I went into Captain Marvel as blind as I could. I never watched the trailers, and had only seen a couple screenshots or gifs, and a poster. I had heard of people absolutely loving it, some thought it was mediocre, and others hated it, so I was open to just about anything. What I watched is by far the worst of the MCU movies. The movie fails at its core, centered around a character that is confusing, unlikable, and what I can only describe as bipolar. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is a spoiler review of Captain Marvel. (The only thing you need to know from this movie before Endgame is she gets her powers from the Teseract, and she shows up on Earth)
The tribute to Stan Lee at the beginning was great with all of the images devoted to his participation in the movies. It's just a shame it's attached to such a bad movie. I hope they do it again before Endgame since that will probably have a larger audience than those who watch Captain Marvel.
The movie starts off introducing Brie Larson as Vers who has bad dreams and wakes up her team leader to train. This scene largely is exposition, yet forcing her to not use her powers doesn't pay off later. It's used as a cheap joke. By the time you get to that part of the movie, you're already bored or annoyed.
We're quickly introduced to her teammates with no more than a quick mention of their names if any. It was nice seeing Gemma Chan playing Minn Erva, since she does a great job on the UK show, Humans. There is no character exploration except for Captain Marvel saying Korath looks ugly, but he's obviously not. It just makes her look like a jerk. Also with Korath here, it further creates confusion as to the current timeline.
Their mission is to find a spy and bring him back from Skrull control before the Skrull find him. This is not really important because they just forget about him once it's revealed he's a Skrull. Vers even asks what happened to him, and he says he'll tell her after she tells him what she knows. (Spoiler: he doesn't).
The Skrull go through her memory looking for Dr. Wendy Lawson. However, they don't bother stripping Vers of her suit that does all sort of Space Tech stuff. There's some weird audio in this scene where Annette Benning's lines are sped up. This isn't the case with any of her other memories.
They would have gotten more intel out her, but she breaks free. She would have been easily subdued, but Talos the Skrull stops his men, saying "Wait!" Why? Why let her beat up your guys? Why let her run around and destroy the ship? Why let her escape out of a pod? You didn't have the information on Lawson's ship, so you obviously needed to interrogate Vers more.
I don't know what the intention was for Vers to scream back at a Skrull, but it was probably unintentionally funny. What's not funny is they showed Brie Larson's toes, twice. Ew.
Space Tech is a fickle thing. Our puny Earth technology can reenter a planet's atmosphere, but a Skrull escape pod? Nope, breaks up.
Vers lands in a Blockbuster. Her first instinct is to shoot Arnold Schwarzenegger's cardboard stand from True Lies. If this was a real person, what would she have felt if anything for killing an innocent person?
Seeing only humans on Earth, she doesn't connect that she is human. We learn later on that she's aware she was injected with Jude Law's Kree blood, so she knows she's not Kree.
Vers approaches a security guard and asks for communications equipment. He points her to a Radio Shack. Vers begins to set the tone for the movie of her being bipolar. The way she acts towards this guy, she never acts towards anyone else during the movie.
After hacking 1990s Earth tech with her Space Tech, she manages to boost the signal to Jude Law. Their call is cut short because the phone runs out of money, but it's never established how she would have paid for the initial call in the first place. This comes up later.
Agent Nick Fury and Agent Uncanny Coulson show up and start to ask her questions. Why do they show up for reports of her destroying a Blockbuster? It's never explained.
The Skrull show up and try to kill Vers, which makes no sense for later in the film. Vers chases a Skrull onto a subway train. This is where we get one our last Stan Lee cameos which is great. Not just because Stan Lee is on screen, but because of the meta nature of the scene of him reading a Mallrats script preparing for his role in that movie. However, the scene is ruined by Brie Larson for standing for a solid 5 seconds with a grin on her face for no reason.
Then we get to the punching an old lady scene that I saw as a gif. Rolling back, she only notices this because before boarding the train, the real old lady slams hard into Vers for no reason! Anyway, the fight ensues with some cool choreography, and interesting dynamic where everyone thinks she's beating up an old woman, even if she's as spry as Black Widow.
The Skrull escapes, but transforms before he does in front of Vers. Why? It's never explained.
Meanwhile on the ground, Fury has been racing through the streets, and they did a good job of not even hinting that Uncanny Coulson was a Skrull. The real Uncanny Coulson was left back at Blockbuster. They fight in the car, and Fury manages to crash the car, killing the Skrull, but he's unhurt. This makes far less sense later in the movie.
Fury gets out of the car and shows his badge to someone off camera that we never see. Um, okay. The really terrible part is when he announces he's with SHIELD. Why? You don't work for SHIELD, Fury. You work for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division, as was established in 2008's Iron Man. Only then did they start using SHIELD. It's not a one-off thing. He continues to call it SHIELD later in the film.
Vers has new memories now of her time as a pilot and her childhood. She looks for the name of a bar at an Internet Cafe. How doe she know how to operate a PC? How does she know how to operate 1990s Internet without the stupid-proofing that Google would provided 10 years later? How did she pay for her use of the computer? This is never explained. It also makes a scene later make far less sense.
