I finally saw Marvel's take on a superhero named Captain Marvel. Before you criticize that I deliberately didn't see the movie in some sort of protest to in order to hurt ticket sales, let me remind you that with just about every movie I go to see, I do so with my god son. So between both our work schedules, it just happened to work out that we could both go when we did.
I haven't gotten into the controversy surrounding this movie. When I was growing up, Marvel's Captain Marvel was a black woman named Monica Rambeau. Carol Danvers was either Ms. Marvel, a cosmic powered entity called Binary or for a while, without powers thanks to the X-Men Rogue. The House of Ideas has been trying to make the Carol Danvers Captain Marvel their flagship character for the past several years. And while I think Marvel would have hit a home run berthing Rambeau with the moniker again, I've been okay with the move.
What I haven't been okay with is the trolling. It's not just white males upset that a woman is getting her own movie. The stars and producers of this film have been trolling just as much too. The fighting on social media has turned politica,l in a sort of misogynist vs feminism kind of battle, much like what was going on the 70s with the thwarted attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. And it's really tiring...
Oddly enough, people seemed more open in the 1980s to a black, female Captain Marvel than to a white female Captain Marvel today. Our world has become a toxic environment of a war of words in which the battleground is all platforms of social media. Besides, I am more concerned about Marvel and Disney's fudging of sales numbers than what version of superhero is on the screen.
I've been investigating for the past year of so on this blog and sister website Outrightgeekery, both company's manipulation of sales numbers for both comic books and films. As of press time for this review, some allegations of Disney and Marvel lying about packed movie theaters and fake mass ticket purchases of Captain Marvel have come to light on other websites. It appears that some theaters were having entire showings purchased as a sell out but nobody actually showed when it was showtime.
If this happened once or twice, I could see it as maybe somebody wrote the date and time wrong and an entire company outing was ruined. But this sort of thing is supposedly happening nationwide in multiple cities. I'm really hoping that Disney and Marvel didn't pull some sort of pyramid scheme in which to make Captain Marvel a success in some sort of play to make right-wing trolls look stupid. The comic book industry is too fragile right now for some sort of scandal such as this. You can be sure that I will be looking into this further when week 2's numbers drop next Sunday.
Now for the review of the film...
Captain Marvel stars Brie Larson (Kong: Skull Island) in the title role. Her character begins the film as a member of the Kree Special Forces. Larson's character is referred to as Vers, with no idea who she really is- just fractured memories. During a mission to infiltration a Skrull enclave, Vers is taken aboard their ship and interrogated.
Findings from Vers' memory lead the Skrull to Earth. Vers manages to disable the ship but not before she is marooned on the third rock from the sun. Looking for a way to make contact with the Kree, Vers makes an unlikely ally in SHIELD agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Together, they must uncover the Skrulls hiding in plain site as they are a race of shape shifters, while finding a way to get Vers back home. Or is she already there?
That's all of a synopsis of Captain Marvel you are going to get. The movie is a prequel to every MCU movie (with exception of Captain America: The First Avenger). Over a decade of films have left a slew of dangling plot-lines and unanswered questions of which Captain Marvel does a decent job of answering most.
Captain Marvel is one-part cosmic odyssey and one-part espionage caper. I've always been more of a fan of Marvel's cat-and-mouse spy stuff over their intergalactic fare. So for me, the best parts involved Nick Fury and Clark Gregg's Phil Coulson, both looking quite young to some CGI magic.
The movie run just over 2 hours long of which I felt was about 15 minutes too long. Marvel Studios clearly has done some updating of their special effects, after some really poor showings in scenes of Black Panther and Ant Man And The Wasp. However, some fight scenes got repetitive, especially towards the end. That third act just seemed to go on forever and ever and ever.
Captain Marvel was blasted for having a anti-male SJW tone. And while this is a film with a strong female lead, it's not man-hating as some feared. In fact, I feel that some web sites are trying to find hidden messages to claim the film was more feminist that it really was. I refuse to believe that Vers' destruction of a poster for the 90s film True Lies was an attack on a 'racist and misogynist action flick' and more of an answer to director James Cameron's repeated hatred of comic book movies.
If Marvel hadn't decided to fight dirty back at the trolls by fighting dirty, this film wouldn't be so controversial. I also think Marvel/Disney got scared that the trolls would scare away viewers as signs of superhero movie fatigue made the last Ant-Man movie be the first 'bomb' from Marvel Studios.
I still believe that Disney and Marvel are doing something shady with their ticket numbers. The theater I went to confirmed that literally every showing from Friday-Monday were less than half full. Yesterday's 7pm showing had 12 people! Only the Thursday midnight premiere was a sell-out; though only 2/3 of ticket holders actually filled the seats. True, it was midnight on a workday. So, we'll see with the week 2 ticket sales if Captain Marvel was truly a hit or miss.
With Supergirl, Catwoman and Wonder Woman all having beat Captain Marvel as the first female superhero films, I don't think the cultural impact of this picture was as huge as that of Black Panther. While the debate is still unsettled as to whether superhero fatigue has truly set in at the box office, Captain Marvel proved one thing: it's time for a Nick Fury movie!
Yes, Brie Larson is the star of this movie and she does a great job Yet, I was more interested in SHIELD. Both Jackson and Gregg were fun to watch as SHIELD agents in their heyday. However, the actors who stole the movie went by only one name- Reggie, Archie, Rizzo and Gonzo: the four feline actors who played the role of Goose the cat! What can I say? I'm a cat person. Plus, I kinda want to see a movie starting him and some of the other famous animals in Marvel Comics history!
Captain Marvel was good. Better than I expected and not a preachy as some claimed it would be. From now on if you want to see films about superheroes or comic books, do yourself a favor- stay away from social media. And if you can't do that, then unsubscribe to those media outlets that are liking to fan the flames of dissent and cause fanboys to go for the jugular. It will make your movie going experiences that much more enjoyable if you do!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
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