The Marvel recipe still works, but not entirely
Following the worldwide success of DC’s Wonder Woman, Marvel fights back with Captain Marvel, its first female-driven superhero movie which stars Brie Larson (Room, Kong: Skull Island) in the leading role. The film, written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, debuts in Italy tomorrow (March 6) and in the U.S. on March 8.
In Avengers: Infinity War, we saw the villain Tanos leading half of humanity and half of our favorite superheroes to disintegration: we know from the last scene of the film that agent Nick Fury sent an S.O.S. to Captain Marvel and that we’re going to see her again in the last chapter of the saga, Avengers: Endgame
That said, Captain Marvel acts as a prequel set in 1995, before the creation of the Avengers team. The story follows Vers, a member of a Kree elite military unit called Starforce: according to the comic books, Kree are a fictional advanced militaristic alien race living on planet Hala. Pushed by her mentor Yon-Rogg, Vers is fighting in a war she doesn’t know a lot about, while memories of a mysterious past life flash through her mind every now and then, with no apparent explanation.
Following a space battle, she finds herself on Earth, as the planet becomes the center of the conflict: with the help of agent Fury, she finds out that she’s Carol Danvers, a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who received superpowers during an accident, which exposed her to alien DNA.
Captain Marvel has some undeniable strong points: a powerful leading character (Larson is always convincing), a human-alien-superhero funny mix, and a mid-90s soundtrack (which includes No Doubts, TLC and Hole) that will make music fans go crazy. In addition, the film reveals how agent Fury lost his eye and introduces a secondary character that is hard to forget: a sweet but dangerous cat named Goose (a clear tribute to Tom Cruise’s sidekick in Top Gun), whose presence spices up the narrative.
Maybe the audience will struggle in the first part, which is mandatory to explain the character’s origin story, but that recalls too much the Star Wars saga.
Alongside Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson (who returns as Nick Fury), Captain Marvel also stars Jude Law (as Yon-Rogg), Ben Mendelsohn (as the shape-shifting leader Talos) and Annette Bening (as the Supreme Intelligence).
Overlooking some absurd action scenes (in the end… it’s a superhero movie!), Captain Marvel is maybe not as good as other Marvel’s films, but certainly enjoyable.