Looking up Captain Marvel on IMDB, I half expected this guy to be listed as Misogynistic Biker #1, where he tries to hit on Vers. When she ignores him looking at a map, he tries again, asking for a smile. This is justification for her to steal his bike and clothes from a store nearby. They cut to her being dressed and riding away. Where's her space suit? Did she just strip naked in front of everyone and change into Earth clothes? If she stripped and changed, she managed to steal the guy's bike with everyone looking too.
They perform an autopsy on the Skrull where Fury learns Vers was spotted stealing a bike. This doesn't explain how he shows up where Vers is going before she gets there. She even changed clothes, so it' snot like people continued to spot her green suit. It's revealed here that his boss is a Skrull, which ruins a later scene that sets the whole thing up anyway.
The bar is in the middle of nowhere. Why was it so popular in Vers' memories? It's never explained. To prove Fury isn't a Skrull, Vers questions him, but she has no way of confirming his answers. Unless she knows about Earth more than just the galactic designation. To prove she's not a Skrull, she destroys private property by blowing up a jukebox. She could have just made her hand glow. So far, Vers is a thief and will nonchalantly destroy your property. A real hero we got here.
Fury knows about Project Pegasus that Lawson worked on, and takes her to a secret Airforce NASA joint base. They set up Nick Fury's name and everyone including his mama calls him Fury. This is the pointless setup.
Once inside, they're led to a waiting room being stonewalled. Fury uses his spy knowledge to unlock the door with a thumb print. Meanwhile, Vers sits there and does nothing when she could blast the door off, further complicating who this character actually is. I guess it's just a continuation of her being a dick to Korath. Fury sends a message to his boss where they are. How does he have pager reception inside a top secret mountain? It's never explained.
There's a cat on base that Fury gushes over like a dog. Of all the movies Fury has been in, this by far his most out of character, and it's all for plot reasons. Where did this cat come from? It's never explained.
They find exposition in some records about Lawson, and Vers finally finds proof she's from Earth. Hurr Durr. It's taken this long for the character to catch up to the audience.
Fury steps out to meet with his boss who has brought agents of Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. The boss tells them to stay on the top floor while he and Fury go to interrogate Vers. He let's slip calling him Nicholas. This would have been a cool moment like with the reveal of Uncanny Coulson as a Skrull, except we already know he is. Pointless setup is pointless.
Fury tricks him by getting off on a different floor, but he can't find Vers where he left her. All those agents left topside? Well, they magically appear with their boss searching for Fury and Vers.
They escape on a quinjet prototype it looks like, and they manage to fly clear across the US without being intercepted.
Arriving is Louisiana, they show up to visit Maria, her long time friend and her daughter Monica. This child actor is bad. Her lines come out forced and flat. The actress playing Judith in the current season of The Walking Dead is actually really good in comparison.
By now, we have an unlikable character with Vers who is told her name is Carol. The problem is, Carol has no new memories other than what was pulled by the Skrull interrogation, and nothing any of them say brings back memories. Carol is not growing in any sort of way. She's just showed pictures of her life, which for someone with amnesia is just going to be out of context images with the knowledge of the facts that "this happened."
Then the Skrull show up, but this time they don't want to kill her. Why now? Why did they try before? It's never explained.
The Skrull leader, Talos, says he has intel of what happened to her. Okay, this next scene is stupid on so many levels. He has this data from an Earth blackbox. Somehow it's been put onto a CD. It takes time for the CD-ROM to load. Carol questions what's happening when she should know how slow things load based on her time at the Internet Cafe. When the audio does load, it's being played on an old version of Windows Media Player. Why is that so accurate, but the loading of the CD-ROM is not consistent with that version of Windows?
Anyway, she hears a recording that turns into a flashback, so it's not entirely clear what is on the recording because half of the flashback she spends outside the cockpit, away from her radio. So the Skrull are not the enemy, but Jude Law and the Kree are.
This might be biased of me, but from the limited knowledge I have from the Fantastic Four cartoon in the 90s, and the now-deleted Marvel Heroes Omega, the Skrull are bad. The MCU is making them good now? I never really trust them, but suspend disbelief for this terrible movie's sake.
To convince Carol to help the Skrull, Maria emotionally validates her friend, but with no new memories, the scene doesn't make. She agrees, and the Skrull retrofit the quinjet to fly in space. Where did the Skrull get this technology? Their pods crash landed in the ocean.
Carol asks Maria to be her copilot, and her daughter helps with even worse acting than before. Monica helps redesign Carol's suit colors. This Earth kid knows how to manipulate Space Tech by pressing buttons that don't turn out like a bad MS Paint drawing.
While they're flying to space, Jude Law shows up to meet with Carol who is actually a Skrull. He kills the Skrull, and somehow knows they're in space, I honestly don't remember. But we do learn that Jude Law's blood flows in Carol. Which doesn't make sense why. She gained her powers from the core exploding while she was still human. Jude Law and Korath probably aren't Kree like the blue skins, so Jude Law would have been injected with Kree blood. But if Carol got his blood, then she's not getting pure Kree blood. And as we'll find out later, her abilities are more powerful than Kree, so why bother?
