My favorite superhero movies are origin stories, those
tales of how our comic book saviors gained their powers (in the case of Marvel
characters) or first came to Earth/began their lives of fighting crime (in the
case of DC characters). What makes a hero (or heroine) is always the most
interesting part of the story, and Marvel’s CAPTAIN MARVEL, in theaters now,
has two such fascinating origin tales.
The first and most important, of course, is
the overarching portrait of Carol Danvers, aka
Vers, aka Captain Marvel (Brie
Larson, ROOM, TRAINWRECK), who, like most Marvel characters acquires her
superpowers in an accident. How this happens is not revealed until almost the
end of the film, however. And from this point on, it’s going to be very
difficult to explain just how good CAPTAIN MARVEL is without getting a little
spoiler-y.
At first, we’re led to believe the young woman
called Vers by her handsome commander Yon-Rogg (Jude Law) is just another
soldier facing her first test in battle against an alien foe. She has problems
controlling her emotions, which lead to difficulties controlling her powers (a sort
of undefined killer blast from her hands). Even the Supreme Intelligence, the
AI that rules their planet who looks surprisingly like Annette Bening in a flight
suit of some kind, warns Vers that she must put a leash on these pesky emotions,
or she will be of no use to anyone.
Comes the big battle and Vers is captured by
the alien Skrulls and “brainscanned” for information. The process triggers
memories that the “soldier” can’t account for—a childhood and early adulthood
on a planet different from the one she defends. When she escapes from the
Skrulls, her pod crash-lands on that very planet—Earth—where with the help of a
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) she begins to piece together
the story of her earlier life.
I won’t reveal all the twists and turns of
Carol/Vers/Captain Marvel’s story, because it is truly a wild one. Let me just
say that the good guys and the bad guys are not who they first seem in this
film. Even a purring kitty hides a secret identity, though both eventually fight
for the “right” side. CAPTAIN MARVEL was a surprise from beginning to end.
As it happens, the filmmakers (writer/directors
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck) chose several times to take the path less traveled
with CAPTAIN MARVEL. Historically, the comic book character has been written as
either male or female, depending on the year. So, to make this Captain a female fighter pilot was a plus from the start. Her best
friend in the USAF is also a female, and African-American, too. The female
perspective is not just window-dressing, either. A montage of “fall-down-get-up-fight”
moments from Carol’s younger days would never have come from anything but a woman
writer. [SPOILER ALERT] Then, too, the good guys
in this film turn out to be the ugly green lizard-y aliens; the bad guys the
good-looking human-y ones. And it might be good to remember a cat is not just a
sweet piece of fluff.
I said at the beginning of the piece that
this film featured two origin stories. The second is S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick
Fury’s tale. Vers crash-lands on Earth in the 1990s, when Fury is just an agent
in the nascent organization, not its head. At the beginning, he reminds us,
though his full name is Nicholas Joseph Fury, no one, not even his mother,
calls him anything but Fury. And that eye-patch he sports in all the Avengers
movies? We learn how he gets that here.
This was among the better of Marvel’s efforts,
and I say that as a true-blue DC fan. Definitely a GO!
Cheers, Donna
