’re obviously not meant to know what it all means, there was a huge sense on confusion for me when everything started.

On the not so good side, the movie has trouble following its own rules sometimes. There’s an alien race involved who can look exactly like anything that they’ve seen and know up to a certain point of memory for that person as well. The issue is those characters often forget things about Earth that they would probably know if they were that person, or they know how to use certain objects and say certain things that they wouldn’t if they could only remember things from a recent point onward. There’s also a lot of things that don’t seem to link up within the greater context of the MCU, and that mostly boils down to timelines of a lot of things, as Captain Marvel takes place in the early 90s, long after Captain America was found and not too long before Iron Man takes his place in the world. Characters have dialogue in other MCU films that really contradict what they would know and think from having their experience with Captain Marvel, and while that may be hard to avoid, people have done it before, and done it really well. Not taking the time to do that and make things fit together just seems lazy for such an interconnected universe of films.

There are a lot of other moving parts to the movie and they’re mostly forgettable. Carol’s connection to her past and present makes many others show up around her and they all seem to have some semblance of importance, but it’s either kind of lost or fairly inconsequential as the movie rolls on. What I felt from about ten minutes in onward was that it felt a bit cheaper than past marvel films. It may have been the motion smoothing on the theater’s screen, but I almost felt like I was watching a high budget Netflix film on the big screen. And don’t get me wrong, I like Netflix movies with big budgets, but I like watching them on Netflix while I’m at home on my couch. For a theater experience, Captain Marvel fell a bit flat.

There are a lot of great parts to Captain Marvel and a few moments I genuinely enjoyed while in the theater thanks to its cast, great feminist message, and overarching implications for the MCU, but it often gets lost in itself and insulates its story from parts that are frankly more interesting. Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, but for a hero who’s supposed to be the key to defeating the biggest bad guy of all, I thought she’d bring a little more good with her.

6.5/10