There is a funny exchange between Fury and Talos on the ship. Once in space, they have antigravity technology. Where did this come from? It's never explained.
They can't find the ship because it's cloaked. Carol uses her Kree suit to uncloak Lawson's ship. Why does her suit have control over that? If Lawson was in hiding to develop her FTL drive (why do this on a primitive planet like Earth?) why would she allow her ship to be decloaked by any Kree battle suit? It can't just be Carol's because Lawson died 6 years before Carol got her suit. This makes no sense.
They board the ship, taking the cat with them because Talos says it's dangerous, and Fury likes that it makes him scared. The cat up until this point always likes Fury. It's revealed that Lawson used the tesseract to power the FTL core, so Carol effectively got her abilities from an infinity stone. It's also revealed the ship has a ton of Skrull refuges, including Talos' family. This ship used for research can support this many people with food and life support for 6 years?
Jude Law and Carol's former teammates show up, but because the screen is so dark, it's hard to make out anyone but Minn Erva because she has a distinctive look. They capture everyone, and the next bit makes absolutely no sense. We've got three groups: The Skrulls, the humans, and Carol. They don't kill the refuges, they don't kill Talos, they are willing to kill the humans by ejecting them into space, but they don't wanna kill the cat because the scan says it's extremely dangerous. If the cat alien is the most dangerous, why not eject it into space?
Carol is taken to be hooked into the AI. Why? To give her a talking to, I guess. The AI access your mind, so nothing in that space is real. Yet Carol can use her powers inside. Okay, a manifestation of your strength to resist, but she removes the control chip from her neck inside the AI space. How does that change anything? Apparently it's been an inhibitor, but she didn't remove it in the real world. After this point, the movie falls flat on its face and even does a little scorpion with its feet.
A lesson in storytelling: Conflict is what creates tension. The risk of failure, a person's weaknesses, the different in abilities and powers between two opponents creates uncertainty that we don't know if the hero can succeed. You can show a taste of someone's power by beating up a low level goon, but the big bad is an even match.
Captain Marvel does none of this. She effectively becomes a Mary Sue where nothing, and I mean nothing can stop her. She's now stronger than Space AI. She takes out all of the Kree, while Fury and Maria help the Skrulls escape in the quinjet. Minn Erva gives chase in a ship. They fly to Earth and dog fight in what looks like the scene from Independence Day where Will Smith dog fights in the desert. There would be tension in this, except Maria is out maneuvering Space Tech with a quinjet prototype.
Also, the song choice of "I'm Just a Girl" by No Doubt was incredibly on the nose.
Ronan, played by Lee Pace not acting like Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy, shows up to bomb the crap out of Earth. Carol stops a missile by hitting its nose. Why didn't that cause it to explode immediately? She then flies into space where she activates her suit's mask. Part of her hair creates a mohawk which makes no sense because once the mask is gone, her hair fall flat, so why would the mask push her hair up and out of the mask? She destroys multiple Kree battleships, leaving Ronan to tuck tail and run. Why? Because this shoe-horned movie has to fit within the MCU. Also, this sets up the Kree have planet nukes for the most part. Why weren't they used to destroy Nova? Why try to land the ship when they can nuke from orbit? Captain Marvel has ruined the continuity of the MCU.
Even if Carol was a likeable character with depth and personality that was consistent, and had some character growth, it would have been cool to see her kicking butt destroying entire ships. But she is none of these things. Instead, I sat in the theater bored to the point of giving an exasperated sigh.
She lands on back Earth, to remove her mask. Jude Law wants a non-powered fight to prove he can beat her if only she ties both hands behind her back. The old "Throw away our guns and fight with our fists" crap was so annoying, that even when she shot him with her photon blast, I was just annoyed.
Carol gives a hand to him, but then drags his body to his pod, further proving how much of a dick she is, and not a hero. She sends him off to the Kree home planet.
At some point, the cat alien, who has never had a problem with Fury scratches his eye. This is Soylo level of "how did this happen?" There's a scene later where Uncanny Coulson asks if it's true a Kree cut his eye for refusing to cooperate. You wanna set up the joke? Fine. But the cat scratched him for no reason. It was just shoehorned in to effectively belittle Nick Fury's badassery. They also make her the reason they're called the Avengers in the first place.
Carol gives Fury the enhanced pager, and says she'll take the Skrull to a safe place and end the war. The Skrull get on Lawson's ship and Carol flies up into space without her mask on. Why does she not need it now? Also, where are the Kree they left on the ship? Where did Korath go? It's never explained.
The midcredits scene has Carol show up on Earth right behind the remaining Avengers. Why is her acting so different from the rest of the movie? She sounds incredibly meek.
Finally, after waiting through all of the credits, we get to witness the cat alien vomit the tesseract it ate to carry back to Earth. So a cat throwing up: pretty much sums up Captain Marvel.
No comments:
Post a Comment