Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Where & When: Vista Theatre, Los Angeles, CA. March 19, 2019 2:00 PM
"Captain Marvel", the latest Marvel super-hero action-thriller, is groundbreaking for exactly one reason. After twenty feature films which brought to the screen their popular characters and introduced the somewhat, lesser-known heroes, this is the first of the comic-book movies to showcase a female in the lead. Brie Lawson plays the intergalactic being with a mysterious past and little memory of it who will ultimately become Captain Marvel. And while the Oscar-winning actress is certainly able to deliver some gravitas to our hero, the colorful costume still feels ill-fitting on her. She is unable to create much of a distinctive personality for her powerful character and the film itself cannot overcome a generic quality to this ponderous adventure.
There is a brutal conflict between the alien worlds of the Kree and the Skrull. We meet Vers (Lawson) after she awakens from another dream which involves experiences that feel like they were real. She is a young member of Starforce, a Kree military unit, and under the tutelage of the group's commander, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). Impulsive and emotional with the ability to project energy which she's not completely able to control, the commander trains Vers hard in order to break her of this so she can become the perfect warrior.
Starforce, which includes Korath (Djimon Hounsou), Att-Lass (Algenis Pérez Soto), Bron-Char (Rune Temte) and Minn-Erva (Gemma Chan), is sent on a mission to rescue one of their undercover operatives who is infiltrating a group of Skrulls, who have the ability to shapeshift. But it's a trap and the Skrulls capture Vers. As they approach 1990's Earth, the Skrull commander, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) attempt to extract memories from her with a probe. Realizing that her dreams are actually a reality that happened on Earth, Vers manages to escape and crash lands on our planet.
She runs in to Nick Fury, at this point just a low-level agent with S.H.I.E.L.D. (and played by Samuel L. Jackson who was digitally-enhanced to take some years off of his actual age), who team-up to discover her past. Those triggered memory fragments leads them to visit former Air Force pilot, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) in Louisiana. She reveals that Vers appears to be her best friend and fellow pilot, Carol Danvers that apparently died years ago in a crash with an experimental jet. And this jet was designed by Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening), a figure featured prominently in Vers' dreams.
The Skrulls are hot on her trail with Talos disguised as S.H.I.E.L.D. director, Keller while Yon-Rogg and his crew are not far behind. This leads to Vers discovering the truth behind her part in this war between the Kree and the Skrulls which will allow her to release the full potential of her incredible powers.
Another attempt by Marvel to shake up the routine was by hiring Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck to write and direct "Captain Marvel" with Ms Boden the first woman to direct one of their movies. The team (who are not a romantic couple) is best known for their indie dramas like "Half Nelson", "Sugar" and "Mississippi Grind" and their script for this film, (which was co-written with Geneva Robertson-Dworet who wrote the recent "Tomb Raider" reboot) while not completely ignoring her gender, wants to keep the focus on our hero's quirkiness and her humanity. But displaying some compassion and offering a few bad jokes isn't enough to make this cosmic Captain particularly engaging. Since this is an origin story, there's a lot of sitting through exposition and introductions with it all being done in a long-winded and mundane way. The unexpected twist in the third act regarding the actual reason behind Vers' involvement in this war is clever and intriguing but most everything that has lead us to it is not.
Ms Lawson, who we know is more than capable of being captivating on screen from her impressive work in "Short Term 12", "Trainwreck" and "Room" which won her the Best Actress Oscar, seems to struggle with finding a balance between her character's human and super-human sides with her settling for a bland middle ground. Yet Ms Bening, on the other hand, (who also makes her first appearance in a super-hero flick) is effortlessly fascinating as she embodies authority with her brief appearance as the scientist who is also mysteriously connected to the Kree–Skrull War. Someone should build a movie around her character or better still, put this actress in the lead of any Marvel adventure.
For all its efforts to be seen as a bold and monumental achievement in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, "Captain Marvel" never moves much beyond this sentiment. The movie seems content floating along with uninspired battles, predictable explosions and lame attempts at humor. But this is supposed to be viewed as an innovative advancement simply because a woman is at the center. They seem to be implying that should be enough. But it isn’t.
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