Captain Marvel Movie Review

Captain Marvel. 5.5/10

Another solid Marvel film. Captain Marvel works as a classic superhero film with enough originality and humour to be an easy and entertaining watch. It’s nothing spectacular but to the films credit, the story manages to fit perfectly into Marvel’s cleverly designed cinematic universe.

To my surprise, I actually enjoyed Captain Marvel, even though I feel that the market for superhero movies has become completely oversaturated.

With each new entry into the franchise, it becomes tougher for me to enjoy them as each film feels less fresh and original than the ones before it. While I’m not saying Captain Marvel managed to overcome these issues, I can’t say that I didn’t find it entertaining enough to like. In fact, I enjoyed it more so than Black Panther not only in terms of story but also because of the special effects looked far better.

I don’t have too many notable gripes with Captain Marvels narrative aside from it being predictable and quite safe. It’s nothing that I wouldn’t haven’t expected from a Marvel superhero but that’s not saying it’s a bad thing either. The structure serves its purpose and even though it’s essentially a cookie-cutter formulaic recipe; you’re still getting a solid cake at the end of it.

Some standout issues were with moments of humour that came across as forced or weren’t very funny.

Comparing to early Marvel films (Iron Man, Captain America), there were a few more scenes that would be inserted not to serve to move the story along but rather just as quirky character interactions. The aim being to have a moment of comic relief from a witty exchange of dialogue between two characters; which seems to be slowly more of a trend with recent Marvel films (Avengers Infinity War, Ant-Man: The Wasp).

Unfortunately, in Captain Marvel, these moments don’t work as well and just feel a bit awkward.

While I appreciate the effort in at least attempting them to create some “originality” so it’s not just another superhero film, the editing room could have easily cut them out. They should have realised that the humour simply wasn’t translating as well off the screen and saved them as deleted scenes.  The whole plot would not be affected because as mentioned before, these scenes aren’t moving the story along. They’re just there to try and add some humour.

Having said that, I did find myself actually laughing at a few moments but ones that came from actions and events in the story and not from a “witty” lines of dialogue. I won’t spoil anything but I’ll say that the funniest scenes involved characters that weren’t humans.

The most enjoyable feature from Captain Marvel was how well it serves as, essentially, a prequel to Marvel’s cinematic universe.

While watching the film, it became very apparent that the studio executives and team at Marvel have clearly put in some thought to outlaying their plan for the franchise. Clearly, Marvel knows how to make superhero movies that can feel bigger in the grand scheme of things. It sounds like a simple thing to do but there are other companies (*cough* DC comics *cough*) who can easily make a mess out of it.

Overall, I enjoyed Captain Marvel and suggest checking it out if you’re a fan of Marvel or superhero films in general. I forgot to add that Brie Larson and Samuel L. Jackson do a solid job but I’m sure most wouldn’t expect anything otherwise.

Interestingly, after leaving the theatre, I can’t help but be excited to see what happens for her character in the next Avengers movie simply because she kind of feels unstoppable and overpowered. But then again, I feel the same about Doctor Strange and look what happened there…

See it.

Trailer: