When DC finally defied the odds and put out its first female-led superhero film in its current version of the DC-verse (in other words, not counting Catwoman, if you were inclined to- though technically, she's more of a supervillain), Wonder Woman, it was the rare instance of DC getting the leg up on its main competition for the first time in ages. Lest we forget, DC films used to be the high-water mark against which all other superhero films were judged, between the original Superman and Batman films.
With director Christopher Nolan's groundbreaking Batman trilogy, the first superhero films to garner an Oscar win for acting (for Heath Ledger's mesmerizing turn as The Joker), it seemed like DC was headed for more success, but then it fumbled the ball somewhat with its Superman reboot, Man of Steel and things didn't go much better from there. Instead, Marvel swept in and stole their thunder with their ambitious Marvel-verse, which rewrote the rules for what such films could be.
That's why it was such a surprise when DC finally nailed one again with the excellent Wonder Woman. Not only was it the first superhero flick to feature a female lead, but it was helmed by a woman as well. It certainly didn't have to be this way, as Marvel had been promising a Black Widow movie for years, which it still has yet to deliver, but let's face it: few female superheroes have the high profile of a Wonder Woman, much less any Marvel ones. Truth be told, I wasn't all that familiar with Captain Marvel before this film.
Still, better late than never, and I can see why Marvel opted to go with this one first. After all, to hear them tell it, Captain Marvel is arguably one of their most powerful superheroes, period, to say nothing of her being a woman. Conversely, while Black Widow is nothing if not a compelling character, she's also "only" a human, which is to say, while she certainly kicks ass- and is, I might argue, the heart of the Avengers, especially in the new film- she nonetheless has no real powers to speak of, unless being remarkably hot can be considered a superpower, lol. 😍
To be fair, Marvel has been plotting a Captain Marvel film for years, starting around 2013, whereas a Wonder Woman film has been kicking around since way back in 1996! Why it took so long to happen is anyone's guess- some point to the critically-lambasted Catwoman film as the main reason, but it seems kind of harsh to judge an entire category of potential films on the basis of one film, and besides, it's long been proven that women absolutely can carry action films (see a substantial portion of James Cameron's output, notably the Alien and Terminator franchises) and TV shows (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alias, etc.).
But Hollywood is notorious for its short-term memory, hence the expression "You're only as good as your last movie." As such, it took some doing to finally get a big-screen female superhero flick made, even as TV continued to populate itself with them, i.e. Supergirl, the ladies of Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow (which features a female captain- ditto the latest Star Trek, for that matter), etc. Once Wonder Woman was a hit, though, the floodgates seem to have opened.
Now, there's a second Wonder Woman movie on the way soon, a Birds of Prey movie on the horizon, and it looks like that Black Widow movie might actually get made after all, as well as potential films revolving around Supergirl, Batgirl and two other films involving Harley Quinn: one about her relationship with The Joker and the other about the so-called Gotham City Sirens (Harley, Catwoman and Poison Ivy).
As you might have noticed, DC clearly has the upper hand in this particular battle, having learned the lesson quicker than Marvel and running with it accordingly. That lesson being that women like superhero films, too, and if you feature women in the leads of these films, guess what? They'll line up in droves, especially if the film is good, as was the case with Wonder Woman.
It's also worth mentioning that most of the above upcoming films, though many of them began as projects written and potentially directed by men, have since been retooled by women writers and are scheduled to be directed by them, too, which is certainly progress, especially by Hollywood's oft slow-moving standards.
Captain Marvel kind of splits the difference, with several female screenwriters working on the script, along with Ryan Fleck, who, to be fair, typically works alongside his longtime writing partner, Anna Boden, with whom he also directed this film. Contrary to some sources, the two are not a couple, though they did date at one time. The romantic relationship didn't stick- the creative one did.
