New ‘Marvel’ takes flight as fun retro blast
With “Captain Marvel,” Marvel proves yet again that it can do a superhero origin story better than anyone – even when wrapped in a VH1 “I Love the ’90s” package.
While the retro action-adventure (★★★☆; rated PG-13; in theaters nationwide Friday) gets a little lost in its own nerdy nostalgia, the 1995-set prequel of sorts to the rest of the Marvel saga still manages to be a blast with plenty of sci-fi satisfaction and entertaining characters.
Played with gumption by Brie Larson, space warrior Carol Danvers is at first way better at shooting photon-energy blasts from her hands than solving her rather large identity problem: She’s part of the alien Kree’s Starforce squad (think a stuffier, less fun Guardians of the Galaxy) but has strange visions of growing up on Earth and flying in a fighter jet, without any actual memories of her life before becoming an adopted Kree.
A Starforce mission goes awry thanks to the Kree’s arch enemies, the shape-shifting Skrulls, and Carol winds up crash-landing in a Blockbuster Video in L.A., where she meets S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) a decade and a half before he’ll help form the Avengers. She informs Fury that the Skrulls have infiltrated human civilization on the hunt for a mysterious light speed engine, and he decides to help this formidable enigma figure out her connection to a
secret government project.
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, “Captain Marvel” has a lot on its plate – more than, say, “Doctor Strange.” The ambitious effort has to be worthy of the first Marvel solo film to have a woman front and center, plus somehow tie into next month’s hugely anticipated “Avengers: Endgame” (out April 26). All while melding the politics and heft of the Kree-Skrull War from the comics (no easy feat, mind you) with a healthy slathering of the ’90s, from music to technology. (It does offer perhaps the greatest needle drop of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”)
It’s the more grounded earthbound stuff that works best, though, from Fury and Carol’s banter – and their teamup with an orange cat named Goose – to heartfelt moments between Carol and Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), a fellow fighter pilot who’s long believed her best friend died.
Those who are expecting major connections to the next “Avengers” film will be disappointed, though it does revel in its Marvel-ness: Jackson gives Fury a lighthearted swagger that’s missing from the grim older secret agent of other films. Ben Mendelsohn’s scene-stealing Skrull boss Talos is also quite the gem of an addition.
And Carol is the straight-up female powerhouse the universe has been missing. Scenes where men throughout her life tell her she’s too weak and not good enough – including Jude Law’s very punchable Starforce commander Yon-Rogg – pay off in one rousing, cathartic moment where Captain Marvel gets knocked down but gets up again, and no one’s going to keep her down.
However, Carol’s personality, caught between stoic alien warrior and need-for-speed maverick, never gets a chance to fully burst forth as much as her sparkling fists. We spend a lot of time seeing her overcome obstacles and only fitfully glimpse her enjoying life, but never really get to know her.
That said, it took three “Thor” films for Chris Hemsworth’s thunder god to find his groove. Although Larson’s heroine is still a work in progress, “Captain Marvel” lays a solid foundation to follow her wherever she flies next.