Captain Marvel

So there's finally a female-led MCU movie, which is a good thing, though it freaking took long enough. They've had Scarlett Johansson playing Black Widow for what, almost a decade at this point? And a Cold-War-spy-thriller-style solo movie for her writes itself. But later is better than never.

Obviously Captain Marvel is going to be looked at in the context of the protagonist's gender, but I don't think you really need to hear the take of some dude who shares a gender and ethnicity with 19 of the previous 20 movies' protagonists beyond just: "more of this please."

I think the weirdest thing for me is, as an older millennial, (I think I'm one year shy of Xennial, if that year is 1985, ) is seeing this movie that mines the 1990s - the decade I really feel I grew up in - for nostalgic jokes. Our protagonist, who at the time is known as "Vers," (pronounced to rhyme with beers,) winds up on Earth crashing through the roof of a then-ubiquitous Blockbuster Video (apparently there's only one left that exists today.)

Apart from having her go far enough away that Nick Fury never contacted her in the previous Avengers-level crises, there's not a ton of justification for setting the film in the '90s, beyond the awesome music and fashion (as someone who always groaned at 80s nostalgia I am all in for the 90s.)

The movie primarily functions as a buddy-film between Vers (Brie Larson) and a 24-year-younger Nick Fury. Samuel L. Jackson became a household name after his star-making role in Pulp Fiction, which came out one year before Captain Marvel is set. Digital wizardry and make-up is used to make Jackson and Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson look significantly younger. I'll leave it to you whether you think 70-year-old Jackson (I know his age because he has the exact same birthday as my dad) looks like he's in his mid-forties, but while it maybe looks like he's wearing a wig, I think the effect is not too off-putting, which is good given that he's one of the biggest characters in the movie.

Anyway, Vers is a member of the Kree civilization, and a part of an elite commando team led by her mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) that is hunting Skrull agents - the Kree are mostly blue (with some exceptions) human-looking aliens while the Skrull are goblin-like creatures who can alter their appearance and even genetics to pass as anyone they've seen. We actually see a couple Kree characters from Guardians of the Galaxy: Lee Pace's Ronan the Accuser and Djimon Hounsou's Korath, the latter of whom is on Vers' team.

After Vers is captured by the Skrull, she escapes her mind-delving interrogation and winds up crash-landing on Earth.

While chasing down the Skrull agents who have landed there as well, she is stopped by Nick Fury, and soon manages to convince him of the threat, and they try to track down the aeronautics facility the Skrull are trying to find, which is where Vers discovers that she's actually human, or at least was before the Kree gave her some kind of blood transfusion.

Let's head into spoiler territory (I count the preceding stuff as what you'd glean from the trailer.)

There are some strong hints that the story is a bit backward. First off, we've got Korath and Ronan. Now, admittedly, Ronan is seen as a hotheaded zealot in Guardians of the Galaxy, so you figure he might have just gone over the deep end. And Korath is ultimately just a loyal soldier.

But there's also the fact that the Kree are governed by a massive AI called the Supreme Intelligence, which doesn't tend to go so well in sci fi stories.

The biggest issue, though, is that the leader of the Skrull agents, Talos (played by Ben Mendelsohn) is just so fun and charming. While it's gotten better in recent years with folks like Kilmonger and Thanos, Marvel has traditionally had trouble with compelling villains. So while Talos seems at first to be pleasantly avoiding that trend, in fact it's that Talos is no villain.

In what I imagine might be a break from the comics, the Skrull in general are actually not bad guys here. Yes, they infiltrate other societies. But their motivation is not conquest, but rather refuge. It turns out the Kree have been hunting them down and killing them wherever they go.

We eventually discover that the engineer Vers (who was the test-pilot Carol Danvers) had been working for was actually a Kree named Mar-vell, who discovered the truth about the war and wanted to create a vessel capable of taking the Skrull far enough away that they could escape the genocidal campaign against them. (I'm given to understand that Mar-vell in the comics was the first Captain Marvel.)

It was actually Yon-Rogg who tracked her down and shot down the vessel she and Carol were testing. Carol destroyed the ship's core and absorbed its power, which not only gave her superpowers, but also nearly killed her. Yon-Rogg took her with him and gave her a blood transfusion, making her part-Kree. From then on, he and the Supreme Intelligence created a narrative that her ability to shoot energy blasts out of her fists was something they had bestowed upon her.

In fact, Mar-Vell had used none other than the Tesseract to build her drive (it's back, baby! Well, in the 90s. No, it's just the Space Stone now. Hey, did anyone pick up Thanos' glove after the snap?) which means that Captain Marvel - a name never used in the movie, if I recall correctly - derives her powers from an infinity stone. That's not unique among them, of course, but I think she is supposed to be one of the more powerful superheroes in the Marvel universe.

Anyway, the point is that ultimately Carol teams up with Nick Fury, Talos, and her old wingwoman/best friend Maria to get the Skrulls to safety and stop Ronan and Yon-Rogg from killing them.

In the end, Carol goes with the Skrull, essentially being the engine that carries them to safety, leaving behind that pager we saw in the post-credits scene of Infinity War that she has upgraded to find her no matter where in the vast cosmos she is.

So what are our thoughts?

Brie Larson brings a playful energy to Carol Danvers that can be a lot of fun when she's not fighting the script to display it - one fun moment early on is when a Skrull (at a point in the movie when they seem to be evil space-goblins) growls at her in the middle of a fight and she growls right back. But I do think the movie is weighed down a bit with the origin story requirements - especially given that her amnesia causes this story to be told in a nonlinear manner.

She and Samuel L. Jackson have an enjoyable chemistry, even if their camaraderie is established a little faster than seems realistic.

Much as The Winter Soldier had a rather transparent political point of view - "Project Insight" being the nightmare scenario for how drone warfare could develop - Captain Marvel certainly calls to mind the current immigration... I'd call it a debate, but that's probably too polite a term for it. The Kree commando squad Vers starts in seems heroic at first, but it's ultimately revealed to be basically the Kree equivalent of I.C.E., hunting down civilians and children merely for being somewhere they don't want them to be.

I do feel like it would be nice to see another one of these movies without origin story burdens. The other "Captain," namely "America" seriously improved in its second outing (though I liked the first one) though to be fair, other direct sequels haven't gone quite as well - Iron Man 2 was meh, Thor the Dark World is considered the worst of the MCU by many, and Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2... I liked it but it wasn't as amazing as the original.

With Carol Danvers playing a role in Avengers: Endgame (I assume the post-credits scene of her showing up after the Snap is just a scene from the movie) I expect we'll get a less fun version of her, but if they're grooming her to be one of the major Avengers characters once Tony Stark and Steve Rogers die (I mean, we're assuming that's happening in Endgame, right?) I'm eager to see what kind of chemistry she has with the rest of the goofballs in this mega-series.

Here's the crazy thing: I had a doctor's appointment today and rewarded myself with a fun movie (I hate going to the doctor) and I got a follow-up appointment that is literally going to be after the next Marvel movie comes out. And Captain Marvel came out today.

And then later we're going to have the next Spiderman movie, whose very existence (if it's not a pre-snap prequel) spoils the inevitable reversal of the snap.

So we've got plenty of Marvel movies to look forward to if you're into them.