Together, the two are responsible for the likes of Half Nelson, Sugar and It's Kind of a Funny Story, all of which they wrote and directed together, save Half Nelson, which Fleck directed and Boden produced. She also edits all their films, save Captain Marvel. The two have also done lots of TV, including gigs on The Big C, Billions and The Affair.
As to be expected, the film is basically an origin story, but it is unusual in that it tells that story in flashback form. When the movie begins, Captain Marvel (Oscar winner Brie Larson, of Room) is known as Vers, a Starforce warrior living on the capital planet of Hala, which is part of the empire of the Kree, who are an advanced militaristic race of aliens. Unfortunately, Vers suffers from amnesia and recurring nightmares, and as such, has no real memory of her past, save brief flashes of things which she can't make sense of.
Helping her out in her training is Yon-Rogg (Jude Law, young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), the commander of the Starforce, who serves as a sort of mentor to her, and considers her the fiercest of his warriors, much to the others' chagrin at times. Their latest mission is to rescue an undercover operative from the Skrulls, but things go sideways and Vers is captured.
Information garnered from her memories leads the Skrulls to Earth for some unknown mysterious purpose, where Vers escapes and lands in Los Angeles, where she continues her pursuit of the Skrulls while trying to evade the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as represented by a young Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), pre-eye loss, and Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg).
Both Jackson and Gregg have been given the "de-aging" CGI treatment, a la Michael Douglas and Kurt Russell in, respectively, Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which has considerably improved in the meantime, I must say, to the point that you forget all about it within minutes of seeing it this time around.
The film is set in 1995, which just so happens to be my own heyday, so you better believe I got a kick out of the 90's era alternative rock soundtrack, much of which is female-driven, including the likes of Hole, Garbage, No Doubt and Elastica, as well as older ringers from Heart and Lita Ford, and some Nirvana and R.E.M. to boot. Larson also sports a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt for a healthy portion of the film for good measure.
Anyway, eventually Vers realizes that she's been to this planet before, and as time goes by, she begins to look into her potential past, eventually reconnecting with an old friend, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch, Fast Girls), who was the last one on Earth to see her alive, and helps to fill in the blanks of who she possibly used to be: Carol Danvers, an Air Force pilot who mysteriously vanished out of the blue after crashing her plane, after which she was presumed dead, though no body was ever recovered.
So, how did she come to leave Earth? How did she end up on Hala? Did she die in the crash? Were her memories somehow "uploaded" into a new body that was modeled after her old one? Or is she really Carol Danvers, given a new lease on life via some mysterious occurrence? Did the crash somehow result in her gaining her superpowers? All of these questions are eventually answered, along with a twist that only those familiar with the comics are likely to see coming, which flips everything Vers knew- or thought she did- on its head.
I won't spoil the surprise here, except to say that, obviously, yes, Vers eventually becomes the titular Captain Marvel, and the powers she possesses are considerably more involved than she thought initially, what with her not remembering anything that happened to her before a certain point.
There's, of course, a reason for that, which I also won't spoil here. There's also a cameo from a character late in the film that will no doubt be familiar to fans of the Marvel-verse, and the Tesseract plays a part in the action here, as it does in many of the other Marvel films and TV shows, including Avengers: Endgame, which I'll be reviewing soon.
Overall, Captain Marvel is a reasonably entertaining film, though it's no Wonder Woman, I'm afraid. Granted, that's stiff competition, and that one had the benefit of better name recognition, as well as a solid feminist agenda, thanks to WW's Amazonian origins, and the fact that the film was solely directed by a woman, albeit written by a man.
Still, there's ample girl power on display here, and, as I mentioned, Captain Marvel is arguably the most powerful of all the superheroes, male or female ("Marvel's Mightiest Avenger," as she is known) which is impressively forward-thinking for a character created in the late 60's. (Wonder Woman, it should be noted, beat Captain Marvel to the punch in the comics by several decades, having debuted way back in 1941, so credit where it's due.)
