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Movie Review: “Captain Marvel”

“Captain Marvel”

Release Date: March 7, 2019

Running Time: 124 mins

Directed by: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Starring: Brie Larson

              Samuel L. Jackson

             Ben Mendelsohn

            Jude Law

Almost 11 years ago, “Iron Man” was released. With that, what we now know as the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or MCU, was born. Since then, 19 additional films have been made, introducing new characters and storylines and further developing familiar ones. All of this culminated in last year’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” a movie with so many characters and so many plotlines it should have been completely incomprehensible. It was not, however. This can be attributed to the immense amount of careful planning and long-term thinking done by the producers to create a comprehensible universe across many movies.

The common problem with movies in the MCU is the films which are spent establishing these characters and plot lines are often rather bland and forgettable. With few exceptions, the movies are really only worth watching so you can know what is going on in the huge, ensemble “Avengers” movies. The producers have outlines for each movie, and they generally do not allow for much creativity and input on the part of their directors and writers.

In the grand scheme of things, all “Captain Marvel” had to do was establish a character who we have been told will be integral to the upcoming “Avengers: Endgame.” It does this, but it manages to be more creative in presentation than the average MCU origin film.  

Since 99 percent of the movie takes place in the year 1994—well before the established MCU timeline begins—the writers had more leeway with the information it presents. We learn more about Nick Fury in this movie than in all of the previous movies combined, and it really adds some much-needed depth to his character. Samuel L. Jackson (“Pulp Fiction,” “Unbreakable”) convincingly pulls off the younger, less grizzled version of the character he has been playing for more than a decade. I wish they would have given similar attention to Clark Gregg’s Agent Coulson, given the large role he played in the early MCU films. The bits of backstory we do get, however, are still more than satisfactory.   

“Captain Marvel” draws from a wide variety of influences, from “The French Connection” and “Top Gun” to “Star Wars” and “Star Trek,” not to mention taking quite a bit from the buddy-cop genre. I even detected some “Toy Story” influence in the way the way the main character and her space warrior comrades talk. I am really not sure if it was at all intended, but I could not help but think of these characters as a live action version of Star Command united in their fight against Zerg.

Not all of these influences work well—“The French Connection” part with the car chasing the path of a train with a high profile suspect on board was an extremely odd choice which did not work for me—but they work most of the time. The aerial and space dogfights work rather well.

Oscar award-winning actress Brie Larson (“Room,” “Kong: Skull Island”) fits naturally into the MCU. This is her movie, and she oozes charisma during the comedic scenes and strength and power in the action scenes.

There is really no questioning what the best part of the movie is, though. The banter between Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson was super entertaining, and their getting together marked the point of the movie where it stopped being annoyingly bad.

As I have not so subtly hinted at, I really did not like the first act of this movie at all. It almost seems like an entirely different group of people worked on this part. There is an insane amount of point of view shots in this section. Not only is this done in an overly obnoxious way, almost as if the directors are shouting, “Look at how cool this shot looks,” but many of these shots are blurry and zoom in and out unnaturally. This was an ambitious attempt to increase realism and make us feel as if we really were seeing through the eyes of the character, but it just fell flat completely.

The writing in the first act was also noticeably worse than in the next two acts. There is an excruciatingly drawn-out flashback scene which randomly jumps around to various memories the main character has. It is clunky, unnecessary and kind of embarrassing.

The poor quality of the first act leads to many of the characters introduced in it to be painfully uninteresting when they show back up later in the film. This means the villain is forgotten before the credits roll. The human characters are infinitely more believable and interesting.

Overall, “Captain Marvel” ranks somewhere in the top half of the MCU films in terms of quality. It would be much higher if the first act was not as abhorrent as it was, but the rest of the film does a decent job of getting a crazy runaway train back on track. Anyone looking forward to the new “Avengers” movie next month will definitely want to check this one out.

Drew Eckhart is a sophomore history and pre-law major from Edmond, OK. He has loved movies for as long as he can remember but thinks his passion really began when he watched “The Dark Knight” for the first time in theaters. His favorite type of movie blends comedy and drama seamlessly, and he loves great action films. In Drew’s free time, he enjoys reading and playing video games, as well as watching TV and movies. His favorite TV show is “BoJack Horseman” and his favorite movie is “Whiplash.”

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