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Brie Larsen is Captain Marvel - yah boo sucks Trolls! |
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Cast: Brie Larson (Carol Danvers/Veers), Samuel L Jackson
(Nick Fury), Jude Law (Yon-Rogg), Ben Mendelsohn (Talos/Keller), Djimon Hounsou
(Korath), Lee Pace (Ronan the Accuser), Lashana Lynch (Maria Rambeau), Gemma
Chan (Minn-Evra), Annette Bening (Supreme Intelligence/Mar-Vell/Dr Wendy
Lawson), Clark Gregg (Phil Coulsen)
After almost 11 years, the big criticism of the Marvel
Cinematic Universe has been that it had never made a film with a woman as the
lead. Sure, we’d had various strong female characters, but never had one been
trusted with headlining a movie. Well the studio has put that right with Captain Marvel, a hugely enjoyable, if
not exactly groundbreaking, superhero origins story that can stand up with some
of the best origin movies the studio has produced.
In the Kree civilisation, Veers (Brie Larson) is in training
to take her proper place in the Star Force, under the tutelage of her mentor
Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). But she’s struggling to control her immense powers, with
her dreams plagued by strange visions and half memories of a planet that looks
to us viewers a lot like Earth. After a Star Force mission goes wrong, Veers is
captured by the shape-shifting Skrulls and their leader Talos (Ben Mendelsohn),
her memory being searched for a time on Earth that she doesn’t remember.
Escaping, she finds herself on Earth in 1995, and quickly allies with SHIELD
operative Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson, impressively digitally de-aged) to find
out what the Skrulls want. But is everything as it appears? And what will
happen as Veers starts to remember her true identity, as long-missing air-force
test pilot Carol Danvers?
Captain Marvel I
guess you could say is not an ambitious film. It largely sits pretty close to
the well-established Marvel formula for introducing a new character, and it
presents a series of visuals, fights and general tone mixing light-jokes with
action beats extremely well. It’s a very professionally assembled product.
However, what makes it work is the strain of emotional truth, and an interest
in character as the driving force for events, that runs right through the
centre of the film. It’s a testament to the imaginative and original direction
from Boden and Fleck that at the centre of each clash we see, not the action
and the pyrotechnics, but the emotion and character that give these things
meaning.
They are also helped by an interesting plot, with some very
decent twists, that throws the viewers into the deep end and carefully
drip-feeds us information at the same pace as Carol picks it up. This also helps
hugely for investing in Brie Larson’s Carol Danvers, a character who doesn’t
know who she is and where she came from. Brie Larson does a terrific job,
crafting a character “strong and determined”, but also witty, impulsive, brave,
caring, decent and rather sweet with a strong moral compass that clearly, from
the start, governs all her actions. It’s a fine performance and Larson is
equally convincing in the film’s lighter, funnier moments as she is when banging
heads together.
That helps keep the tone of the film pretty consistent as it
heads through various twists and turns and rugpulls. Now I am sure some of
these twists would be seen coming by anyone immersed in Marvel comicbook lore,
but for us Muggles I appreciated the reveals about several characters defying
expectations. The film also avoids false tension – a character is so obviously
a shapeshifted replacement, it’s a relief that the film confirms this in
minutes and the characters work it out shortly after. It’s a smart way for the
film to fool you into thinking where it is going, while building towards more
interesting reveals later on – particularly as it throws our expectations for
several characters into the air.
And the action when it takes place is great fun, primary-coloured
and accompanied by a great selection of 90s tracks. Because Boden and Fleck
have spent so much time carefully developing the characters at its heart, these
become action moments you can genuinely invest in, where people you care about
are in peril, rather than the bangs and crashes without consequence that plague
other films.
It’s also mixed extremely well with comedy. Samuel L Jackson
in particular gets some great comic mileage out of a young Nick Fury, a man on his
way to becoming the hard-as-nails guy we’ve seen in countless movies, but here
still young, playful and (hilariously) besotted with a cat rather wittily
called “Goose”. Ben Mendelsohn also gets some good moments from his mysterious
shape shifter and Jude Law has a sort of put-upon charm as Carol’s mentor.
There are also some lovely moments as Carol rediscovers her memories and
rebuilds a relationship with her former best friend and fellow test pilot Maria
Rambeau, well played by Lashana Lynch.
Captain Marvel is
such good fun, such good old fashioned entertainment, that it seems to have
defeated the efforts of the internet trolls to consign it to oblivion. It’s sad
to say that, following in the footsteps of Black
Panther, The Last Jedi, Star Trek: Discovery and Doctor Who, another “fan boy” franchise
entry has seen its opening overshadowed by a bunch of sad wankers with key
boards hammering into the internet (and whining into YouTube) about Disney and
“the suits” forcing fans to watch
stories about people who aren’t white males. Larsen and Captain Marvel got it in the neck for being sexist (it’s not about
a man and Larsen dared to say she thought film critics were overwhelmingly
white and male – guilty in this case), pushing a feminist agenda (because, like,
it had a woman in it that wasn’t a damsel-in-distress or
hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold) and not representing what the fans wanted to see
in comic films (muscular men saving ladies and hitting things basically). Never
mind that social commentary in the old days used to be what these fans bragged about their passions being so full
of. Now any character who doesn’t fit a narrow set of racial and sexual
criteria is an attempt by the PC brigade to push these pricks out of the
fandom. Well to be honest we are better off without this turgid slime polluting
fandom with their putrid stench. Put frankly, if films like Captain Marvel make some idiots decide
they are going to boycott Marvel for ever more, well good – please fuck off and
let the door slam you on your arse on the way out.
Anyway, rant over. Captain
Marvel is great fun, Brie Larsen is great, the action is well done, the
jokes are funny, the story is engaging and it’s all done and dusted in two
hours. Go and see it.
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