Saturday, June 08, 2019

Movie review - "Captain Marvel" (2018) **

Disappointing. I wanted to like it - I enjoy Marvel and Brie Laren. I really hope this isn't unconscious sexism on my part. Maybe it is.

Things I did like:
* the running gag about how Nick Fury's eye got destroyed
* the montage about a girl standing up after being knocked down
* the use of 'Celebrity Skin' over the final credits
* the shout out to Stan Lee's cameo in Mallrats.

But I don't feel it was particular well made. It starts off sluggishly with a lot of mumbo jumbo exposition on some planet. Larson starts off a bad arse with a code, and winds up that at the end of the film - she just changes her enemy.

It was hard to get a fix on her character. Some scenes she acted like a robot - this seemed to be intentional. But in the scenes with Samuel L Jackson she was chatty and natural. Why were they friends by the way? I know the script needed them to be but why character wise?

The actor who plays her best friend and her daughter aren't very good. Ben Mendehlson is starting to appear in too many bad comic book movies. Annette Bening is fine.

The action is okay - it's cool how Marvel can blow people away. But there's no action. No cleverness. No character.

I feel a film about the human life of Marvel would have been better - a girl knocked down who gets up, who becomes a fighter pilot, who's brave. That would've have more resonance.

It's a very ordinary movie.

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