Captain Marvel shares many similarities with Thor. It’s an action-drama involving extraterrestrial super-beings, planetary escapades that end up revolving around Earth, and utilizes fish-out-of-water comedy with its protagonist. Captain Marvel stands out from Thor in two noteworthy ways—its period and its protagonist. The film takes place in the 1990s, effectively making it a backstory for how the Avengers Initiative came to be along with other smaller details such as how Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) lost his eye (spoilers, it’s comedically…underwhelming). The 90s setting, in general, is quite an impressive replication, though it can get a bit heavy-handed with the nostalgia. The film also uses a combination of makeup and CGI to make actors Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg look convincingly younger.
Nick Fury is given the strange position of comedic relief sidekick in Captain Marvel. I have very mixed feelings about this, leaning more towards the negative. It’s nothing new for the MCU to alter character personalities based on the film. Thor: Ragnarok did this to fantastic results, and the character Loki has basically experienced a massive mood shift with every film he’s been in. It feels wrong, however, to have the complete badass, highly competent Nick Fury feel so wacky and inept here—constantly needing to be saved, never in control of the situation, and acting unusually happy-go-lucky (the latter has Fury act more akin to Jackson’s character Darius from The Hitman's Bodyguard). Fury also refers to S.H.I.E.L.D. as “Shield”, which contradicts 2008’s Iron Man where it still hadn’t been given such acronym yet.
When looking at the film’s lead, however, it becomes abundantly clear why Fury became so comical. Control of the situation is almost always held by the second major stand out of Captain Marvel…Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers aka Vers (aka Brie Larson). This is the first time the MCU has had a female lead in its over twenty films. The MCU lost the race for the first critically positive female superhero film to its ever-improving rival—the DCEU’s Wonder Woman. It was inevitable that the two films would be compared, and despite expecting Captain Marvel to not meet Wonder Woman’s quality of excellence…actually, there is no despite, I was right. Wonder Woman’s titled protagonist is a beautifully written character. Captain Marvel’s protagonist is not.
Carol comes across as dull—with the character’s acting feeling stiff and the comedy forced and unnatural. I don’t know why this is exactly, as Brie Larson is usually a fantastic actor—delivering memorable performances in films like Short Term 12 and Room, as well as a funny performance in Trainwreck. Perhaps it was the film’s shoddy script that hindered her performance. While I praise Wonder Woman to the high Earths for its beautiful coming-of-age story and how naturally Diana develops her powers, here it’s the opposite. Carol goes from having decent control over her powers to, after one inspirational scene, being stupidly hax—easily taking out a horde of skilled opponents and multiple spaceships, learning to fly out of nowhere, destroying many space warheads effortlessly, and scaring off an elite army under Ronan the Accuser (Lee Pace).
Remember how it took Tony Stark half a film to get down flying his suit? How the audience sees in great detail his progression. None of that here. The climax doesn’t feel earned by Carol, it feels given. Maybe it’s because the writers were afraid of making the MCU’s first female lead look too weak? Well congratulations, you made her too strong instead. She does everything herself—not once does a supporting character help her out of a tricky situation. It makes Carol come across as isolated and without any real connections to other characters—even Fury who she spends a good deal of the film with. Poor writing and bland acting ultimately leave a sour first impression on the MCU’s first female superhero lead. There’s hope, however, that the Russo Brothers can course correct this in Avengers Endgame and turn Captain Marvel’s protagonist around for the better.
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