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Captain Marvel


So, Alita, Battle Angel, is now out so let’s talk about the horror that was, is, and shall ever be Captain Marvel.

Vers (nee Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson), a mighty Kree heroic warrior, finds herself dumped on Earth during the 1990s. She pursues the Skrulls who dumped her there and who may be plotting the destruction of humanity. But are they…? A snooze-fest, the worst film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ensues.

I had my doubts about this film from the moment I heard that Brie Larson was cast for the titular role. People are going to leap on that as evidence of misogyny, prejudice, sexism, whatever. Fact is, while I was aware of the amount of vitriol pouring out about Larson, as well as the things she was saying, I never read those articles, only the headlines (which, in my Flipboard feed, were kind of hard to avoid).

No, I had my doubts based on her prior performances in two action films, Free Fire and Kong: Skull Island. She’s a fine actress in dramatic roles, maybe even comedy (she was fine in Scott Pilgrim Versus the World), but action is most definitely not her forte. Hence, my dread.

Which was vindicated by her performance. If you’re going to play the most powerful being in existence (and she does, at least within the MCU that we’ve seen to date) then you have to try and be convincing. You should look involved, interested, etc., and never, ever bored. And Larson was nothing but bored during the entire film, as if the entire exercise was beneath her dramatic skills.

Beyond the lack of acting, she was hobbled by a dreadful script and wobbly directing. They oh so much wanted this to be a girl power thing and because they needed to stay constantly on message, it was all oh so dreadful. Worse, I don’t think the writer/director team, or the cast, knew they were undermining themselves at every turn.

Flashback after flashback shows men trying to oppress the future Captain Marvel. There’s a scene on the racetrack and a boy tells her to slow down; she doesn’t and she crashes (duh). Her father yells at her and this is supposed to be some moment of sexism but, seriously, she was warned she was going to fast and paid the price. There’s also the fact that the dad yelling at her is the one who brought her to the track in the first place. So much for the patriarchy.

She’s oppressed during USAF training but look at her shirt. The initials are USAFA. She’s in the damn Air Force Academy. You cannot say you’re oppressed if you succeed in gaining admission to one of the most prestigious military academies in the world.

But worst of all is the complaint about how women aren’t allowed to fly in combat. Strange, but I recall female A-10 pilots doing combat sorties during Desert Storm in 1991. That aside, though, were the producers, director, and actors paying attention to where they were when they showed Our Hero (and Friend) striding toward her aircraft?

As documented in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, for pilots there’s a pyramid. Right now, the top of the pyramid is astronaut. Below that is flight test, and then you get to look at what you’re assigned to fly. At the time of the film, the top aircraft to fly was the F-15 Eagle.

Which is what they fly, the F-15 Eagle. So they were right near the top of that pyramid. But wait, look at the big ED on the vertical stabilizer. That stands for Edwards Air Force Base, the nation’s premier flight test center. Our Hero flew F-15s at flight test. She was just a single step short of the top of the pyramid.

So much for oppression.

I know this is a lot of hot air over matters that may not directly relate to the film, but I believe they do. The film could have shown some amount of humanity from Captain Marvel, even when she was merely the human Carol Danvers. She clearly had to overcome some obstacles on her path to that pyramid’s top, but it’s always a battle with the patriarchy. Her Dad, who took her to the race track, is an oppressor. Fellow pilots she's working with sneer "it’s called the cockpit." No man, at any time or place, shows even a hint of support yet you know, as sure as she was flying an F-15, that some dude at some time had to mentor her, if doing nothing else than teaching her to fly in the first place.

Again, message over empathy. Message over humanity. Message uber ales.

The rest of the film is your standard MCU entry, only on the duller end of the scale. It all feels vaguely like The Incredible Hulk (heretofore the worst film in the MCU), only without any attempt at pathos. Danvers is powerful because she has to be. And playing “I’m just a girl” while she defeats, literally, everyone is so over the top it’s funny. Because she’s able to do all of that not because she’s a woman but because she happened to get sprayed with blue goo and thus accidentally turned into the most powerful being in the universe.

I think all the above happened because this was a rushed product. Everyone involved is better than this end result. They were rushed because someone within the cinematic chain command decided that Captain Marvel had to be in Avengers: Endgame. Rather than use her as the springboard to the next phase of the MCU, she was shoehorned into the existing MCU and Endgame. In doing so, they created a mess, a sloppy film that destroys existing continuity left and right.

Marvel is capable of doing better. Captain Marvel deserved to be better. The entire MCU deserved better.

Alas, gotta beat out that message.

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