Film Review - Captain Marvel

Vers (Brie Larson) is a warrior in the Kree Starforce but she is having nightmares. She cannot remember her life before she was on the Kree homeworld Hala only getting flashes that often end with an alien pointing a laser pistol at her face. Her training officer Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) tells her to let go of the past focus on your training and the need to control your emotions. Vers visits the Supreme Intelligence who appears to a Kree warrior as the person they most admire. For Vers it's a woman (Annette Benning) that she cannot remember at all. Soon Vers gets to fully participate in a mission to rescue a Kree spy Soh-Larr (Chuku Modu) but the mission is a trap designed by the Skrulls to capture Vers as they have noticed something different in her that they want to explore. Vers is poked and prodded by the Kree's mortal enemies evoking more memories before escaping on a ship that disintegrates seeing her fall to planet C-53 into a Blockbuster Video Store flatting an Arnold Schwarzenegger poster a metaphor to announce a new kind of hero for the modern 1990s and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole.

Captain Marvel is an origin story with a twist, Vers has her powers at the outset but there is still a degree of exposition and trials as the hero attempts to understand and harness them. Here Vers finds herself back on her home planet of Earth where she had a life as Air Force test pilot Carol Danvers. Now she's caught between the shape-shifting Skrulls lead by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), the Kree who are trying to catch up to her and S.H.I.E.L.D. with digitally de-aged Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) alongside rookie partner Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) who are called to investigate the strange women in a shiny jumpsuit who has just crashed landed through the roof of a Blockbuster.

Indie film Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck who both have writing credits on the film hit the audience with a lot of information in the piece that inhabits several galaxies managing to keep the narrative straight. The story is also a strong commentary on today's real politics of the fear of the Others, how refugees are treated and the ongoing struggle that is a theme across the Marvel Universe between the use of technology for good or to better wage war.

Brie Larson is an excellent choice as the first female to lead a Marvel Comics title. She is a rangy Academy-Award winning actress with a dry sharp wit and expressive face that is willing to buck the establishment and make the hard choices in her daily life thus the perfect fit for a character that does the same on screen. Ben Mendelsohn seems to be the current go to bad guy of choice having recent villainous turns in Rogue One, Robin Hood and Ready Player One. Jude Law continues his recent string of successful roles as Vers' Unit Commander and trainer who is looking as he says only for Vers to be the best version possible of herself.

Captain Marvel is the last missing piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She's the one that Fury was trying to page on an odd 1990's device as he was being wiped out by Thanos' Snap at the end of Avengers Infinity War. It's during Fury's adventures with her that we finally learn how he came to have an eye patch on his left eye. The film also includes the feline Goose who has some unique Flerken abilities that are revealed in the third act. It's an enjoyable film about a hero with supreme powers that she has to learn to wield on her own terms without as she puts it the need to prove anything to anyone.

*** Our of 4.

Captain Marvel | Anna Boden / Ryan Fleck | U.S.A.| 124 Minutes.

Tags: Air Force, Test Pilot, Energy Core, Light Speed, Aliens, Shape-Shifters, Galactic War, Refugees, Laboratory, Feline, Binary, Cosmic, Glass Eyes.