Captain Marvel movie review

MOVIE TITLE: Captain Marvel

RATING: PG-13

LENGTH: 2 hours 4 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: B-

IN A NUTSHELL: This controversial superhero movie has comic book fans debating the actress choice for Captain Marvel, since the character has traditionally been a man. It’s meant as a prequel to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and is the 21st film in the franchise. I really wanted this movie to be MARVELous. It’s a decent start for this character, but a bit disappointing since we have seen better from the MCU.

I absolutely loved the tribute to Stan Lee at the very beginning. Thank you, Stan, for giving us so many years of Marvel magic.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

Some profanity
Kids might be confused by the timeline and back-and-forth story.
Lots of fighting and destruction.
The good news is that the villains aren’t super scary looking.
This is another female self-empowerment film that your daughters will like. It was appropriately released on International Women’s Day (March 8, 2019). Anna Boden is the first woman to direct a Marvel film. Girls, young and old, might like this merchandise:

Marvel Captain Marvel 6-inch Legends Captain in Costume Figure for Collectors, Kids, and Fans

THEMES:

What it means to be human.
We have more power than we even realize.
Be the best version of yourself.
Good vs. evil.
Free will.

THINGS I LIKED:

Academy Award winner Brie Larson is capable as the new face of Captain Marvel. She spent nine months training for the fight scenes by learning Judo, boxing, and wrestling.
The de-aging CGI work is unbelievably awesome. Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg looked amazing. Samuel L. Jackson had a great voice while singing one of the Marvelettes’ song.
Entertaining dialogue and banter.
Goose the cat is going to be a hit. Let the memes begin. It was named after Goose Bradshaw in Top Gun . Brie Larson is actually allergic to cats, so they used a puppet or CGI for the cat when she was in a scene with Goose. Goose was played by 4 different cats. I thought it was funny when Fury said, “Dam_it, Goose. Pick a side.” I wonder if Goose will be as popular as Frank the pug in Men In Black. In fact, many times, this movie felt like a wannabe Men in Black movie.
The soundtrack was effective by Pinar Toprak, the first woman to write a musical score for an MCU movie.
You certainly don’t have to wait long before the next action scene begins.
The train action sequence with the shape-shifting old lady “scrull” was really fun.
I liked the shout-out of the movie The Right Stuff
The space scenes were good and made me want to learn more about various planets.
I loved the Stan Lee cameo collection for the movie opening. Very touching. And the “live” cameo on the train! Awesome! I loved the expression on Captain Mare’s face when she saw him. In the scene, Stan repeats the words, “Trust me, true believer”, while reading a script, presumably Mallrats since this was supposed to take place in the 1990s. It was one of the last cameos he filmed before he died. There is supposed to be another one in Avengers: Endgame.
Australian Ben Mendelsohn was great as Talos and Keller.
There were some fun 1990’s references. Even the website for the movie shows a 1990’s look.
Lashana Lynch’s character (Maria Rambeau) provides the much-needed heart for the movie.
I love Agent Coulson from Agents Shield: Complete Series Seasons 1-4 DVD and was so happy to see him in this movie. He hardly ages in real life, so they probably didn’t have to do much digitally de-aging.
It’s helpful to learn more about the Kree to understand more details in the MCU.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

If you’ve never seen a superhero film before, this won’t be the one to covert you to comic books.
Visually, it doesn’t have a specific voice like many of the other MCU films have. In that regard, it’s almost bland. In fact, as I have been reading other movie reviews, I have noticed a lot of other film critics use the word “bland” too!
Brie Larson is talented, but her performance seemed a bit uneven. Maybe that was because of poor direction? Of course, we all felt sad that she had memory loss, but other than that, she was kind of bland. (That word again.) She just didn’t make us fall in love with her. One of the biggest issues is that we didn’t see her really struggle emotionally and be vulnerable, like all of the other superheroes out there. She started the film with power and just kept growing in power. There was never a moment when she was weak or hopeless and had to conquer her fears. She just flew around, blew things up, and tried to solve a mystery. That’s not exactly inspiring.
The emotion seemed forced at times.
Some of the transitions were clunky. The flashback sequences could be difficult for some people to follow. The timeline wasn’t handled well.
It feels like just an appetizer for what the Captain Marvel series might be.
The flip flop of characters being good or evil was kind of annoying.
The story about how Nicky Fury got his eye patch was LAME. I thought it was funny when he said, “It’s just a scratch” and the others shook their head “No.”
Why hasn’t Black Widow (Scarlett Johanson) gotten her own movie yet? Hopefully, the MCU will learn from the mistakes of this film so that Black Widow can have a really great one.

FUNNY LINES:

“Do you know how to fly this thing?” – Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) “Ummm…we’ll see.” – Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) “That’s a yes or no question.” – Fury
“I laugh on the inside.” – Korath (Djimon Hounsou)

INTERESTING LINES:

“There’s nothing more dangerous to a warrior than emotion.” – Yon-Rogg (Jude Law)
‘I want you to be the best version of yourself.” – Yon-Rogg
“I want to serve.” – Captain Marvel

“Then master yourself.” – Marvel (Annette Bening)