Captain Marvel critique- by Chris Stuckmann

Welcome to my review of the latest controversial comic book movie. Captain Marvel was directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the team behind the criminally underrated Half Nelson really great indie film. If you’ve never seen that strongly, strongly suggest you check that one out. That one’s really, really good. And Marvel has had a really good track history with taking directors and writers who are primarily from an indie background and putting them in this universe and letting them shine. So I was really excited to see what this team could bring to this story and hear. The MCU finally is introduced to Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson. She learns about her past. She discovers who she is, and she finds herself caught in the middle of a war between two alien races and realizes she’s more powerful than she ever knew she was. Now, I feel like a lot of reviews are going to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway because it’s on my mind. There’s a lot of hype surrounding this movie from two different groups. Some people really want the film to fail and some people really want the film to succeed for various reasons.

It seems like a lot of agendas are involved with this movie, which is something that’s becoming very common now for Marvel films. I just want to see a good film. I don’t care if it fails. I don’t care if it succeeds. I want to see a well-made film made by people who respect the art form, who are trying to tell a good story, that communicates a good message to the people who are going to see this movie, whether that’s for girls who don’t usually get the chance to see a female hero on screen or your average audience member who just wants to be entertained. And Captain Marvel is entertaining in spurts. There are sequences throughout the first act and second act that I thought were really well done, namely the chemistry between Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson as a younger Nick Fury. Their arguments were clever. They were funny. Both of them played really well off of each other. There was a fish out of water scenario. Once Carol Danvers is on earth, it reminded me a little bit of Terminator two.

You promise me you were going to kill anybody? Why? Because you just can’t. Why? Because you just can’t.

Ok, it’s not that exaggerated or anything. But there were scenes where she does things that are normal to her and people are looking at her like, what the hell, what is going on here? And a lot of that was really entertaining. Also, one of the most praiseworthy elements of this film is the truly, truly groundbreaking CGI work that was done to Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg. It’s stunning. After the first few scenes, I didn’t even notice anymore. It just blended into the background, which is what the best CGI does. The best computer generated stuff is the stuff you don’t even notice. That’s when a CGI artist has truly met their goal, when their work is so seamless that it doesn’t even capture your attention necessarily. It just becomes part of this world. And that is just we’re in the future. We’re in the fuckin future. It is insane what they’ve done here. Really amazing CGI work. I also liked aspects of the opening moments. You have Jude Law and her training. You have this fight scene where she has these metal braces on her hands and she’s trying to break them by busting your hand against a spaceship wall and they won’t shatter. So she just has to punch people really fucking hard to try to get these things off of her hands. That was a bad scene. Probably my favorite fight scene in the movie. I also like the musical score. It felt different from other Marvel films. There was an electronic hue to it. I guess it was most akin to Thor Ragnarok score perhaps and goosed the cat.

I like the cat. I like cats.

I don’t know what else to say. The cat was fucking cool, but I got to be honest, I thought this was a pretty bland and disappointing movie. Otherwise, especially visually, the film doesn’t have much of a style. This is something that was very disappointing to me because you look at a movie like Thor Ragnarok that TYKO ATD directed, or James Gunn’s work on the Guardians of the Galaxy or the Russo Brothers. And they’re very visceral, intense style that they’ve brought to their Marvel films. You have come to expect something of a Marvel movie of style, a feel of voice. I didn’t experience any of those things in Captain Marvel. This film felt like a series of setups where the actors are in frame and they’re performing and they were captured on film doing something, but there’s no visual style to it. It’s a very bland looking movie, very dark and murky. There’s a fight scene in a spaceship where it’s this very dark area with white lights on the wall and a pop song is playing won’t spoil it for you, although the song choice I thought was particularly obvious. And I couldn’t tell what was going on, I legitimately could not tell who was who they were a few shots where you could see close ups and you’re like, Oh, OK, so that’s Captain Marvel, OK, that’s the other person could not tell what was going on besides that opening sequence where she has those metal braces on her fists. There is not a single memorable fight in this movie, not just from a visual perspective, but from a choreography perspective.