The main problem isn't that Vers/Danvers/Marvel isn't a compelling character, or that Larson doesn't give a winning performance- she does- it's that, due to its mostly flashback-driven structure, it's hard to connect with the character. I guess the idea was to have the viewer discover her origins along with the character herself, which is a neat idea in theory, but not so much in execution, as it means she's a bit of a passive participant in her own origin story, which is a weird choice.
As such, this may be yet another example of a Marvel movie that doesn't truly get going until it's a few movies into the franchise, like Captain America- The Winter Soldier and Civil War were way better than The First Avenger- or Thor - Ragnarok was easily the best of that trilogy. On the plus side, it doesn't hurt that she plays a key role in Avengers: Endgame, or that the next movie in the franchise won't have to deal with the whole "origin story" thing.
Oddly enough, origin stories tend to be the least compelling entries of many a superhero movie, at least after a certain point, i.e. I think we can all agree that, even if they rebooted it from scratch, we don't need yet another recounting of, say, Batman or Spider-Man's origins. Once or twice is quite enough, thanks.
With all that squarely behind her, Captain Marvel's second movie can concentrate on developing her as a fully-formed character the next time around, so I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the sequel is a marked improvement on this film.
Be that as it may, Captain Marvel has cleaned up at the box office, having already grossed some $1.125 BILLION on a roughly $175 million budget. That's enough to garner it the rank of the tenth highest-grossing superhero film of all time at the time of this writing, as well as besting even Wonder Woman, which grossed a mere $821 million. (I joke, of course- that's still a LOT of money.) But never fear WW fans, as she'll get a chance to top CM soon enough, with Wonder Woman 1984 due to hit theaters next year.
All in all, I enjoyed Captain Marvel on the whole. Larson and Jackson have a surprisingly durable and easy chemistry, having worked together by now several times, notably on the underrated Kong: Skull Island and in Larson's directorial debut, the quirky-sounding Unicorn Store. Though the script has its problems, it's lol funny at times, especially for hardcore Marvel fans- wait till you see how Fury loses that eye- and the big twist is a solid one that almost redeems the iffy structure of the film as a whole.
Yes, it's a bit of a slog at times, and the pacing is nothing if not uneven as hell, and the inherent structure of the screenplay makes it impossible not to have the Carol Danvers character kept at arm's length for almost the entirety of the film, but it's a testament to the strength of the cast that it almost doesn't matter. Larson brings a wry snarky charm to the early bits on Earth, and the parts of the film involving her and Jackson's character are like the buddy film you didn't realize you needed in your life until you saw it.
The action is relatively solid as well, and the film features the last filmed appearance of Stan "The Man" Lee before his untimely death, with a great nod to devout fan Kevin Smith to boot that literally brought the man to tears, which you can see here, if you missed it. (Beware: mild spoilers.) Lee did record cameos for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Avengers: Endgame as well, but the one here was actually the last one he filmed, and the film opens with a tribute to him.
Of the three Marvel movies I saw last week, Captain Marvel is admittedly the least of the three, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its charms. As such, I'd say, if you haven't seen it yet, it's certainly worth a rent or a visit to the dollar theater to see when it leaves the proper theaters. I'm sure the rest of you superhero/comic book fans have already seen it by now, but if not, it's also not as bad as some would have you believe, either.
(There was a shady pre-release campaign to slam the film before it was even seen by anyone, launched by a bunch of sexist a-holes that were grumbling about the whole female-driven action film thing- and you wonder why it's so hard to get these sorts of films made! 😝)
Negative advance word notwithstanding, it didn't stop the film from being a huge hit, and good for it. Captain Marvel may not be a perfect film, but it's a reasonably entertaining one, and its success all but guarantees another installment, which means they have plenty of time to get the next one right this time. I look forward to it, and though I can only give this one a mild recommendation, it was still pretty fun, so no regrets over seeing it in theaters here.
Check it out! 😎
No comments:
Post a Comment