Who's surprised to see this review here? Anybody? Anybo... Oh, you in the back? You must be new here. Welcome to My Valley, home of Highly Subjective Marvel Movie Reviews and Rankings.
Huh. I think I just accidentally re-tag-lined my blog...
Ahem. Anywho, we all know why you're here. We all being me and you. Both of us know why you're here. It's because you wanted to read my thoughts on Captain Marvel. Because that's the title of the post and that's why you clicked on it. You're wondering when, if ever, I'm going to get around to sharing those thoughts.
Haha, aaah, you're adorable.
There was a lot of trepidation for me going into this movie. I just wanted to watch a really good superhero movie. There were so many layers surrounding my enjoyment, though. The weight of responsibility to respond in a meaningful way to the (justified) accusation leveled against Marvel for not having a movie headlined by a woman after a decade and nearly 20 movies. The whining about Marvel releasing a movie headlined by a woman because they’re more interested in pandering than making good movies. More whining that Marvel only did this because Wonder Woman proved women can be profitable, or that the reason people were whining wasn’t because the movie was about a woman, but because the woman they cast was Brie Larson. The suggestion that the only good the female iteration of Captain Marvel did in the comics was function as a source of superpowers for Rogue of the X-Men... and oh, there is so much more.
So much weight. So many competing voices for Captain Marvel to push through. I literally could not be happier to say that it had zero difficulty in doing so.
This is my favorite movie of 2019 so far. That’s an easy bar to cross, though. As a basically diffinative MCU viewer, I’m comfortable saying this beats out the MCU movies of 2018 as well. It’s actually my favorite movie, regardless of genre, since Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. For context, Ragnarok may be one of my favorite movies of all time.
That’s the court Captain Marvel is playing in.
If I had to pick one word to describe this movie, it would be “classy”. There are so many reasons for that, some of which move into spoiler territory, but I’ll just mention a few.
First! Stan Lee. Stan, frikkin’, Lee. This movie was Marvel Studio’s chance to throw a “thank you” to the champion who started all of this, to the hero who gave hope to a generation of people who weren’t getting it from anywhere else, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. There was fanfare, in the literal sense, but even for the obsessively observant Marvel movie nerd in me it took me a second to realize what they had done with the studio logo at the beginning. And Stan’s cameo? One of the very last live-action cameos we’ll get? It was perfect. That was Brie Larson’s face making eye-contact with him on screen, but I’m pretty confident that I’m speaking for a huge chunk of the MCU’s fan base when I say she was standing in for all of us. Classy.
Second! The Easter eggs. It should come as no surprise at this point that Captain Marvel is absolutely lousy with callbacks and references to everything else in the MCU. Sam Jackson plays a fabulous young Nick Fury. Phil Coulson is in there, giving us a Clark Greg with more hair than I think anyone was comfortable with. There's even some nice little tidbits that tie it in with the Infinity Stones and the events of last season of Agents of SHIELD, and that's all not counting the many, many little things left lying around for anyone who lived through the 90's. But all of that, absolutely all of it, is unnecessary. This is the first MCU movie since, like, Guardians of the Galaxy that doesn't basically require you to have an encyclopedia in your skull to enjoy absolutely everything on screen. Classy.
Third! The utter quality on display absolutely everywhere. The climax of this movie is a character moment for our hero. All of the best MCU movies do this, drop their climax right on top of the final piece of character development for the main protagonist. Guardians of the Galaxy and Peter's willingness to be vulnerable. Iron Man and Tony's self-sacrifice. Age of Ultron and everyone's recognition that they're better together. Captain Marvel and Carol's realization that... aaaah! I reeeeeeeally shouldn't say anything, but it's powerful! It's so good! And as with every other movie, that climax only works if soooooooo many other things are done well in the movie leading up to it! The character development for everyone involved, the way the audience gets to engage with those characters, the story and the conflicts it leads us through, the script and the way those words invite us to participate, the performances and how effective they are at conveying emotions that aren't spoken, the set design, the costume design, the freaking makeup... The entire cast and crew of a movie like this comes together in that one instant to try and make the audience become a part of the production.
