The Critics: Brie Larson stars in ‘Captain Marvel’
While Captain Marvel contains plenty of laughs and feminist justice, it falls short of recent franchise standards, says Paul Whitington
Captain Marvel (12A, 124mins)
Gender wars have inflamed the internet in advance of Captain Marvel’s release, for reasons spectacularly tiresome. The original Marvel Comics character, who first appeared in the 1960s, was male, and though a female version subsequently occluded him, not everyone is happy that Brie Larson is this film’s star. Superhero nerds — an excitable, defensive, oddly conservative bunch — have, in significant numbers, turned against this production, trolling Rotten Tomatoes and muttering darkly about insidious feminism.
They’ll be even more unhappy when they actually get to see it because, in a way, this sometimes formulaic but intermittently very amusing movie is all about female self-determination. It is also, confusingly, a kind of prequel to the entire Marvel/Avengers franchise, set in the mid-1990s and starring Larson as an alien who fell to Earth.
In a noisy prologue, we are introduced to the extraterrestrial Kree Empire, a noble warrior caste locked in combat with their fearsome, shape-shifting foe, the Skrull. Vers (Larson) is an enthusiastic novice warrior, gifted with remarkable powers she does not yet fully command. She’s not finished training with her mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) when their unit is ordered to engage the Skrull on a nearby planet.
When the mission goes wrong, Vers is captured by the Skrull, who interrogate her about the whereabouts of a mysterious energy source. But Vers escapes and falls to ground on an obscure planet. It’s Earth circa 1995 and, amusingly, Vers crashes through the roof of a Blockbuster video store, mistakes a cardboard cutout of Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies for an enemy, and blasts the crap out of it. True Lies was one of the most obnoxiously sexist mainstream movies of the 90s: the subtext is clear — misogynists beware.
Vers begins searching for the missing power source, but must move fast because the Skrull are on her tail, adopting the forms of passing humans to make themselves harder to spot. With her rubber combat suit and ability to shoot proton blasts from her bare hands, Vers isn’t hard to spot at all, and soon attracts the attention of Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), an agent with the covert security organisation S.H.I.E.L.D.
Fury is fascinated by Vers and quickly realises she’s telling the truth. Vers, meanwhile, has been having disturbing flashbacks about a wise female mentor (Annette Bening), an unhappy childhood and a previous life as an air force pilot. Could she possibly have visited this obscure planet before?
Much has been made of the casting of a serious actress at the heart of a superhero action film but, overall, the gamble works. Larson convinces as the impetuous Kree student who loves to take risks. Though there isn’t nearly enough fighting for my liking, she’s plausible too as a high-kicking warrior.
But she’s at her best when she first arrives on Earth and engages with 90s culture, which now seems depressingly arcane.
We smirk condescendingly as Vers looks for information on the dated search engine, Alta Vista, and there’s an embarrassing pause as she and Fury wait for a CD rom drive to load.
Vers’ struggles to assert herself are equated with gender inequality: she will eventually get to grips with Jude Law’s condescending mentor and, on Earth, she contemptuously dismisses demeaning men. “Got a smile for me babe?” a swaggering biker asks: he loses his hot rod and is lucky to escape with his life. Her hair, though, pops back into place like Farrah Fawcett after every skirmish, which is not very Germaine Greer and may or may not be a joke.
Larson has an easy way with humour, and forms a winning double act with Jackson, made magically younger by CGI. These effects are brilliant and Jackson is great fun as the bemused Fury.
There, then, are Captain Marvel’s strengths. Its weaknesses lie in the stodgy exposition of the Kree nation and their extraterrestrial war: the air goes out of the film whenever the narrative gets lost in this space opera. We wanted less of all that faux mythology, more of the hand-to-hand fighting and coy pop-cultural references, and more opportunities for Larson to show off her comic timing.
Captain Marvel is good, but could easily have been better.
We wanted less of all that faux mythology, more of the hand-to-hand fighting and coy pop cultural references