There's a dramatic thread running through Captain Marvel that makes perfect sense considering the film's standing as Marvel's first female-led superhero film, a whopping 21 movies into the Marvel Cinematic Universe's run. The movie poses that Carol Danvers, Brie Larson's titular hero (although she's never actually called "Captain Marvel" in the film), has been unfairly held back by men all her life, first by her father who didn't want her driving fast in the soapbox derby, then by her military superiors who didn't think a woman could cut it as a fighter pilot, and finally by her superhero mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), commander of the galactic Starforce, who thinks she should keep her emotions in check when she fights. Quite frankly, it's exactly the correct track the movie should take, considering the gender politics that have surrounded the film.
It's a bummer then that Captain Marvel never fully commits to this course. Carol's dad only pops up for a few brief seconds in a muddied flashback. Same goes for the resistance she meets in the military; it's briefly referenced and then quickly forgotten about thanks to the film's wonky structure. (Carol spends most of the movie not knowing exactly who she is or where she came from.) And even Yon-Rogg's teachings don't seem purposefully limiting or nefarious so much as they're comprised of "you must control your anger" bullshit cribbed from Star Wars. And because none of this stuff is given any real weight, Carol's eventual triumphs over the inferior men in her life never feel earned. She doesn't smash joyfully through the glass ceiling so much as she casually climbs on top of it. As a result, the movie ends up feeling superficial and uninspired: a noble yet failed attempt to launch a female hero to the top of the MCU food chain to correct for an embarrasing 10 years of imbalance. I support Marvel's intentions, but you need more than good intentions to make a superhero soar.
Captain Marvel opens with Carol going by the name "Vers" (pronounced "veers") and serving on the aforementioned Kree Starforce, a space-based strike team that would quickly dismiss the Guardians of the Galaxy for not having their shit together. The Kree are an alien race at war with the Skrulls, a different group of extraterrestrials who can shape-shift to perfectly disguise themselves as any humanoid creature they set eyes on. A mission to rendezvous with a Kree spy goes bad, and Carol is captured by the Skrull leader, Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), who starts poking around in her lost memories. That triggers Carol's realization that she might not be a member of the Kree race at all. In fact, she likely lived a forgotten life as a human on Earth before some mysterious event gave her super abilities. She escapes toward home in a malfunctioning space pod and crash-lands into a Blockbuster Video circa 1995, where she quickly catches the notice of a young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, putting Marvel's de-aging tech to the test).
The movie then turns into a sort of buddy action-adventure flick (fitting considering the decade it's set in) where Carol and Fury must follow a string of clues to determine what the Skrulls are up to, fill in the gaps of Carol's swiss-cheese memory, and eventually allow Carol to become the hero the MCU desperately needs her to be. None of this is particularly enthralling, especially during film's exposition-heavy first half. What action exists in the early-goings — a shoot-out on an alien planet and a battle inside a terrestrial subway — is unimaginatively conceived and poorly executed. Meanwhile, Captain Marvel never ever stops reminding you that it's (a) set in the 90s and (b) a prequel. There are Radio Shack and "boy, computers sure used to be slow" jokes. There is an endless string of eye-rollingly on-the-nose needle drops. (Of course there's a fight scene set to No Doubt's "Just a Girl." Of course there is.) And whereas I never particularly yearned to know how Fury lost his eye, now that I've gotten the answer I wish I could just forget about it entirely. I swear to god if I catch any of you Solo haters giving a pass to the more overtly prequel-ly stuff in this movie, we are going to have some words.
The film does pick up a bit of steam in the second half thanks to a few neat-ish plot twists and a performance by Mendelsohn that proves to be his most interesting in a recent string of blockbuster roles. Even buried behind Skrull-mask latex, he's put to better use here than he was in either Rogue One or Ready Player One. He's had pretty good luck with Captain Marvel directors/co-writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who were also responsible for my personal favorite Mendelsohn performance in the low-key gambling drama, Mississippi Grind. Except here he's not the lead of the movie, which is kind of a problem considering he proves more investing than Carol herself. I don't necessarily think that's Larson's fault, as the script doesn't do the character any favors by having her be a blank cipher for most of the film's run-time. But you never really get a sense of who Carol Danvers is and what she believes in, and Larson is unable to muster up any grand swell of charisma to fill those voids. Jackson is his usual reliable self, although his role serves as comic relief a bit too much for my tastes. The de-aging CGI is nifty, although it's less convincing when they use it on Clark Gregg's returning Phil Coulson, who sadly only gets a few short scenes.
Overall, the end result here is just so very unfortunate. Marvel is going to need not just female heroes, but interesting new heroes of all types as it moves into a post-Avengers: Endgame world where some of their most beloved characters will likely be permanently retired in one way or another. My guess is Captain Marvel was designed with the expectation that she would help carry that torch into the MCU's next phase, but there's nothing in her origin story to suggest that she's engaging enough to lead the franchise into a new era. Maybe the Russo brothers will be able to give her a jolt when she appears in Endgame next month. If not, the waiting game will be on again … not for Marvel's first solo female superhero, but for their first one who proves to be worth the wait.
