Film Review: CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019): An Empty Origin Story Movie that Steadily Declines into Boredom

Captain Marvel Review

Captain Marvel (2019) Film Review, a movie directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, and starring Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Algenis Perez Soto, Rune Temte, Gemma Chan, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Ben Mendelsohn, Lashana Lynch, McKenna Grace, Annette Bening, and Clark Gregg.

Captain Marvel is possibly Marvel Studio’s most lackluster superhero film-to-date. I say possibly because, full-disclosure, I have not seen Iron Man 3 or Thor: The Dark World. I have heard Thor: The Dark World is the worst Marvel film but it can’t be worse than Captain Marvel, not with its myriad of hemorrhagic problems.

Captain Marvel begins like an epic, high-end science fiction film on a faceted alien world that the viewer wants to get to know. The moment the film moves from that alien world, Hala, to a Skrull ship in Earth orbit, Captain Marvel slides into high-jinks, inappropriately placed jokes, subpar dialogue (accompanied by dubious facial expressions), an ineffective amnesia story-line, a baffling second act turn, and a descendant last thirty minutes of boredom featuring an overpowered superhero.

The sections of this review and analysis:

• The First Twenty Minutes
• Vers’ Personality Problem
• Hala Never Established as a Real World
• Torfa and the Silence
• The Skrull Trap
• The Memory Dump
• The Impact Inconsistency
• The Fish Out of Water
• The S.H.I.E.L.D. Continuity Error
• The Farm / Skrull Plot Turn
• The Infamous Bar Scene
• The Fun House Laboratory
• Lack of Gravitas in the Final Three Fight Scenes
• The Ending

The First Twenty Minutes

The first twenty minutes of Captain Marvel are the best written, paced, and acted segment of the film. It starts the film off with exactly the right tone – the new-comer trying to prove herself to her mentor and would-be commander. The moment Vers (Brie Larson) lifts her head off her pillow in her quarters on Hala, Captain Marvel feels right, like the viewer is in store for another Black Panther or Captain America: The First Avenger. This is exemplified by the line of dialogue “Want to fight?” and Vers’ first session with Super Intelligence (Annette Bening).

Vers’ Personality Problem

An anomaly happens during this time period in the film, however, one that the viewer immediately forgives because of how well everything else is going in Captain Marvel. Vers’ memories have been blocked (or suppressed) through trauma. Like a Nexus Six Replicant in Blade Runner, Vers has no past so nothing is informing her decision-making. There is no internal mechanism governing her emotions or how she acts except the stimuli in front of her and around her. This situation is similar to the one encountered by Henry Turner in Regarding Henry but far less extensive and extreme.

Not having a past, not having a childhood or memories, makes a person’s emotions and reactions unbalanced and unmetered, like in Blade Runner, because old lessons and codes of conduct have never been learned. To an extremely limited extent, a portion of this is present in Captain Marvel e.g. Yon-Rogg telling Vers to restrain her impulses. Here’s the problem – coupled with Vers’ impulse control struggle, since Vers has no past and the people around her are regimented, restrained, and soldier-like, why isn’t Vers? That type of disposition would fit her current mental state and would be reflective of the stimuli around her. Instead, Vers constantly presents a personality in Captain Marvel atypical to everyone and everything around her, severely hurting the amnesia storyline that this portion of the film is trying to present to the viewer.

What external or internal stimuli is generating Vers’ jokes and quips? Her other Starforce team members? The Torfa mission in Captain Marvel is implied to be Vers’ first official mission with them. Her dreams? Human-beings have nightmares but that type of dream doesn’t produce a jovial waking personality.

Vers should not be an example of military extremism like Todd-607 from Soldier but she also should not be Ms. Happy-go-lucky. Not with Yon-Rogg and Super Intelligence as her primary conduct examples.

Though problematic, this personality issue doesn’t hurt the film in a serious way yet because the viewer is still busy watching and taking in the non-Earth situations and locales.

Hala Never Established as a Real World

Unlike the time and care put into Wakanda and Wakandians in Black Panther, the viewer is not introduced to Hala or the Kree in the same fashion in Captain Marvel. If this had happened in Captain Marvel, the Kree would have been given more development as a race. They would still be generic bad guys but it would have shown the viewer what the Kree were fighting and dying for, adding to the patina of their motivations.

This lack of world building also effects Vers and her un-momentous Starforce choice in the third act of Captain Marvel. When Vers ‘resigns’ from Starforce, there isn’t an ounce of loss or reflection in Vers that she is giving up the military position and the team that she had aspired to join. It does not bother her that she is forsaking the only world (Hala) that she has known for the last six years, the friends she has there, the food, the sights, and sounds that are now all too familiar (with a moment in the film for Vers like: “I’ll never walk those streets again, smell Red Bread baking, commune with Super Intelligence, visit other worlds.”). None of this happens in the film because the writers of Captain Marvel never establish Hala as a real planet, a real society filled with recognizable trappings, the things that make home, home. In Captain Marvel, Hala and Starforce are one-dimensional, disposal canvases on which only narrative utility exists. Thus Hala and Starforce are sizable missed opportunities for Captain Marvel, Vers, and her non-existent internal struggle e.g. Hala could have represented an aching push and pull dynamic within Vers during (and after) her Starforce decision.

It is recognized, however, that there is no real Starforce decision to be made for a person of conscience when it is revealed that they are part of a genocidal army but no sense of loss within Vers is unrealistic.

Torfa and the Silence

When Vers’ Starforce unit goes to Torfa, the military reality established in Captain Marvel begins to erode. The Navy S.E.A.L.-style entry onto the alien beach – perfect. The out-of-water exfiltration – issue-ladened. Real soldiers hold their rifles up to their eyes (or goggles) as they step out of the water to quickly shoot any enemy in their line of sight. Even if the beach shows no enemy personnel, the eye / rifle, out-of-water exfiltration modus operandi would still be reflexive in real, high-end soldiers.

Also problematic is the fact that none of the Starforce soldiers have silenced weapons. How does that make sense when they are on a covert mission to quietly extract someone? If one of the Starforce soldiers shoots their un-silenced weapon, the team’s presence will be revealed. That is especially true of Vers whose Photon Blast is noisy yet she carries no silenced weapon either (not even a knife). In fact, Vers carries no weapon at all besides her ‘Blasters,’ technically the only weapons that she needs, except on a mission where noise discretion is an absolute necessity.

As was mentioned earlier, the beginning of Captain Marvel, including this Torfa portion, is the best part of the film. What has been mentioned up to this point in the review are nitpicks that would have fleshed-out plotlines, added missing logic, and made good scenes great.

Keeping that in mind, the Torfa scene should be viewed through the same lens one would view John McTiernan‘s Predator. Like Blain Cooper’s Mini-gun used at the beginning of Predator, the surrounding movie up to this point in Captain Marvel is so good that the viewer goes with the exhibited military imprecision.