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

Brie Larson Captain Marvel

Table of Contents

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

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.

The Skrull Trap

The Skrull’s trap on Torfa is a badly written plot-point. Who are the Skrulls trying to ensnare with their trap? It can’t be Vers. The Skrulls have no way of knowing that it will be her Starforce unit sent to Torfa to exfiltrate the Kree spy. So if not Vers, who are the Skrulls trying to capture with their Torfa trap? Did the Skrulls execute all of that artifice to trap some random Starforce soldier?

It’s not that the Skrulls are morons. They are not to blame for this idiotic plot-point. It’s the writers behind this plot-point, Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, whom are the culprits. These same writers also believe that the viewer is blind and will not see the profound logic problem that this plot-point represents.

Once again, and please remember, this takes place in the good portion of Captain Marvel. Everything up to this point is forgiven, even the Skrulls’ nonsensical trap. With any film, however, there is a breaking-point where the bad equals, then exceeds, the good. The “equals” portion of this transition period happens during what should be one of the best moments in Captain Marvel – Vers waking up on a Skrull ship and her subsequent escape. After she breaks out of her restraints, the “bad exceeds the good” portion of Captain Marvel‘s script begins multiplying like an infection to such an exponential degree that it is impossible to ignore, forgive, and not laugh at in the most derisive way.

The Memory Dump

What starts as an intriguing and serious scene with Vers’ blocked memories being probed by the Skrulls quickly turns comical a situation that should otherwise be gripping and perilous.

Unlike when Tony Stark fights to free himself in an Afghanistan cave in Iron Man, Vers’ break for freedom on the Skrull ship has zero tension. The moment Vers gets free, it’s either a slap-stick display or she beats everyone up with ease. In the Tony Stark scene, there was a suspension of disbelief. The viewer did not know if Tony Stark was going to survive because the odds were so stacked against him and he had so few resources at his disposal. Stark was the underdog, the funny, charismatic guy thrown into a situation in which a single wrong turn would be his end.

Vers, on the other hand, is carefree during her break-out attempt, as if she is jogging through a mall with upset mall guards on her heels. There is no challenge to her escape, or fear, or risk of failure. If the character on-screen can not care less about the perilous situation they are in, why should the viewer? Vers’ reaction to her predicament takes the viewer completely out of the scene to the point of non-engagement. The viewer is reduced to watching a person with no shoes on run around the screen as laughably-inept Putty Patrollers show up to get beaten up.

For all intents and purposes, this scene is a harbinger of what is to come in Captain Marvel.

– Non-review Aside Begins –

When Vers corners Talos (Ben Mendelsohn) and asks why he put all this stuff in her head and he retorts the memories had always been there (to paraphrase), a very interesting response in that moment would have been if Vers demanded that her mind to be restored to its previous state, to the puzzlement and chagrin of Talos. Vers would have been aware, even then, that she didn’t want the images and feelings that were now floating through her mind, that she wanted to be the current version of herself. This would have instituted a parallel story-line in Captain Marvel – while there was an external struggle going on in the film around Vers, there would have been an substantive internal one going on within her as well.

A different way to handle the “Vers Request” would have been for Vers not to make the aforementioned request of Talos (which would, admittedly, be lunacy) but to make the request of Yon-Rogg when she calls him from C-53.

Vers tells Yon-Rogg what happened with the mind probe, that she thinks that it isn’t a Skrull trick. That she can feel this person, this stranger. That the person in these memories is real and that she is that person. That she is being overwhelmed with nameless ghosts and situations that seem as alien to her as C-53.

As she speaks, Yon-Rogg listens patiently, intently. Then Vers asks “Can Super Intelligence put my mind back the way it was?”

“It can try Vers. Remember your training. It will help you.”

Then, like in the film, Yon-Rogg tells Vers to stay put, to marshal her impulses, and for Att-Lass (Algenis Pérez Soto) to max out the engines to get them to C-53 as soon as possible. Yon-Rogg then clasps his hands under his chin thinking to himself, worried about the student that he has grown fond of and the potential enemy that lurks within her.

