Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
Bottom Line: Empowering. Fun. Funny. Great chemistry. Flerkens!
“Captain Marvel” is three origin stories in one. First and foremost, it’s the origin of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) as Captain Marvel. Brie Larson is very well cast in this roll. She exuded confidence and power as she slowly accepts her role as defender of Earth. Second is the origin of the Avengers itself. Captain Marvel is the spark in Nick Fury’s (Samuel L. Jackson) eye that leads him on his quest to start The Avengers Project and the events in this movie set up everything for the first “The Avengers” movie. Third is the origin story of Nick Fury’s eye patch. Oh, the horrors!
Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson are great together throughout the film. They have this natural chemistry, which I hear is true even off camera, and each plays off the other wonderfully. This may be one of the greatest film bromances in history. What I found most interesting is how Danvers never really talks down to Fury despite her being supremely overpowered and him being a normal human. There are moments of almost motherliness too, which work really well.
The mid-credits and post-credits scenes set up both “Avengers: Endgame”, which is up next in our time, and “The Avengers” which is up next chronologically in the Marvel Comics Universe. They are probably the most straight forward credits scenes in any Marvel movie and you don’t need an advanced degree in Marvel Comics literature to figure out what they mean if you’ve been following along with the movies thus far.
My only mild complaint about the movie is the special effects. It actually turned out much better than I feared when watching the previews for it, but there was still an overly CGI feel to many of the effects that was distracting at times.
“Captain Marvel” did, shall I say, Marvel-ously (yes I shall!) in the box office, raking in $455M worldwide, making it the 7th largest opening weekend of any movie and the second largest of any Marvel movie. Girl Power! All this despite a fairly concerted effort by misogynists to game online ratings systems to make it look like the movie was not worth seeing. That effort got a lot of decent press and backfired on the misogynists spectacularly.
I think “Captain Marvel” is probably in the top five Marvel movies so far. “Black Panther” still reigns supreme and probably one or both of the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies are better too, but “Captain Marvel” is worthy to be in their presence and is definitely worth repeated viewings. Whenever this chapter in the Marvel epic is through, it would be fun to have a Tesseract viewing party where we watch all the Marvel movies featuring the Tesseract in chronological order. Because the Tesseract is clearly the real star of the Marvel Universe.