Captain Marvel Spoiler Review - No Trolls Allowed

General Score: 72/100

Being the technical side of the review spectrum there is a lot to go in here for a movie like this. First and foremost it should be noted that none of the MCU movies are technical wonders. There is a set formula and visual style, much like a TV series. The Marvel side of the Disney is a well oiled machine. One that doesn’t have a whole lot of room for individual style. Which isn’t a bad thing really, it just makes for a lot of cookie cutter cinematography. In capable hands like the Russo brothers, those confinements are a challenge to create something fantastic. Here though, directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck pull off a workable job. The biggest issue is the direction given to their lead. This is likely the reason people have been saying there is no character arc for Brie Larson. She is a cocksure and snarky member of a cosmic military unit. By the end the only difference in that regard is the fact that she is no longer part of the cosmic military, she is just the first quasi-member of the Avengers. The saving grace for this score is the fact that there IS an actual arc. It surrounds her memories and her past more than her personality changes. Though there is a slight sense of the character “growing up,” though the operative word there is “slight.”

Mythology Score: 68/100
This is likely the place where the movie fails the most. The respect for the source material is super hit and miss. Some of the changes make sense, in the condense-for-movies kind of way. Other changes seemed unnecessary.
The biggest change that seemed to make sense in this context was changing how Danvers gets her super powers. There are elements that are taken directly from the comics, but instead of it being Mar-Vell who was there and helped her recover, it was Yon-Rogg. Also, the connection to the space stone in the tesseract and that being part of the drive that gives her powers would fall into this category too.
Mar-Vell’s gender swap is a change that didn’t need to happen. Feige says that they originally weren’t going to have Mar-Vell in the movie at all, which would have been a terrible idea, and then they were looking for a man to play the part. But with the casting of Annette Benning, they decided to consolidate her role as the Supreme Intelligence with that of Mar-Vell. This could have easily been Phyla-Vell and payed even more of an homage to the source material. Though this feels like a social narrative driven change.
It was nice to see a potential future Captain Marvel number 2 in Monica Rambeau. Strange though that with the concern over the social narrative, they didn’t decide to make this movie about Monica Rambeau and then lead into Carol Danvers down the road.
The Skrulls being sympathetic was unexpected, and will present issues implementing the Skrull invasion later like Feige has said they want to do.

Story/Writing Score: 78/100
Aside from the mythology issues, the story is cohesive, if not a little hamfisted. There are multiple points in the movie where I found myself saying, “I get it, we are in the 90s!” Some of the jokes missed hard. The tesseract elements also felt a bit forced. But by and large everything was easy to follow, and enjoyable.

Enjoyability Score: 80/100
Being totally subjective now, this movie was thoroughly enjoyable. The first 2 acts weren’t quite as strong as Wonder Woman but they were close. The third act though succeeded where DC failed. The villain isn’t dead, the hero has a grip on her place in the world, and the special effects were totally believable.

Total: 298/400

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