To be completely honest, I was ready not to like this movie. I did not know this woman Carol Danvers as super-heroine Captain Marvel at all. The Captain Marvel I knew as a child was the superhero donning a red suit with a yellow lightning bolt across his chest whom Billy Batson turned into when he shouts "Shazam!" I had no idea who Captain Marvel was when Nick Fury paged her at the end of "Infinity Wars" before he turned into dust. As written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, this film will introduce us to this mysterious superhero who will play a key role in reversing the effects of Thanos's fateful fingersnap.
In Hala, home planet of the Krees, a female warrior Vers under the mentorship of her commander Yon-Rogg, led a Kree Starforce mission against their nemesis, the shape-shifting Skrulls, led by Talos. The action of their outer space battle somehow landed them on Earth in downtown Los Angeles in the mid-1990s. Agents of SHIELD Nicholas Joseph Fury and Phil Coulson were hot on her heels in pursuit, as Vers began to get bits and pieces of memories of a past life on Earth as Carol Danvers, a skillful and valiant pilot who worked for a senior scientist Dr. Wendy Larson.
I did not find all the initial scenes (before Vers landed on Earth) engaging at all and I kept tuning off, which was very unusual for a Marvel superhero film. Things only started to pick up when Vers landed on Earth and met the 25-years younger, pre-eyepatch Nick Fury, his then newbie partner Phil Coulson and Carol's best friend Maria Rambeau. Fortunately, the 90s pop soundtrack did lift up the energy of the proceedings, with the unexpected use of hits like "Only Happy When It Rains" (by Garbage), "Come As You Are" (by Nirvana), "Just a Girl" (by No Doubt) and many more radio hits.
A big part of why this movie failed to completely fly for me was because of the seeming miscasting of Brie Larson as Vers/Carol Danvers. She was a curious casting choice even from the trailers alone, when I already felt that Larson may be wrong for the role. Still, I wanted to see the full film before I can judge. During and after watching, I could hardly connect with the way Larson portrayed her character/s. We only get used to her portraying the character as the film went on, but never really felt that it was a perfect fit at all. In the final stretch though, Larson did somehow come through, so I am not giving up on her yet (since she did sign for six more MCU films after this).
On the other hand all of the supporting actors around her, Samuel L. Jackson (Fury), Clark Gregg (Coulson), Ben Mendelsohn (as Talos), Annette Bening (as Dr. Wendy Lawson), Jude Law (as Yon-Rogg), Lashana Lynch (as Maria), Akira Akbar (as Maria's daughter Monica) and even the four cats who played Goose felt more comfortable in their roles. Unlike the Fury we know now, the de-aged Jackson was loose and funny as the younger Fury, looking like how we first knew him as Jules Winnfield in "Pulp Fiction" back in 1994. Too bad that Larson could not seem to keep up with the comic interactiions with Jackson.
We knew there was going to be a Stan Lee tribute, but did not expect that it would be at the very start, so don't be late! The best CGI moments of the film were in the final half hour or so, when Vers/Carol finally discovered and unleashed the full extent of her electrical powers as Captain Marvel. This film explained a lot of Marvel lore -- like why no one else knew about Captain Marvel, how the Avengers Initiative got its name, why the Tesseract was with Nick Fury, etc. The extra mid-credits scene though promises a better incarnation for Larson as Captain Marvel in the upcoming "Avengers: End Game." And with her origin out of the way, we surely we are all going to watch out for Captain Marvel in that one. 6/10
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