Cap­tain Marvel

As Dis­ney gear up to unleash hell in May with Avengers: Endgame, they kick off their 2019 slate by induct­ing a new hero to the grow­ing ranks – much in the same way we were for­mal­ly intro­duced to Black Pan­ther almost 13 months ago to the day, ahead of Avengers: Infin­i­ty War.

There’s a for­mu­la to Marvel’s release strat­e­gy as much as there is to the nar­ra­tives of their film out­put. You know the drill by now: hero is intro­duced, hero faces prob­lem, hero saves the day. Giv­en that these films have to be fam­i­ly-friend­ly block­busters capa­ble of res­onat­ing with an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence, this struc­ture makes per­fect sense. The real ques­tion is: can film­mak­ers work with­in the exist­ing tem­plate to give us some­thing new?

It seems absurd (bor­der­ing on embar­rass­ing) that some 11 years after Robert Downey Jr pro­claimed ​“I am Iron Man” we’re only just get­ting the first female solo super­hero film from Mar­vel Stu­dios – but if there was ever a safe pair of hands, it’s Brie Lar­son, who takes on the man­tle of Car­ol Dan­vers. While Black Pan­ther estab­lished its tit­u­lar pro­tag­o­nist with­out going through the motions of an ori­gin sto­ry, Cap­tain Mar­vel, per­haps in part ham­pered by its ​’90s set­ting, has a lot of estab­lish­ing mate­r­i­al to get through. This doesn’t leave an awful lot of room for innovation.

On a futur­is­tic plan­et named Hala inhab­it­ed by an advanced race called the Kree, Dan­vers has been led to believe she’s the Kree war­rior ​‘Vers’ (pro­nounced Veers), part of an elite mil­i­tary unit called Star­force, com­mand­ed by her men­tor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). The Kree are engaged in a con­flict with the Skrull race, and dur­ing a mis­sion to retrieve one of their own from ene­my ter­ri­to­ry, Dan­vers is abduct­ed. She inad­ver­tent­ly ends up on Earth cir­ca 1995, where she encoun­ters S.H.I.E.L.D agent Nick Fury (Samuel L Jack­son) and rook­ie Phil Coul­son (Clark Gregg). Before long Dan­vers dis­cov­ers the truth about her identity.

While this amounts to pret­ty stan­dard Mar­vel fare, Cap­tain Mar­vel ben­e­fits from an excep­tion­al cast. Larson’s cast­ing is spot-on as the rebel­lious, sto­ic yet mis­chie­vous Dan­vers, while Jack­son racks up a pleas­ing amount of screen­time as a de-aged ver­sion of Fury – at his most charm­ing when he’s fuss­ing over a scene-steal­ing gin­ger cat named Goose, who also plays a piv­otal role in the plot.

But the film’s MVP is with­out a doubt Ben Mendel­sohn, resplen­dent in lay­ers of lizardy pros­thet­ics as the Skrull leader Talos but still sport­ing his indomitable Aussie charm. He’s giv­en much more to do here than in his last high-pro­file Hol­ly­wood gig, Ready Play­er One, and appears to be hav­ing an absolute blast doing it.

Although Annette Ben­ing feels some­what wast­ed in a minor sup­port­ing role, the deci­sion to focus on the friend­ship between Dan­vers and best bud­dy Maria Ram­beau (Lashana Lynch) rather than a half-heart­ed romance sub­plot pays off. Mean­while Stan Lee, in his first posthu­mous appear­ance, deliv­ers one of his more mem­o­rable cameos which leans into the film’s ​’90s setting.

Indeed, nos­tal­gia is in abun­dance, from the Nine Inch Nails t‑shirt Lar­son wears through­out the film to a sound­track com­pris­ing the likes of Nir­vana, Garbage, Hole and TLC. The sight of our hero­ine crash­ing through the roof of that ven­er­a­ble ​’90s insti­tu­tion, Block­buster Video, feels a lit­tle on the nose, but a fight scene chore­o­graphed to No Doubt’s ​‘Just a Girl’ feels like the most sol­id ​‘com­ic book’ moment we’ve had in a Mar­vel film for quite some time. This is espe­cial­ly notable giv­en that the rest of the fight scenes are quite for­get­table, in the way that super­hero movie bat­tles tend to be.

In the age of the dour super­hero flick, Cap­tain Mar­vel strikes a pleas­ing chord, at once deliv­er­ing lev­i­ty, grav­i­ty and spec­ta­cle. Dan­vers is con­stant­ly told that ​‘emo­tions are weak­ness’, a line that has been par­rot­ed at women for cen­turies (lest we for­get the ori­gins of the word hys­te­ria), and it is both thrilling and poignant to see her over­come her male oppressors.

That said, it’s hard to ful­ly get behind the film giv­en its back­ing by the US mil­i­tary – all the glossy shots of Air Force Thun­der­birds and their involve­ment in mar­ket­ing cam­paign in North Amer­i­ca leaves an uneasy feel­ing, as if Cap­tain Mar­vel has been turned into a covert recruit­ment tool. And con­sid­er­ing that the US Air Force is par­tial­ly respon­si­ble for airstrikes in Syr­ia which have dis­placed six mil­lion peo­ple, an inter­galac­tic refugee sub­plot feels even more galling.

It’s dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile these uncom­fort­able truths with the wel­come and long over­due rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women in Hollywood’s biggest movie fran­chise. Cap­tain Mar­vel is one of the studio’s bet­ter offer­ings, and undoubt­ed­ly her big screen debut will res­onate with younger female view­ers around the world who may only just be engag­ing with pop cul­ture in this way. But films – par­tic­u­lar­ly ones that cost $150 mil­lion to make – don’t exist in a vac­u­um. As fun as it is see­ing Mendel­sohn in his pomp or Jack­son baby talk­ing a cat, it’s nev­er ​‘just a movie’.

Cap­tain Mar­vel only gen­tly dips into what could have been a more engag­ing look at female rage and how emo­tion is cur­ren­cy, pos­si­bly afraid of alien­at­ing male view­ers if its too overt­ly fem­i­nist (that ship has already sailed). Even sex­ism with­in the US mil­i­tary receives only a cur­so­ry nod. It feels less vision­ary and diver­gent next to Black Pan­ther, which stood so firm in its con­vic­tions. Per­haps if this film had been released in 2008, it would have felt gen­uine­ly ground­break­ing (in the comics Dan­vers was ​‘Ms Mar­vel’ until 2012). But it’s 2019 – and we deserve a super­hero movie that’s not just coast­ing by on autopilot.