And... good... grief... Captain Marvel did it. I know how this process works. I've studied it, and I sat in that theater keenly aware of exactly what the movie was trying to do. And despite having my eyes fixed on the attempt, when it happened I was enthralled. I was frightened for some people, angry with others. I was desperate but not despairing because I knew what she was capable of. I was filled with hope that she would see it herself, and I about wept openly from a deep sense of personal triumph when it became clear she did.
It does not take much to make me cry in a movie. A little bit of well-handled sadness will do that easily, as long as I can empathize with the characters at all. But I can only think of one or two other movies that have managed to make me tear up from the sheer amount of hope they stuffed into me with absolutely no sadness in sight. It was, pretty simply, the kind of emotional purity that most entertainment can only dream of instilling in their audience. Perhaps my reaction was just one of a tiny minority of viewers.
I don't care. Classy. Classiest thing I've ever seen. This movie is gold through and through.
You'll undoubtedly see some people complaining about Brie Larson's performance. They're wrong. She stood her ground next to Sam "m************L." Jackson with absolute comfort. You'll probably see some people whining about Carol Danvers being overpowered. They're... maybe not wrong, but c'mon. After Thor's display of power in Infinity War, she's maybe on par with him. Someone, hopefully nobody you know, is going to complain that she shouldn't be that strong because she's a woman, or that her suit doesn't look like something a woman would wear, or that the movie was unrealistic because she didn't have a love interest and of course any real woman would have had a crush on Jude Law or something utterly debase like that. They are, of course, ignorant fools. And also wrong.
My final word on the matter is pretty simple. Captain Marvel is an excellent movie. It's indisputably well made, I have no complaints with any aspect of the film, and its storytelling and audience engagement methods are flawlessly executed. Go see it. Odds are extremely good you'll enjoy it. Absolutely nothing else needs to be said.
Huh. I think I just accidentally re-tag-lined my blog...
Ahem. Anywho, we all know why you're here. We all being me and you. Both of us know why you're here. It's because you wanted to read my thoughts on Captain Marvel. Because that's the title of the post and that's why you clicked on it. You're wondering when, if ever, I'm going to get around to sharing those thoughts.
Haha, aaah, you're adorable.
 |
| I love that they leaned into this mohawk instead of trying to ret-con it. It looks so cool. |
There was a lot of trepidation for me going into this movie. I just wanted to watch a really good superhero movie. There were so many layers surrounding my enjoyment, though. The weight of responsibility to respond in a meaningful way to the (justified) accusation leveled against Marvel for not having a movie headlined by a woman after a decade and nearly 20 movies. The whining about Marvel releasing a movie headlined by a woman because they’re more interested in pandering than making good movies. More whining that Marvel only did this because Wonder Woman proved women can be profitable, or that the reason people were whining wasn’t because the movie was about a woman, but because the woman they cast was Brie Larson. The suggestion that the only good the female iteration of Captain Marvel did in the comics was function as a source of superpowers for Rogue of the X-Men... and oh, there is so much more.
So much weight. So many competing voices for Captain Marvel to push through. I literally could not be happier to say that it had zero difficulty in doing so.
This is my favorite movie of 2019 so far. That’s an easy bar to cross, though. As a basically diffinative MCU viewer, I’m comfortable saying this beats out the MCU movies of 2018 as well. It’s actually my favorite movie, regardless of genre, since Thor: Ragnarok in 2017. For context, Ragnarok may be one of my favorite movies of all time.
That’s the court Captain Marvel is playing in.
If I had to pick one word to describe this movie, it would be “classy”. There are so many reasons for that, some of which move into spoiler territory, but I’ll just mention a few.