– Non-review Aside Ends –

This sequence and subtext would have added another layer to Vers, Yon-Rogg, and Captain Marvel, whom like almost every other element in the film, are in desperate need of depth.

The Impact Inconsistency

Vers coming to C-53 (Earth) in Captain Marvel, like Steve Rogers being transported from 1942 to 2011 in Captain America: The First Avenger, is inevitable. What is not inevitable in Captain Marvel is the gigantic inconsistency that it presents to the viewer during the Skrull-ship-to-Earth transit scene. If Vers can not get hurt by falling from the sky through the roof of a Blockbuster video store, slamming against the floor underneath it (with no physical damage whatsoever), how does Yon-Rogg make Ver’s nose bleed during their sparing match? It is a complete contradiction. So Vers can get hurt by a simple punch to the face but falling through metal and wood at 60-90 miles-per-hour and being bashed up against concrete at the conclusion of the fall causes no physical damage?

The question that you are asking yourself is how does Captain Marvel‘s writers explain this contradiction in the film? This is how they explain it – they don’t. Instead, they either expect the viewer not to notice or if they do notice, not to care.

In Avengers: Infinity War, when the Outriders rip into Iron Man’s Hulkbuster armor with their claws and teeth yet use neither on the flesh and blood characters, the viewer doesn’t notice because so much is going on all at once. In Captain Marvel, when the aforementioned contradiction occurs, its just Vers on-screen. There is no distraction from the massive refutation that the viewer sees. It just sits there for the viewer to mull over in their mind and mouth like a wad of foul-tasting phlegm.

When a film breaks its own rules, it breaks its ability to tell a credible story and destroys the trust the viewer has in the screenwriter and the film. If a screenwriter introduces a cause and effect then violates that rule in another scene, what is the viewer really watching? An exercise in antithetical screenwriting?

The Fish Out of Water

Vers on Earth, because of the memory wipe, should be the brilliant fish-out-of-water segment of Captain Marvel, like Diana Prince in Europe in Wonder Woman or the U.S.S. Enterprise crew in San Francisco in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Vers on Earth should be one of the most rewarding and comedic sections of Captain Marvel. Instead, the-fish-out-of-water segment of Captain Marvel is scene-after-scene of a badly written, constructed, and acted narrative.

The latter lands squarely on Brie Larson’s shoulders. Her dialogue and accompanying facial expressions from the moment she bumps into a security guard to the moment the Skrull on the train escapes, are incongruous, odd, and out of place to: a.) the situations (e.g. why does she smirk at the old man, Stan Lee, on a train filled with innocent bystanders while hunting a killer alien soldier? What’s humorous about that?) and b.) the type of person she is (intergalactic military and an amnesiac).

When it comes to writing and scene construction, there is a choppiness and idiocy to the early Earth events in Captain Marvel: Example 1.) Vers just takes S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson )’s word on it that he is Earth law enforcement when she is dealing with shape-shifting aliens? Example 2.) How is an trained U.S. Air Force pilot and Kree Starforce soldier restrained by a gaggle of untrained civilians on a locomotive? Vers knows a myriad of wrist moves and take-downs and doesn’t use any of them to free herself so she can capture or kill her target? Why? Example 3.) Instead of punching the old lady Skrull, why doesn’t Vers use her Photo Blast and kill the Skrull on the spot in the train? Her objective is to stop the Skrulls from getting the light-speed engine and she starts a banal fist fight with a Skrull (who just tried to kill her) when she has two lethal weapons at her disposal?

When faced with this level of incomprehensibility and utter degradation of the screenwriting profession, the faithful fanboy may acknowledge the above, chew his or her popcorn, mutter something about Avengers: Endgame, and concentrate on the explosions and fist-i-cuffs present in Captain Marvel. This is probably a wise move since they already paid $15-$20 to see the film in-theater. The connoisseur of the superhero genre who does not deign to shut off his or her brain, however, will see this entire section of the film as a magnificently wasted opportunity created by dolts who unfortunately carry the moniker of ‘screenwriter.’