We’ve come to expect more out of a Marvel film than this. This feels like phase one almost. And that’s not a disservice to Iron Man. There was a feel to those early Marvel movies that felt like they were still sort of figuring out what they were doing, kind of like Captain America, the First Avenger. But even those films, Joe Johnston had a visual flair and a style. It felt like a Joe Johnston film. It felt like the filmmaker who made The Rocketeer made The First Avenger. When it comes to this movie, I can’t tell who directed it. It doesn’t feel like it has any real voice of its own. Even from a storytelling perspective, the film comes off very messy. This is a big risk. Whenever you have a character that has elements of their past they can’t remember and they’re trying to piece together a movie like The Bourne Identity, I think did that really well, because we have someone and we just see who they are now and they slowly learn who they used to be. And it was told in a very interesting way because we find out who Jason Bourne used to be through his actions when he grabs that flashlight that a guard tries to smack him with, and then he just takes him out in a second through those actions, you’re like, oh, OK. This guy used to be something fucking badass. In this movie, though, we learn of Carol Danvers past’s more through audio and quick flashes of things that may have happened to her before.

She goes to this realm and visits this intelligence and is supposed to show her what she most desires. And that arc feels really wasted in the movie. By the way, I won’t get into it because it’s spoilers. But whenever you have a character like Carol Danvers with a fragmented past, it can be very difficult to tell this story in a way that feels cohesive while also having her punch things every 10 minutes in a really entertaining way. It also doesn’t seem to know what its tone is or what its message is. There’s Nyos nostalgia for like ten minutes and then it’s sort of a buddy cop movie between her and Nick Fury. And then it’s kind of a movie about sisterhood between her and one of her past friends. And those scenes were really kind of cute and adorable and heartwarming. If there was more of an emotional pull to them that I actually felt and I just didn’t feel it, it felt very forced and there just wasn’t enough backstory or information to really give a shit about those characters. But the main villains in the films are scrolls. They can shape shift, they can turn into anybody. They can make themselves look like anyone as long as they’ve seen that person. This makes for one of the most entertaining chase sequences in the film with Nick Fury on the road trying to catch up to a train that Captain Marvel is trying to infiltrate.

Because there’s an old lady that we’ve all seen the trailers or the better scenes in the movie for sure. But they really wasted a lot of the potential that they could have done with these scrolls and shapeshifting, a different things and creating an air of mystery and deception. It’s a few scenes where they use that to their advantage, but it just sort of disappears really quickly. And another story is put in its place that also doesn’t really feel earned or warranted. But I think the biggest issue with this film is really not what I wanted to say. And I mean this honestly, I am sad to say that I feel like Brie Larson just did not do a great job in the movie. She is definitely trying super hard to be a good Captain Marvel and a good Carol Danvers. She’s giving a lot of dedication to this role. And I do not know if it is direction or her choices, but her character is so, so wooden. This is a fish out of water scenario. This is somebody who doesn’t know what’s going on, who reacts to things differently. We’ve seen that in Thor. We’ve seen it, as I said, Terminator two. All of those movies played those scenes for comedy and it made those characters more likeable. Here it feels like the movie is almost afraid to make light of Carol Danvers character or show a hint of vulnerability or human emotion, which led to a performance that felt uneven to me.

I think Brie Larson is crazy talented as an actress, and I really do think they have set up great potential. I’m excited to see what else they can do with this role. And Brie Larson, in the future, I’m excited to see a more fleshed out version of this character. Now that this film has been established, it just feels like a stepping stone movie. It doesn’t feel like that incredibly powerful film that a lot of us wanted to see. It just feels like filler leading to other things featuring Captain Marvel, which is one of the most disappointing elements of the movie. Is it entertaining at times? Absolutely. Will people watch the movie and find enjoyment in it? Of course. But as some. One who has seen multiple Marvel films, now I expect way more out of them. I’m going to give Captain Marvel a. Guys, thank you for watching. And I do suggest seeing the film and making up your own mind. Don’t give in to online agendas one way or the other. Just make up your own opinion and be honest about how you feel. That’s how we get better films. I think you just have to be honest and I’m being honest. The movie could have been a lot better. All that being said, I do want to give a huge shout out to the sponsor for this video and that is Express VPN. I’m away a lot. I spent a lot of time at conventions.

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