First! Stan Lee. Stan, frikkin’, Lee. This movie was Marvel Studio’s chance to throw a “thank you” to the champion who started all of this, to the hero who gave hope to a generation of people who weren’t getting it from anywhere else, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. There was fanfare, in the literal sense, but even for the obsessively observant Marvel movie nerd in me it took me a second to realize what they had done with the studio logo at the beginning. And Stan’s cameo? One of the very last live-action cameos we’ll get? It was perfect. That was Brie Larson’s face making eye-contact with him on screen, but I’m pretty confident that I’m speaking for a huge chunk of the MCU’s fan base when I say she was standing in for all of us. Classy.
Second! The Easter eggs. It should come as no surprise at this point that Captain Marvel is absolutely lousy with callbacks and references to everything else in the MCU. Sam Jackson plays a fabulous young Nick Fury. Phil Coulson is in there, giving us a Clark Greg with more hair than I think anyone was comfortable with. There's even some nice little tidbits that tie it in with the Infinity Stones and the events of last season of Agents of SHIELD, and that's all not counting the many, many little things left lying around for anyone who lived through the 90's. But all of that, absolutely all of it, is unnecessary. This is the first MCU movie since, like, Guardians of the Galaxy that doesn't basically require you to have an encyclopedia in your skull to enjoy absolutely everything on screen. Classy.
 |
| I was not kidding about that hair. |
Third! The utter quality on display absolutely everywhere. The climax of this movie is a character moment for our hero. All of the best MCU movies do this, drop their climax right on top of the final piece of character development for the main protagonist. Guardians of the Galaxy and Peter's willingness to be vulnerable. Iron Man and Tony's self-sacrifice. Age of Ultron and everyone's recognition that they're better together. Captain Marvel and Carol's realization that... aaaah! I reeeeeeeally shouldn't say anything, but it's powerful! It's so good! And as with every other movie, that climax only works if soooooooo many other things are done well in the movie leading up to it! The character development for everyone involved, the way the audience gets to engage with those characters, the story and the conflicts it leads us through, the script and the way those words invite us to participate, the performances and how effective they are at conveying emotions that aren't spoken, the set design, the costume design, the freaking makeup... The entire cast and crew of a movie like this comes together in that one instant to try and make the audience become a part of the production.
And... good... grief... Captain Marvel did it. I know how this process works. I've studied it, and I sat in that theater keenly aware of exactly what the movie was trying to do. And despite having my eyes fixed on the attempt, when it happened I was enthralled. I was frightened for some people, angry with others. I was desperate but not despairing because I knew what she was capable of. I was filled with hope that she would see it herself, and I about wept openly from a deep sense of personal triumph when it became clear she did.
 |
| She realizes it, and the bad-guys spend the next twenty minutes regretting absolutely everything. |
It does not take much to make me cry in a movie. A little bit of well-handled sadness will do that easily, as long as I can empathize with the characters at all. But I can only think of one or two other movies that have managed to make me tear up from the sheer amount of hope they stuffed into me with absolutely no sadness in sight. It was, pretty simply, the kind of emotional purity that most entertainment can only dream of instilling in their audience. Perhaps my reaction was just one of a tiny minority of viewers.
I don't care. Classy. Classiest thing I've ever seen. This movie is gold through and through.
You'll undoubtedly see some people complaining about Brie Larson's performance. They're wrong. She stood her ground next to Sam "m************L." Jackson with absolute comfort. You'll probably see some people whining about Carol Danvers being overpowered. They're... maybe not wrong, but c'mon. After Thor's display of power in Infinity War, she's maybe on par with him. Someone, hopefully nobody you know, is going to complain that she shouldn't be that strong because she's a woman, or that her suit doesn't look like something a woman would wear, or that the movie was unrealistic because she didn't have a love interest and of course any real woman would have had a crush on Jude Law or something utterly debase like that. They are, of course, ignorant fools. And also wrong.
 |
| This isn't a romantic relationship, but it felt more real than any romantic relationship I've ever seen on screen. |
My final word on the matter is pretty simple. Captain Marvel is an excellent movie. It's indisputably well made, I have no complaints with any aspect of the film, and its storytelling and audience engagement methods are flawlessly executed. Go see it. Odds are extremely good you'll enjoy it. Absolutely nothing else needs to be said.
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