Captain Marvel Review - NO Spoilers

(Original article posted on Facebook; March 9, 2018)

It's long past time we talked about Captain Marvel.

As always, I'm going to keep this as spoiler-free as I can, but before I go into proper review, I need to situate this contextually.

The discussion around this movie has been... problematic. It always has been. It has been since the first trailers dropped and people complained that Brie Larson 'didn't smile enough.' Or that they felt an Oscar-winning actress couldn't carry the movie. Or when they complained that Marvel was pushing the fact that this movie was female-led when other female superheroes exist, as if representation is a tick of a check-box and not, well, a representation of the variety of the human condition. As if one or two female characters is enough to stand for an entire half of humanity. When Brie Larsen said - correctly - that there are a lot of male critics in the industry and that there should be more seats at the table, people reacted as if she was a man-hating chauvinist and that the movie was anti-male propaganda. And when reviews finally began to come out and they weren't absolutely 100% glowing, people reacted as if feminism had killed the movie industry. Articles came out shaping this story of Captain Marvel as this feminist flop, despite it already making a lot of money, and having largely descent reviews, with a lot of critics enjoying it a lot.

I've been wanting in increasing measure to comment on this whole fiasco and address how absurd it all is, but in the end, I refused to give them any of my time. I believe the absurdity should speak for itself. If you can look at everything I've just lined out, and say, 'yeah, that's all a sensible reaction for a movie,' then I genuinely don't know what to say. This movie does not aim to attack anyone's masculinity by existing, and if you feel it does, then I think you need to do some soul-searching. If that's a genuine question you have, then let me affirm it again. This movie does not hate men. Brie Larson does not hate men. And if you are holding off on this movie because you've been lead to believe that it does, then I would encourage you to at the very least give it a shot.

But enough about what other people have to say, what do I have to say? If you're hearing looking for a crisp thesis, here it is: this movie is fun, and exciting, and innovative, even if it's a shot away from the upper echelons of the MCU. In the end, what it has to say is better than how it says it, though the how is still entertaining. In a lot of ways I would compare it to Doctor Strange - it's a movie with a lot of cool ideas and a lot of heart and imagination, but ultimately, it settles for bending boundaries rather than pushing and breaking them entirely. For a company with a guaranteed success rate like Marvel, I'm continually shocked at their willingness to pull back on the weird and the out-there. But a lot of people liked Doctor Strange, and a lot of people will like Captain Marvel. This movie has so much heart and charisma, it's dripping with it. Brie Larson does a lot more with the role than I've seen people give her credit for, certainly not the wooden performance she's been trumped up as. Her friendship with Maria Rambeau, played by Lashana Lynch, is the key to this movie and their scenes are so good. I truly wish there was more of them. SLJ crushes it as always, Jude Law is fantastic, and Ben Mendelsohn plays easily one of the more endearing characters in the whole thing. The whole cast is so much fun together. And the third act is just pure electric thrill. The ride getting there is bumpy; this movie wants to be a slow-burn amnesia thriller but also wants to be a typical Marvel movie, and I think you can feel the tension between those genres in the middle, but the end result is well worth it. And this is all without talking about what Captain Marvel's arc means and how impactful that all is, because you all should see it for yourselves. Also, there's a cat, and if you know Captain Marvel and you know her cat, you know you're in for a ride. If you don't, please go if only for the cat.

TL;DR, Captain Marvel is a really fun ride. It's not perfect. But it's a lot of heart and fun and energy, and where the seams show, that heart shows all the more. That heart alone is what makes this movie worth a watch.