Captain Marvel
There have been 21 movies that take place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2008, and I’ve seen approximately… 5.7 of them. (I walked out of Thor: Ragnorok and made a sincere effort to sit through most of Avengers: Infinity War, aka, the longest movie ever made.) I think I get it. Half the universe is “dead,” there are magic boxes that can bring everyone back to life, plus heroes, scientists, and aliens. I think these movies are pretty stupid, but I’m not exactly the target market. Most fans concede that they are bazillion dollar commercials for themselves catering to a low common denominator–but they’re fun. Sure the exposition spills out at a third grade reading level and the movies look like live action cartoons, but it’s fine because we’re having so much fun.
Halfway through Captain Marvel, I got to thinking that I was being pretty uptight. What is a comic book, after all, but a leaflet that wishes it were a movie. We have the technology to give an indie actress glowing blue blood, we might as well use it. It’s just a shame that my revelation came during one of the MCU’s more lackluster efforts. Brie Larson isn’t working with much, but still, does she have to deliver every line with such stony resignation? Also she looks like Jenna Fischer from the office. What if Jenna’s career had taken off and she were in this movie instead. That would be weird.
My favorite part of Captain Marvel was the YouTube video I watched a week before the screening, featuring Larson’s celebrity trainer going over her intense workout schedule leading up to filming. She did push-ups with a chain around her belly and jumped up onto boxes! And yet none of that hard work is apparent on screen. Her fight scenes are poorly shot and choreographed and never linger very long on athleticism. Mostly she just shoots balls of fire out of her fists. Can’t they all do that? (Who’s the most powerful hero, I’ll go first: The Hulk.)
I could explain the plot, but it’s all pretty much laid out in the trailers. Captain Marvel is not actually an alien, but a ’90s era fighter pilot named “Carol” whose memories have been erased. The narrative finds our heroine crash landing on Earth, where we follow along as she rediscovers an identity we the audience have known about since before the movie started, so really what are we even doing here.
There’s a shapeshifting race of aliens who seem like villains, but perhaps the real monster is man. Or cat or horse. It’s hard to know what the stakes are when the rules of reality are subject to change at any moment. Do the shapeshifters have dicks? This PG-13 movie won’t let us see.
Women aren’t stupid enough to think that this is a feminist motion picture, are they? Surely we know we’re being marketed to by suits who saw the money generated by Wonder Woman. Comparatively, I’d say this picture is about 1/2 as good as that (Wonder Woman cast literal bodybuilders as Amazonians!) and will generate 1/4 the box office revenues. The system works.