For a number of reasons, Captain Marvel is a risk for Marvel Studios. The primary reason would be that they chose to introduce a totally new tentpole character—with the glitzy promise of serious franchise significance—right smack-dab in the middle of two halves of one of the biggest cinematic events of all time (2018's Avengers: Infinity War and April's Avengers: Endgame). By promising that Captain Marvel will play a significant role in what could be the final chapter for many of our favorite MCU heroes, Marvel Studios have set the bar very high for themselves with this entry. Additionally, Captain Marvel is the MCU's first female-led solo film, and while I wish I didn't have to say that was a risk, one look through any Facebook, YouTube, or Reddit comment thread on a Captain Marvel-related post would show you why it is.
But the many opportunities presented by Captain Marvel—positive gender representation, unconventional plot structure and storytelling methods, a rad '90s setting—would seem to be well worth those risks. Besides, the most financially successful film franchise in history can afford to roll the dice in the name of creativity and variety now and then. But the question is then whether or not Captain Marvel takes advantage of these opportunities, and the answer to that is a bit muddled.
Captain Marvel is simultaneously ambitious in its attempts at upending superhero plot structure and unambitious in the depth it gives to its titular character. For both of those reasons, Captain Marvel is a mixed, lukewarm bag, and perhaps the first MCU film since Phase One that elicited almost no strong emotional response from me on first viewing.
It will be interesting to see if "okay" can cut it in a franchise that has reached such a wide and ecstatic fanbase, and crescendoes to a fever-pitch of anticipation with each entry.
Captain Marvel is about a skilled alien warrior introduced to us as Vers (pronounced "veerz"), played by Brie Larson. Vers is part of an elite squad of soldiers of the Kree Empire, a proud and powerful alien people. The Kree have long been at war with the Skrulls, a race of lizard-like shapeshifters who can hide in plain sight, disguised as their enemies' allies. What sets Vers apart is that she A.) has absolutely no memory of her past before becoming a part of this squad, and B.) she can shoot fiery "proton blasts" from her hands without the need for Kree weaponry. She also has a sense of humor, which seems to be lacking in several of her squadmates. She is trained by her charismatic but relentless helicopter-parent of a mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).
While tracking down information on a reconaissance mission, Vers winds up separated from Yon-Rogg and the rest of the crew and crash-lands on Earth. Haunted by intermittent and vague flashbacks, Vers finds that she recognizes many of the places and people she comes across. From here, her mission becomes as much about discovering the source of her new memories, and a potential past life on Earth, as it is about finding the Skrull intelligence she was originally after, in order to stop a planetary invasion and the bolstering of the Skrulls' forces.
As most of us probably know, Captain Marvel's actual name is Carol Danvers, and she did in fact have a life on Earth. But the nature of that life and how she forgot it, I will leave undisclosed.
The most interesting thing about Captain Marvel is how it breaks apart and rearranges the time-worn superhero plot structure, mainly in its second and third acts. It's hard to delve into how it does this without spoiling anything, but there's a pleasantly quiet moment in the middle of the film at which point you'll know that this movie is doing something different. And for the most part, it works. It keeps the story compelling at every beat and helps alleviate the potential tedium of watching yet another superhero gear up to face down their expected foe. Ben Mendelsohn turns in a delightfully weird performance as Talos, a villain whose role may not be as imposing as Josh Brolin's Thanos or Michael Keaton's Vulture, but is certainly unique and devlishly fun in its own right.
However, it may also be this upheaval of plot structure that makes the film so tonally and qualitatively uneven. The movie breezes by, thanks to a lot of levity, humor, and buddy chemistry between Vers and her new government-agent-friend Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, beautifully de-aged and de-grizzled for the '90s via some stellar VFX work), but it's when the film slows down to hit the emotional beats that it becomes apparent that the filmmakers are unsure how to believably communicate what it is they want to say. Fun, goofy, and campy dialogue can work for light-hearted comedic scenes; it's considerably less effective in the heavier ones. If I had to pick the worst lines in the film, most of them would be from serious scenes. And that kinda hurts.
This is surprising, coming from directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, whose work on Half Nelson and Sugar is proof that they understand how to expose the innards of a character, both overtly and subtextually—seriously, check those movies out, pronto. But this time around, it may be an issue of too many cooks; Captain Marvel features a whopping eight credits between story and screenplay, two of which are Boden and Fleck. Having so many on the writing team can often be to blame when a film feels inconsistent or unsure of itself, and Captain Marvel is both of those. By the end of the film, we definitely understand why Carol has done the things she has, and we have a pretty good idea of what she's learned on her journey, but we don't really get any moments to see her articulate (verbally or gesturally) her struggles to understand and learn from what's going on around her. Her emotional arc feels a tad too manufactured and easy in a few too many important moments.
Usually, MCU films get a least one of two things right, if not both: spectacle and character. Captain Marvel is the first in awhile that only does each of these kind-of-almost-right. The action sequences are definitely present, and Carol's powers allow for a few small moments we haven't seen in previous films, but largely the scenes are visually unremarkable, with Carol Captain America-punching a goon into a wall and then Iron Man-blasting another out the window. It's certainly fun to see Carol keep up her projected bravado and snark in the face of frustrating odds and waves of enemies; Larson does a good job capturing the physicality of Carol's strength and sense of humor. But there aren't really any sequences that I'll be clamoring to see again, and I even have a hard time picturing most of them in my head now.
It is a pretty film, at least, opting for more formalist lighting and camera angles that most MCU films; definitely keep up that trend, Marvel.
In the end, Captain Marvel is different enough in structure alone to stand out from the broader blockbuster crowd, but its inability to believably convey and unwillingness to deeply analyze its main character's emotions leave it feeling a bit dry, and without the added benefit of memorable boom-booms, the experience isn't all that impressive. I am certainly interested to see what they do with Captain Marvel moving forward, both in Avengers: Endgame and the MCU beyond, but they'll need to step up their game if they want her to be the tentpole they've been holding her up as.