Review: Captain Marvel
Mar. 11th, 2019 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glitter_n_goreOne thing I promised myself with regards to this movie was I would not get caught up in The Discourse, because there is always Discourse. I wanted the chance to sit with it and enjoy it--or not--on my own terms before the tidal wave of hot takes and bad faith criticism started to roll over everything. This meant pulling back significantly from social media, avoiding any other reviews by professionals and hobbyists alike, and generally turning myself into a virtual hermit more than I generally like to.
Why did I decide to do this? Because not doing so very nearly ruined Wonder Woman for me. It felt like I had a whole two days to actually enjoy the movie, and then all the criticism started to pour in. And because I'm both stubborn and intellectually masochistic, I read A LOT of unfavorable reviews, some of which had salient points worth considering, before I had the chance to write up anything about it myself.
Glowing, floating woman in front of space ship door
Source.
So, it's been two years. We have another female superhero movie from a huge, blockbusting franchise. I refuse to get stuck in The Gauntlet Of Impossible Perfection Superheroines Must Run that their male counterparts do not. It's not fair, and it's not fun. And so far, I've succeeded!
But what did I actually think of Captain Marvel?
I liked it. I really really liked it.
(Mild spoilers here. Very mild spoilers.)
Brie Larson plays a Kree operative called "Veers" who gets captured while on a rescue mission gone terribly wrong. She can't remember anything about her life prior to the past six years, apart from what her trainer (Jude Law) has told her, and the occasional hazy flashback featuring a crashed plane and a woman in a uniform similar to the US Air Force. She also has powerful kinetic energy coursing through her veins that she can use to punch through walls, and as a heat source, but this power is cataclysmic and very difficult to control, especially if she gives into intense emotions like anger.
She does use it to escape her captors, a shapeshifting race called the Skrulls, and ultimately crashes into a tiny blue planet known to her as "C-53." We know it as "Earth." And she crashes straight through the ceiling of a Blockbuster Video in 1995. Soon, she starts to realize just how much about her life isn't what she thought. Her power is much more potent than she was led to believe. The Skrulls are not her enemies. Her name is not "Veers." It's Carol Danvers.
To give away more than that would undercut much of the character building that makes this story interesting, so I won't. It is difficult to follow in the beginning if you aren't familiar with comic book logic, or the sci-fi/magic world we're steeped in here. There's a lot of action right off the bat and it doesn't let up for long. But once we get to Earth and hook up with Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, it settles into a more comfortable pace and rhythm.
I'm tempted, as I'm sure many are, to compare this to Wonder Woman, but honestly the character beats remind me more of the Resident Evil movies. Like Alice, Carol is a tough, resourceful, hyper-competent female lead with a mysterious past that she mostly doesn't remember, and tends to handle most conflict by punching it in the face. Also, both characters have a close friendship with another woman with similar talents and ambitions that is so close to a legit queer romance many fans have chosen to read it as such. In other words, exactly the kind of female lead I've been hoping to see in a mainstream property for YEARS. Carol is nobody's love interest, nobody's sidekick, but she's down for making cheerful banter with teammates and enemies alike if the situation calls for it. She's got ass to kick and no one's going to stand in her way.
Woman in dusty desert outfit giving salute
Source
What struck me the most watching this was the music. I'm starting to see more and more entertainment set during my formative years--the mid- to late-90s--and the music is a big marker for setting. As are landmarks like Blockbuster Video. Hearing wall-to-wall Grunge, Alternative, and R&B from that era is evocative and nostalgic even if you weren't around back then. But watching a kick-ass lady discover and embrace her own power while backed up by the voices of Kurt Cobain, Gwen Stefani, and Des'ree was revelatory in a way I'm still processing. There's a dark, raw, introspective hope to 90s music--yes, hope, which no one seems to mention. Captain Marvel, who doesn't go by her comic book moniker in this movie, has to break down her identity in order to build herself back up. My actual favorite album from this time period, conspicuous by its absence from the movie's soundtrack even though Larson spends half the movie in the band's t-shirt (the better to blend in), is Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Thematically, it's about a man breaking down parts of his identity one by one until there's nothing left. It's one of the most brilliant deconstructions of self ever set to music, and a very important album to me personally.
But here's how the last song, "Hurt," ends: "If I could start again / a million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way."
If you'll forgive me for going too meta, like I always do, that is Carol Danvers' journey in a nutshell. She shatters her own life as she knew it to bits, traveling lightyears from where we meet her at the start of the film, and reconstructs herself from the broken pieces.
Now, to be very clear: this didn't take Thor: Ragnarok's place as my personal favorite Marvel movie. I didn't get the gut-punch to the feels, or the eye-popping set pieces and costumes, and yet, I was kind of fine with that? This movie is good. And I think I've forgotten, tangled up as I've become in the anticipation of fresh, mind-blowing awesome at every new release, that not every movie has to be mind-blowingly awesome to be a good time. Captain Marvel is just a really good, fun, entertaining, solid, action-packed superhero movie. Tonally, it felt a lot like the early 2000s X-Men movies: pretty cool, has flaws to be sure, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with these characters. There's something oddly refreshing about that. Knowing that this is breaking a lot of records as a female-led superhero movie is putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on it. But at the same time, Wonder Woman being as popular and successful as it was took some of that pressure off. There's no "No Man's Land" scene. Carol Danvers isn't trying to take down the patriarchy. She's just trying to live her best life, and figure out what that means for her. It hits all the beats you'd expect for a similar story with a male lead, and honestly, that's enough.
