CAPTAIN MARVEL: A Woman's Touch

March is Women's History Month, so round these parts we round up films directed by women. This one's a big one, Marvel's first woman behind the camera since Patty Jenkins was ousted from the production of Thor: The Dark World.

Other Reviews in this Series.

Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck
Writers: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Geneva Robertson-Dworet, Nicole Perlman, Meg LeFauve
Cast: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch
Runtime: 123 mins.
2019

A pattern begins to emerge among all of the heroes Marvel has introduced in Phase 3, which ends next month with Avengers: Endgame. These newcomers' stories lack compelling, fully manifest character arcs. In other words, the movies are hardly about anything at all. The MCU's Doctor Strange is Tony Stark with tech swapped out for magic; he is punished for his hubris by losing functionality in his hands, but then zips through magic training effortlessly, with only lip service paid to transcending his arrogance. Meanwhile, the MCU's Spider-Man is Tony Stark with oldness swapped out for youngness; Peter steadfastly refuses to learn any lessons, then is rewarded for his unchanging behavior. The only exception seems to have been Black Panther, who managed to have a focused and pointed arc even before his solo film, back in Captain America: Civil War.

Which brings us to Captain Marvel, the worst offender yet. There is a narrative online that the men writing negative reviews don't understand the message, and that the movie is not for them. In some cases this is certainly true. Others may love the message, but resent the execution. There are quite a few women writing negative Captain Marvel reviews that you could check out, like this succinct piece by Louisa Moore.

Captain Marvel purports to be about a woman throwing off the shackles of what men have told her to be, but in practice the message doesn't evolve past lip service. "You should do what you feel!" the movie suggests, "Especially if you got superpowers in an explosion!" Such a worthy message tossed off with such little thought feels more like condescension than progress. It doesn't help that director/writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have absolutely no idea how to dramatize any of this. We never see the growth. Yes, Jude Law tells her to control her emotions, but then she blasts him anyway. Yes, a man tells her to smile more, but then she steals his motorcycle. These are fist-pumping feminist moments, but they jump the shark of Carol's arc. What lesson has she learned if her behavior is the same throughout? (And who is she supposed to have learned this lesson from, anyway? Nick Fury, a man who has no compunction against exploiting individuals for their violent potential? Or her supposed mentor Dr. Wendy Lawson, whose only advice is, "We need to blow up this speedy engine."?)


This is not a problem with Brie Larson, who is doing her level best to cobble together a charismatic and compelling lead out of scraps. This is a deep tissue problem with the writing. Sloppy characterization, sloppy plotting, and sloppy dialogue--the whole package.

Vers (Brie Larson) is a Kree warrior who is being inculcated as a soldier* in the war against the shapeshifting Skrulls by her commanding officer Jude Law. She can't remember who she is, but she has a weird connection with Earth, where she eventually goes by accident. There she encounters a nascent SHIELD organization, a secret invasion force of Skrull warriors, and her true name. Also, this movie is set in the 1990s for a reason I can't quite discern.

*Incidentally, I find it rich that the film seems to disapprove of Vers' military brainwashing, then seamlessly transitions into full-throated Air Force propaganda.

The cardinal sin of the screenplay is to saddle its titular character with amnesia. Memory loss is at this point the tropiest of all tropes, primarily useful in video games when you don't want the protagonist to have pesky things like "character" and "personality." It creates the air of mystery without any of the actual mystery. Captain Marvel kneecaps its protagonist hard by draining her of psychological depth for the sake of a plot contrivance. In the absence of any defining characteristics beyond bad dreams, Carol is a borderline parody of the MCU superhero model--a quippy charismatic shell. She is entirely reactionary, impulsive, and carelessly violent, all things that could have been contextualized if she were an actual character with actual psychology and nuanced motivations.

The tell-don't show dialogue makes matters worse. Carol spends much of the runtime listening to side characters deliver exposition in her general direction. Exposition about the world, exposition about her place in it, exposition about who she is and what her values are. If you were to squint you could imagine this was meant to be a commentary on mansplaining. In practice, it's a bad look to make the first woman lead of your cinematic universe the most passive agent.

There is no throughline of character development guiding us along, and Captain Marvel suffers for it. The shape feels like at least three or four different movies awkwardly stitched together. The first quarter is the most dismal of these, and the most sci-fi. This doesn't seem to be a coincidence. Boden and Fleck have built their career on low key dramas, and their skillset jars with the requirements of Genre Weirdness. Their addiction to close-ups and close medium shots may do more to ruin the film than any other single element. Without any wide shots to texture the world and connect the characters to their environment, the sci-fi spectacle ends up being downright indiscernible. The sets are uninspired and murky. Or maybe the sets are fine, we just have no view of them. In any case, it's clear that unlike, say, a James Gunn or a Patty Jenkins, Bodin and Fleck's hearts aren't in this sci-fi gobbledygook.

One of two sequences in which Captain Marvel is restrained, then manages to escape by trying really hard.

The action wallows for similar reasons. Everything is too close and quick. Since Carol's powers are ill-defined at any given point in the film, there is no push/pull of expectation and subversion. There's a moment early on when Carol is disadvantaged and outnumbered, but still takes out an entire squad of enemies. This could have been a great underdog moment were it not cut to ribbons, as impactless as a Playstation One video game, but with that particularly raucous N64 camera. It doesn't help that they seem to have filmed the majority of this movie in a warehouse.

The film starts to pick up a bit when Carol gets to Earth, owing mostly to the genial banter between her and a young Nick Fury--wearing some really incredible anti-aging cream!** We also get to see more of Ben Mendelsohn's villain, who ends up being a highlight despite the encumbrance of big green goblin make-up. Mendelsohn underplays Talos to great effect, selling the only couple comedic moments that even remotely work. We also also get to spend some time with Goose the Cat, whose function in this movie is almost entirely window dressing, but in the absence of compelling characters one appreciates all the screentime one can get with a cute lil orange kitty cat.

**Cream Generated Image

Boden and Fleck are clearly out of their depth here, or at the very least far afield of subject matter they are comfortable with. The Marvel machine keeps them from embarrassing themselves, however, as it has done with every film since Thor: The Dark World. That's what they do. I can't help but be increasingly frustrated by the MCU stable of tricks though, like *SPOILERS FOR THIS PARAGRAPH* an entirely needless cameo-for-the-sake-of-cameo by Ronan the Accuser, adequate villain of Guardians of the Galaxy fame. I feel bad that they dug up Lee Pace for something so inconsequential. He is holo-Skyped into the film and asked to invade the Earth; he then shows up to do so, gets intimidated by Captain Marvel, and turns around to leave. That's it.

My issues go deeper than that. I believe the narrative mediocrity of the MCU is purposeful. It is anti-drama, because drama requires consequence, and consequence means rupturing the status quo. Consequence also means a struggle with responsibility, which cuts into the (marketable) fascist superhero wish fulfillment fantasy: Wouldn't it be great if I got super powers? I would be so cool, and totally justified in anything I do. There are folks who make the argument that for blockbusters, entertainment trumps narrative cohesion. First of all, well-executed drama is far more entertaining, and second of all, these may be popcorn movies, but they are some of the most viewed pieces of art on the planet. Stories matter.

I can only hope that the sequel picks up a stronger creative team. One that will be less hamstrung by the rush to introduce Captain Marvel so that she can punch Thanos a lot next month.

1.5 / 5  BLOBS