Movie Review: Captain Marvel

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Creative introduction to a new Marvel superhero

Cons: A few niggles

The Bottom Line:

New superhero

Creative introduction

In a fun movie

Fun Twist on an Origin Story

I hadn’t heard of Captain Marvel until Marvel Studios announced they would be creating a movie for this character.  Considering my lack of comic book knowledge, this isn’t completely surprising.  However, I put it on my must watch list since I figured I’d need to see it to be ready for the next Avengers movie when it comes out next month.  I’m glad I did because I really enjoyed it.

As the movie opens, we meet Vers (Brie Larson), a member of the Kree.  This race is caught in a war with the Skrulls, an alien race that can transform themselves into any other person or animal they’ve seen.  Vers has spent the last six years training to be part of their elite military squad under the direction of Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).  She has no memory of her time before she started training, but she accepts that and uses it to drive her to train harder.  It has paid off because she is finally ready to go out on her first mission.

However, the mission goes wrong and she finds herself tracking several Skrulls on Earth in 1995 where she also crosses paths with Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and a rookie agent named Coulson (Clark Gregg).  Will she be able to stop the Skrulls?

As superhero movies have flooded the market, I have complained about how similar the origin movies can be.  We see how they get their powers while also seeing them fight their first villain.  Yes, I need to be introduced to these heroes myself often, so I appreciate the background, but they can be extremely formulaic.  That wasn’t the case here.  Yes, we are introduced to Vers and get quite an interesting backstory, but it isn’t the typical first movie origin story, so I really enjoyed it.

That also means the plot has some unique and fun twists to it that kept me engaged between action scenes.  I did think by the time we got to the climax things were a bit anti-climactic, but that might just be me.

 There is certainly plenty of action in the film.  This is a superhero movie, after all.  These action scenes usually involve some pretty heavy special effects.  All those effects were believable, including the effects to make Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg look 25 years younger.

The acting was mostly good.  Brie Larson has some scenes with a pre-teen, and I thought some of those scenes were forced, but that was my only complaint in the acting department.  As the star, Brie has a wide range of scenes to play, and she nailed the rest of them.  The rest of the cast is obviously having fun while working hard to make us believe their characters are real.

You’ll definitely want to stay through the credits.  There are two scenes, one that sets up Captain Marvel’s appearance in next month’s Avengers movie.  The second one is good for a laugh, but I’m wondering if it will play into the new movie as well.

Captain Marvel does a good job of introducing us to another superhero from the Marvel world.  If you care about staying up to date in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you’ll want to watch it, and you’ll have a lot of fun doing that.