Captain Marvel (2019)

A lot has been said about this film. “It’s a masterpiece.” “It’s horrible.” “It’s feminist propaganda.” Good or bad, people have gone to see it. So let’s talk about it.

First of all, I think the superhero formula is becoming not only too predictable, but tiring. There’s at least two or three superhero films released per year just by Marvel, that essentially share the same structure. So I think this impacts on how I rate Captain Marvel.

I’ll start by talking about the things I liked about the movie.

• Opposite to what I’ve read online, I think Nick Fury was very enjoyable. In fact, I think it’s his performance the single thing I enjoyed the most about this movie. Fury’s character is refreshing and very different to the tough, serious patched-eye guy we know from past films.
• Another thing I appreciated was the plot twist of the real villain. It was well written in the sense that the script carefully put us in Carol’s P.O.V. by creating this fighting scene in the beginning where the squad is ambushed by skrulls. This puts us in her shoes and, from then on, we see the green aliens as evil, making that revelation scene effective.
• The scene in the climax of the movie, where she confronts the Supreme Intelligence was very well done. The way we’ve seen these flashbacks of different moments of her life as she falls, and how they show us in that moment all of those same moments as she gets up, was moving and powerful. In fact, this was the most emotional moment in the film for me.

Now, I’ll mention those things I didn’t like.

• Carol Danvers’ character is flat. There’s nothing memorable about this character. I don’t think there’s one likable trait I can mention from the character, aside from ‘powerful’. I think this problem could’ve been solved by doing a couple things: First of all, adding a scene (or couple of scenes) that focus on making us create empathy with Carol. Whether it’s showing us how she suffers an unfair injury or doing something honorable. Second, making her, in some point of the movie, have to fight against the odds and what’s more, hit bottom. We never have the feeling that all hopes have vanished. There’s no All Is Lost moment and this impacts in our empathy with her. It never makes us care because she’s always doing alright. She has no character arc and urges one. She starts perfect and ends perfect. It’s harder to relate with someone who has not a single flaw. If these two things had been in the movie, I can almost guarantee, that powerful scene I mentioned where we see her getting up after every time, would’ve been twice, maybe thrice as powerful.
• Carol’s sarcasm. I also found her unlikable at some points of the movie, with her unnecessarily sarcastic dialogue. This is not to say that a character cannot be sarcastic and likable. But, in order to make her that way, there should’ve been some good traits shown first. Take Iron Man, for example. He’s as sarcastic and maybe even more dislikable, but we’re shown how he’s suffered and how he cares for the people near him. This really adds up to create a more complete and likable hero.
• The main villain has no depth. They say heroes are as great as their villain. If that’s the case, then we have serious problems here. Jude Law’s character is cliché and unidimensional. His only trait is that he’s evil. What’s his motivation? I don’t think we’re ever really told or shown. He just does things because he’s evil. That’s not as compelling. And the guy isn’t even good at being evil. I guess this shouldn’t come as a big surprise, given Marvel’s history with flat villains.
• The second half of the second act is almost conflict-less. I’d have to rewatch the movie, but I think the midpoint of the movie is when Talos lets Carol hear the black box audio from the plane, then the flashbacks come and we’re revealed who the true villain is. After this, she has a debate with Talos about whether he’s evil or not. Then comes the preparation for the mission (no conflict). Afterwards, the daughter tries to convince her mother to go on the mission, still not much conflict. Carol changes her uniform’s colors. They take off. No conflict yet. Then, Jude Law kills the skrull science guy, which adds some conflict. Then, they fly up, find the invisible ship, they enter, the skrull family come out of hiding, cute reunion, but no conflict. Then, it’s until Jude Law and his squad invade the ship that the real conflict starts, only to push the plot into the third act. The first half of the second act has a lot more conflict than the second half, when it should be the other way around. I think this makes for a long part of the movie becoming boring, because there isn’t something really interesting holding our attention.
• The third act felt too long. I don’t have the running time of the third act, but it felt long. We’re shown, at the very least, 4-5 different fights: Fury and Maria trying to escape from the ship flown by the blue girl, Carol distracting Jude Law and his friends with the lunchbox, then another air battle when Jude Law chases Fury and Maria, then, the most useless scene in the entire movie: Her ‘confrontation’ with Ronan. Afterwards, Carol blasts Jude Law back on land and sends him back to his planet. The thing here is, as so many battles take place, it becomes tedious. In part, because there isn’t a real emotional connection with most of the characters. And the Ronan scene is a very poor attempt to set-up things for a sequel. It adds absolutely nothing to the plot and doesn’t even add conflict, since Carol very easily gets rid of the missiles. This particular scene should’ve been in the after credits, instead of the cat spitting the tesseract. It’s like they tried to compensate for the lack of conflict in the second half of act two but went too far with it.

In conclusion, I don’t think the movie was horrible. It wasn’t great either. It definitely wasn’t feminist propaganda (it barely even deals with that subject, in my opinion). Captain Marvel is a fine movie, that will get lost in the universe of the tons of Marvel movies.

Just to finish, I just want to say that I’m very curious as to how Captain Marvel is going to be handled in Avengers: End Game. She’s what I would call a ‘Superman Paradox’, in which you have a hero so powerful there’s basically nothing that can stop him. Superman, at least, has kryptonite. What does Carol have?

Thanks for reading.
The Screenplayer.