That, and watching Brie Larson punch out a dude who tried to tell her off for getting "emotional." That was pretty rad.
Why did I decide to do this? Because not doing so very nearly ruined Wonder Woman for me. It felt like I had a whole two days to actually enjoy the movie, and then all the criticism started to pour in. And because I'm both stubborn and intellectually masochistic, I read A LOT of unfavorable reviews, some of which had salient points worth considering, before I had the chance to write up anything about it myself.
Glowing, floating woman in front of space ship door
Source.
So, it's been two years. We have another female superhero movie from a huge, blockbusting franchise. I refuse to get stuck in The Gauntlet Of Impossible Perfection Superheroines Must Run that their male counterparts do not. It's not fair, and it's not fun. And so far, I've succeeded!
But what did I actually think of Captain Marvel?
I liked it. I really really liked it.
(Mild spoilers here. Very mild spoilers.)
Brie Larson plays a Kree operative called "Veers" who gets captured while on a rescue mission gone terribly wrong. She can't remember anything about her life prior to the past six years, apart from what her trainer (Jude Law) has told her, and the occasional hazy flashback featuring a crashed plane and a woman in a uniform similar to the US Air Force. She also has powerful kinetic energy coursing through her veins that she can use to punch through walls, and as a heat source, but this power is cataclysmic and very difficult to control, especially if she gives into intense emotions like anger.
She does use it to escape her captors, a shapeshifting race called the Skrulls, and ultimately crashes into a tiny blue planet known to her as "C-53." We know it as "Earth." And she crashes straight through the ceiling of a Blockbuster Video in 1995. Soon, she starts to realize just how much about her life isn't what she thought. Her power is much more potent than she was led to believe. The Skrulls are not her enemies. Her name is not "Veers." It's Carol Danvers.
To give away more than that would undercut much of the character building that makes this story interesting, so I won't. It is difficult to follow in the beginning if you aren't familiar with comic book logic, or the sci-fi/magic world we're steeped in here. There's a lot of action right off the bat and it doesn't let up for long. But once we get to Earth and hook up with Nick Fury and Phil Coulson, it settles into a more comfortable pace and rhythm.
I'm tempted, as I'm sure many are, to compare this to Wonder Woman, but honestly the character beats remind me more of the Resident Evil movies. Like Alice, Carol is a tough, resourceful, hyper-competent female lead with a mysterious past that she mostly doesn't remember, and tends to handle most conflict by punching it in the face. Also, both characters have a close friendship with another woman with similar talents and ambitions that is so close to a legit queer romance many fans have chosen to read it as such. In other words, exactly the kind of female lead I've been hoping to see in a mainstream property for YEARS. Carol is nobody's love interest, nobody's sidekick, but she's down for making cheerful banter with teammates and enemies alike if the situation calls for it. She's got ass to kick and no one's going to stand in her way.
Woman in dusty desert outfit giving salute
Source
What struck me the most watching this was the music. I'm starting to see more and more entertainment set during my formative years--the mid- to late-90s--and the music is a big marker for setting. As are landmarks like Blockbuster Video. Hearing wall-to-wall Grunge, Alternative, and R&B from that era is evocative and nostalgic even if you weren't around back then. But watching a kick-ass lady discover and embrace her own power while backed up by the voices of Kurt Cobain, Gwen Stefani, and Des'ree was revelatory in a way I'm still processing. There's a dark, raw, introspective hope to 90s music--yes, hope, which no one seems to mention. Captain Marvel, who doesn't go by her comic book moniker in this movie, has to break down her identity in order to build herself back up. My actual favorite album from this time period, conspicuous by its absence from the movie's soundtrack even though Larson spends half the movie in the band's t-shirt (the better to blend in), is Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. Thematically, it's about a man breaking down parts of his identity one by one until there's nothing left. It's one of the most brilliant deconstructions of self ever set to music, and a very important album to me personally.
But here's how the last song, "Hurt," ends: "If I could start again / a million miles away / I would keep myself / I would find a way."
If you'll forgive me for going too meta, like I always do, that is Carol Danvers' journey in a nutshell. She shatters her own life as she knew it to bits, traveling lightyears from where we meet her at the start of the film, and reconstructs herself from the broken pieces.
Now, to be very clear: this didn't take Thor: Ragnarok's place as my personal favorite Marvel movie. I didn't get the gut-punch to the feels, or the eye-popping set pieces and costumes, and yet, I was kind of fine with that? This movie is good. And I think I've forgotten, tangled up as I've become in the anticipation of fresh, mind-blowing awesome at every new release, that not every movie has to be mind-blowingly awesome to be a good time. Captain Marvel is just a really good, fun, entertaining, solid, action-packed superhero movie. Tonally, it felt a lot like the early 2000s X-Men movies: pretty cool, has flaws to be sure, but I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with these characters. There's something oddly refreshing about that. Knowing that this is breaking a lot of records as a female-led superhero movie is putting a lot of unnecessary pressure on it. But at the same time, Wonder Woman being as popular and successful as it was took some of that pressure off. There's no "No Man's Land" scene. Carol Danvers isn't trying to take down the patriarchy. She's just trying to live her best life, and figure out what that means for her. It hits all the beats you'd expect for a similar story with a male lead, and honestly, that's enough.
That, and watching Brie Larson punch out a dude who tried to tell her off for getting "emotional." That was pretty rad.