Captain Marvel (a movie review post)

 

MCU #21

You can see my original review of this movie here. 

For reasons I can't really fathom, Captain Marvel is one of the most disliked of the MCU movies. It has only a 45% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes and not much better anywhere else. It's not that I don't understand that there are supposed reasons, but I don't get it. Captain Marvel is a wonderful movie, and Larson is excellent in the role.

That said, Captain Marvel is not a character I have much experience with in the comics. My experience of her was her in a coma because Rogue absorbed her powers and memories, and that's the way it was for much of my active comic reading experience. Monica Rambeau, on the other hand, a later Captain Marvel in the comics, I have much more experience with and that character just so happens to be introduced in this movie. Rambeau also appears in WandaVision, and we should be seeing more of her soon. I think it's pretty cool the way she is introduced in this movie.

I have no idea of the origin story for Captain Marvel in the comics, the past or the current origin, and I don't care one way or the other about the relation of this origin to what might or might not be in the comics. I got over clinging to the comic origin a long time ago. As I've said before, the MCU is its own beast and should be judged on its own merits.

And the merits of this movie are good. I love the 90s setting. The crash through the roof of the Blockbuster is classic. I love that the Skrull posing as Colson gets found out because Colson calls Fury while he's with the imposter and that you don't know ahead of time that that has happened. Okay, well, now you do, if you haven't seen it, but that's on you. You've had time. I love the flerken. And the Tesseract, what a little cube of mischief! Always getting around and powering people's weapons and engines and... superpowers. That things gets around! Of course, it is the space gem, so I guess it's appropriate.

There is one argument that could be made against the movie that is valid: It is a touch of retconning to toss Captain Marvel into the mix right in the middle of the whole Infinity saga. BUT! They wanted the cause to seem hopeless. Because it was hopeless. Thanos won. He beat the heroes. Hands down. There were two opportunities to have beaten him, the first ruined by Quill and the second because Thor didn't go for the head. If we had known going into all of that that Captain Marvel was still out there, the situation wouldn't have seemed quite hopeless. I'm reminded of the scene in Empire when ghostBen says, "That boy is our last hope." And we don't have a Yoda to say, "No, there is another." (Okay, there is the post-credit scene with Fury using the call device, but we don't know what that means, yet, right?) So putting us in the situation where there is no hope left and then introducing the character works well, I think. But I can see the argument there; I just don't agree with it.

Marvel is a really solid movie with powerful characters and performances. And, as I said in the previous review, I do think Larson and Law have great chemistry together, which makes their final confrontation very... satisfying. To say the least.
What a condescending ass.
Of course, that is the character that Jude Law plays best.

So let's get this one ranked. I say that knowing that people will disagree with my placement on this one, but, hey, this is my ranking and this how I feel about it.

1. Captain America: Civil War

2. The Avengers
3. Captain America: The First Avenger

4. Avengers: Infinity War

5. Spider-Man: Homecoming
6. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
7. Iron Man

8. Captain Marvel

9. Black Panther

10. Doctor Strange

11. Ant-Man

12. Thor: Ragnarok
13. Thor: The Dark World
14. Thor

15. Guardians of the Galaxy

16. Ant-Man and the Wasp

17. Avengers: Age of Ultron

18. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
19. Iron Man 3
20. Iron Man 2
21. Incredible Hulk (Edward Norton's ego could never be a shape-shifting Skrull. He's incapable of disguising that thing.)