Captain Marvel (2019) Review

"Why would I turn into a filing cabinet?"

-Talos

On the planet Hala, the capital of the Kree Empire, Vers (Brie Larson) is a member of the Kree Starforce, which protects the Empire, but she can't remember most of her past.  After a mission goes wrong, Vers finds herself on Earth and learns she has been on the planet before and has to figure out who she really is.

What Works:

This is by far the biggest role Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury has had in an MCU film and it's wonderful.  Since this is a prequel film and takes place in 1995, we get to see a Nick Fury who is much less serious and more fun.  Jackson is fantastic in this film and has some of the funniest moments in the film, especially in his interactions with a cat they encounter on their adventure.  Jackson and Larson have great chemistry and their scenes together are some of the strongest in the film.

I also have to give props to Ben Mendelsohn, who plays Talos, a shapeshifting antagonist, who's actions get Vers sent to Earth in the first place.  At first, I thought he was going to be another underwhelming Marvel villain, but there is a lot more going on with his character than meets the eye. He has solid motivation and is very funny.  

The shapeshifter aliens are a really fun group of enemies.  It definitely ups the tension and causes the main characters to not know who to trust.  It gives us some fun moments and interesting conflicts.

I also really enjoyed seeing some older Marvel characters in this film.  Ronan (Lee Pace), Korath (Djimon Hounsou), and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) all appear.  None of them get a whole lot to do, but I still appreciate it.

Finally, while the 3rd act isn't perfect, the final moment between Vers and Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) is extremely satisfying and enjoyable to watch.  I won't say anymore than that.

What Sucks:

The majority of my problems with Captain Marvel occur in the 1st act, which was really bad and hurt the structure and the storytelling for the rest of the film.  Vers is a character who has lost her memories.  That makes it really hard to connect with her as a character.  There isn't much there.  Now, one way to help this is to put us in her shoes from the get go.  The opening scene should have been Vers waking up and meeting Yon-Rogg and we learn everything about the Kree empire through her eyes.  This is a world we haven't seen much of before so at least we could be along for the ride with Vers and learn as she does.  Instead, this movie begins six years after Vers first wakes up with her memories gone and the movie does an extremely poor job of explaining to us what is going on in the Kree Empire and how this society works.  Throughout most of the first act, I had no idea what was going on and who was who.  It was very confusing and gave the film a rocky start.

To make things worse, this is a movie about Vers recovering her memories and finding out what happened to her, but we see most of her memories early in the film.  It's pretty easy for the audience to guess what happened to her.  There was one surprising detail, but, for the most part, her backstory was very obvious, but it wasn't obvious to Vers, so going along this journey was frustrating.  We knew more than she did, which isn't how to tell this story.  The filmmakers should have shown us far less during the visions of her past.  If they had cut down what we had seen, the twists, turns, and revelations that came later in the film would have been much more exciting.

Finally, Brie Larson's performance wasn't great.  I won't it hold it against her too much because she was in a tough spot.  How do you play a character with no memories?  She had very little to work with.  I've seen her do fantastic in other roles.  It just wasn't a great character.   Most of the funny parts, especially with Jackson, Larson does a fine job, but the more emotionally moments generally fall flat.  This makes the movie not as smooth as it could have been.  There are scenes that just don't work.

Verdict:

Captain Marvel definitely has problems; the first act is genuinely terrible and should have been completely different and the protagonist with no memories rarely works, but I still enjoyed the film.  Jackson and Mendelsohn are both great, the shapeshifters are fun, and there are plenty of funny and satisfying moments throughout.  It's definitely one of the weaker Marvel films, but it's still worth watching.

 7/10: Good