The S.H.I.E.L.D. Continuity Error

Did anyone proof read the screenplay to Captain Marvel before it was finalized into the shooting script?

If someone did, how does that person or group of people, explain the S.H.I.E.L.D. inconsistency between Iron Man and Captain Marvel? In Iron Man, which takes place after Captain Marvel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline, the running joke in that film is that Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) constantly refers to the organization that he works for as the “Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.” It is only in the third act of Iron Man that Coulson announces that the organization now goes by the acronym S.H.I.E.L.D.

In Captain Marvel, Agent Coulson and Fury both call the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division “S.H.I.E.L.D.” when talking about the organization they work for, thirteen years before that acronym is created in Iron Man.

How is that possible?

This is a major instance of sloppy writing, copy-editing, and script supervision by Marvel Studios during the production of Captain Marvel. How did this make it into the film? Did any of the people that wrote this lackadaisical script actually see Iron Man? Did anyone who rehearsed this script see Iron Man and point out this blatant continuity inconsistency? Doesn’t Marvel Studios have a M.C.U. historian that reads film scripts before they roll into production to catch continuity errors like this? If not, they should. Marvel made themselves look like amateurs with this unforced error.

The Farm / Skrull Plot Turn

Once Vers reaches U.S. Air Force pilot Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch)’s home towards the end of the second act of Captain Marvel and the perfunctory amnesiac, past-discovery sequence begins, the entire film slows down. I don’t mean the slow down that happens in Joss Whedon‘s Avengers: Age of Ultron during the farm sequence where the viewer learns meaningful things about the on-screen characters. I’m referring to the hackneyed, abyss type-of-slow-down that Captain Marvel tumbles into where cartoon bad guys, sub-par reversals, and flat reveals exist.

In its writing and how it is handled, this is the most boring section of Captain Marvel and features a tedious plot turn – the Skrulls are good guys and the Kree are the bad guys, with Talos being a jovial and proper gentleman. It is a dull, unimaginative plot twist with no foundation, whatsoever, in the film. It literally comes out of nowhere and is supposed to introduce a positive and rewarding new element to the narrative i.e. shake things up while upping the dramatic ante. It does not accomplish that goal because the plot twist is pathetic. This reveal and plot turn makes the film and the narrative worse, not better.

A good plot turn or late script reveal, like in Christopher Nolan‘s The Prestige, ameliorates the narrative, makes the viewer question and revisit previous scenes (e.g. seeing characters in a new light), and galvanizes the remainder of the film. This took place during the box scene in David Fincher‘s Seven and Esther’s true identity moment in Jaume Collet-Serra‘s Orphan. The reveal / plot-turn in Captain Marvel immediately flat-lines because: a.) the viewer doesn’t care about anyone or anything on-screen when it occurs and b.) the banal nature of the plot twist.

The Infamous Bar Scene

The bar scene where Agent Fury mysteriously finds Vers is entirely illogical and may be the worst scene in Captain Marvel.

Case and point – Vers endeavors to determine if Nick Fury is in fact Nick Fury. How does she know, regardless of his answers, if he is telling her the truth or not? Vers doesn’t know Fury, has no personal or professional knowledge of him. How does she know, based upon his answers, that Fury isn’t: a.) a Skrull, b.) a criminal, or c.) some out-of-work actor pretending to be C-53 law enforcement? Vers does not know, which means she should not trust Fury. Vers has no way of assessing the validity of Fury’s answers so this horrendous scene serves no purpose in the film’s narrative. Since the scene serves no purpose, why is it in the film?

What were the screenwriters going for with this worthless scene? It’s like the viewer is watching a deleted scene that has been reintegrated back into the main film.

