Fish and Cherries Productions

Summary: A little more than a decade before Iron Man first took flight, an intergalactic war between the Kree Empire and the shapeshifting Skrulls raged in the Milky Way Galaxy. One Kree name Yon-Ragg (Jude Law) leads a team of special forces which includes a very talented up and comer named Vers (Brie Larson). After one mission goes wrong, Vers and some Skrulls discover that a scientist named Dr. Wendy Lawson has done work on a hyperspace engine on the primitive planet C-53… also known as Earth. The strange thing is, this information was taken directly from Vers’ memories… but isn’t she a Kree? The race is on as the two groups race to Earth, where Vers teams up with a young S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to repel this secret invasion and find out the truth about Vers… the woman destined to become Captain Marvel.

Review: Captain Marvel was goooooooooood stuff. While it moved a little slow at first and picked up toward the end, it was thoroughly enjoyable throughout. I’ll admit to having been a fan of Captain Marvel (or Ms. Marvel, Binary, or Warbird, depending on your preferred era of comics) for a long time and as such have been eagerly anticipating its debut. Now that it’s out, I can say for sure that I’m impressed.

I think I can pinpoint the initial slowness to the fact that Captain Marvel doesn’t quite stick to one feel. Each of the MCU movies has its own genre with distinct feel (the Captain America movies are idealistic war movies, the Ant-Man movies are heist movies, the Guardians of the Galaxy movies are 80s action movies, etc.). Captain Marvel is an odd duck because it starts as a black ops film before going to a “phoenix rises from the ashes” film. The execution is fine, but it can feel a bit disjointed.

Where the movie truly shines is its character interaction — Captain Marvel and Fury, Fury and Coulson (Clark Glegg), Captain Marvel and her old friend Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), and so many more each struck a great cord. It helps that all the characters are interesting in their own way, be they humans out of their depth or cosmic aliens stepping into a foreign and underdeveloped planet. Even the Skrulls have compelling interactions, keeping up the tradition of intriguing antagonists. There are, however, two major exceptions: Guardian’s of the Galaxy alumni Korath (Djimon Hounsou) and Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace) who desperately needed some fleshing out. I had hoped that their appearances in this movie would have developed them more, but sadly that was not the case.

This movie is unabashedly girl power-focused and a massive patriarchy smasher, which I’m totally down with. Some people might take issue with that and dump on this for being a female empowerment fantasy, to which I respond, “Why is that a bad thing in itself?” We give a free pass to male empowerment fantasies all the time (Fast and the Furious, anyone?) and the only time I take issue with it is when it diminishes the other roles or strips them of their agency. There’s no one who’s less capable because they’re not the main lady (okay, no one else can shoot photon beams from their hands, but shut up, I’m trying to make a point) and no one needs her to rescue them. The movie lifts up our leading lady and doesn’t push anyone else down, showcasing how to do empowerment right.

There are a lot of twists that I don’t want to spoil, so the last thing I’ll say is that, as many of us predicted, Goose the Cat was the absolute star of this awesome and incredibly relevant flick. It’s a worthy addition to the MCU that answers a number of questions and doesn’t slip into Star Wars Prequel Syndrome. I don’t actually think that I really captured how much I love this movie and its characters, visuals, soundtrack, and overall amazing atmosphere. This movie really does fly higher, further, faster.

Fun Tidbit: Maria’s daughter, Monica (Akira Akbar), is enthralled by Captain Marvel and opts to go on a future mission with her, where she’s told that it might happen if she gets a pilot’s license or “starts glowing.” In the comics, Monica Rambeau does in fact gain energy-based superpowers and even takes the title of Captain Marvel for a bit. Mythology gag… or foreshadowing? I can’t wait to find out.