If the screenwriters had approached Vers and Fury from a serious perspective during this scene (and their initial meeting), Vers wouldn’t have trusted Fury for a second. That is what an intelligent and cautious soldier would have done, especially after what had happened on Torfa. The best course of action for Vers would have been to go it alone. Then Vers would have known with one hundred percent certainty that no Skrull was present.

Marvel, on the other hand, wanted a buddy-comedy starring Nick Fury and this appaling bar scene is the result of that desire.

The Fun House Laboratory

The fun house in the third act of Captain Marvel, Mar Vell (Annette Bening)’s hidden laboratory, is filled with 90’s nostalgia, games, equipment, containment cells, No Doubt, empty fight scenes, a Flerken, and the Tesserac (how did that end up there?).

What it isn’t filled with is tension.

This section of Captain Marvel is the definition of anti-climatic. Following the narrative disasters at the farm and bar, a slippery nail is thrust into a coffin slicked with tears from sardonic laughter. That laughter is at the steep declivity of Captain Marvel‘s plot-line.

This segment of Captain Marvel should house the largest gaggle of key moments in the film, the apex of Vers’ storyline i.e. Vers’ old team coming to retrieve her, that confrontation, and the moment Vers confronts Yon-Rogg about her past. These moments happen, sort of, but in a lukewarm, loosey-goose way. There is no weight to any of them. Vers, Yon-Rogg, and the Starforce team have no emotional depth thus they are incapable of displaying any, even when the film will benefit from it. Scenes abroad the fun house contain physical drama (e.g. the fights and the escape) but the scenes are dead when it comes to emotional tumult. Because of that, there is no emotional engagement during any of them for the viewer.

The scenes abroad Mar Vell’s ship are more concerned with Flerken / Groot jokes than any type of pivotal moment between reunited pupil and teacher. This type of narrative decision is emblematic of nearly the entire film.

Lack of Gravitas in the Final Three Fight Scenes

Screenwriters Boden, Fleck, and Robertson-Dworet show in the third act of Captain Marvel that they do not know what they are doing when it comes to sequencing or escalation in a screenplay.

What is the point of watching Vers fight Yon-Rogg at the end of the film after she is super-powered, has already beaten him and her old team, destroyed Kree missiles, and a Kree warship single-handedly?

The very proposition of said fight is anti-climatic and pointless by the time it occurs in the film.

It is equivalent to watching Rey fight the Praetorian guard in Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Rey is so overpowered with The Force by that point, having already beaten the trilogy’s main villain in the previous film, that the viewer knows the Praetorians do not stand a chance.

It’s the same with Vers vs. Yon-Rogg in the third act of Captain Marvel (and every other opponent she faces in the film) after she fully powers-up.

A more effective sequencing and escalation during this pivotal portion of the third act would have been: 1.) Vers fights Yon-Rogg (following an emotional dialogue exchange), 2.) then Vers fights the remainder of her former team (again, emotionally gut-wrenching for her because she likes them. Vers barely survives i.e. there are real stakes in the fight), and 3.) Vers powers up, heals herself, destroys the Kree missiles, and one of the Kree fleet ships.

That sequencing and escalation would have produced a rich and rewarding third act in Captain Marvel.

The viewer would have watched Vers face an escalation in the level of opponent she fought. The viewer would see Vers rise to the occasion, defeat an enemy only to face a far greater threat. At each escalation, there would have been greater stakes, greater reward, and greater mental strife for Vers because she would be doing things that part of her did not want to do.

Through Boden, Fleck, and Robertson-Dworet’s slipshod sequencing of the aforementioned third act events, this up-scaling, present in Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger, does not occur in Captain Marvel.

Instead, the viewer just watches overpowered Vers beat-up everyone and everything on-screen. It’s absolutely boring because everything thrown at her is irrelevant. Nothing in the film at that point can defeat her, she can’t be hurt, and there is no peril.

The Ending

Vers leaves our solar system at the end of Captain Marvel and the viewer leaves his or her movie theater seat, not caring about Vers, where she is going, or who she will encounter when she gets to her destination.

Rating: 2/10

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