By Jake Wilson
CAPTAIN MARVEL
123 minutes, M
★★½
Better late than never, I suppose – it's taken only 10 years and 20 movies for Marvel Studios to release its first superhero blockbuster centred on a woman.
As if to make up for lost time, Captain Marvel isn't just one more Marvel production: the studio's name is right there in the title, implying the heroine, played by Brie Larson, will serve as their flagship character from now on.
This is not the place to get too deep into the complicated back story of Captain Marvel (a name given several distinct characters, male and female, in the Marvel comic-book universe and beyond) Here, she's introduced as a warrior named Vers in a Blade Runner metropolis on the far-off planet of the Kree, where she's trained for combat by her yellow-eyed mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).
Brie Larson looks as if she has stepped out of a comic book.
After an encounter with a mysterious being known as the Supreme Intelligence – incarnated all too briefly by Annette Bening – she finds herself in mid-1990s Los Angeles, enabling a long series of hoaky jokes on subjects such as video stores and dial-up internet.
Armed with powers including flight and the ability to shoot energy beams from her hands, she tangles with a reptilian race of shapeshifters known as the Skrulls (their leader is played by Ben Mendelsohn, whose performance by necessity is mainly vocal) while rediscovering her former human identity as an air force pilot called Carol Danvers.
Her companion on these adventures is future Avengers overseer Nick Fury (Marvel regular Samuel L. Jackson, with digitally smoothened skin). Dorkier than his 21st-century self and not yet with his trademark eye patch, he's the designated comic relief, spending much of his screen time petting a ginger cat (a gag with a pretty good payoff).
It all runs smoothly, but with little trace of inspiration. The supporting cast is impressive but under-used, the banter is knowing in a way that has become familiar – and while the more-1990s-than-the-1990s soundtrack ranges from Nirvana to TLC, directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck never manage to tap into the specific energy of this music the way James Gunn did with the 1970s rock in his Guardians of the Galaxy films.
No one would pick this as the work of the same filmmaking team who gave us 2006's gritty Half Nelson, with Ryan Gosling as a crack-addicted high school teacher preaching Marxism. Still, Boden and Fleck may not have entirely sold their souls: taken as allegory, the plot ultimately feels unusually progressive by the standards of today's Hollywood.
For better or worse, the film is committed above all to the glorification of Carol, who might have been conceived in deliberate opposition to Diana (Gal Gadot) in Wonder Woman, a major hit recently for Marvel's rival DC. Where Diana is coy and exotic, Carol is direct and all-American – and unlike Diana, she doesn't get a love interest, unless you count her best friend Maria (Lashana Lynch).
Larson always strikes me as a bit of a goody-two-shoes, but given the concept she's well cast. She does appear to have stepped out of a comic book, with an open face – wide eyes, strong chin – that looks made for an artist to draw. What she doesn't have is a character arc or at least one that makes much sense.
On one hand, Carol starts off as an amnesiac, a blank slate hoping to discover her authentic self. But rather than gaining assurance gradually, Larson is required at every moment to be breezy, competent, irreverent, grounded, tough, kind-hearted, and noble – in short, an ideal older sister for the children (both girls and boys) who seem to be a key target audience.
Bringing this home are the embarrassing scenes involving Maria and her young daughter Monica (Akira Akbar), which exist to reassure us that Carol is really, truly, wonderful.
The trouble here, at least as far as adults are concerned, is the well-known fact that flawed characters are more interesting than idealised ones. Historically, this has certainly been true of the best Marvel protagonists, such as Robert Downey jnr's egotistical Tony Stark or Krysten Ritter's self-destructive Jessica Jones.
No one would think of Jessica, who has appeared in two seasons of her own Netflix show, as a straightforwardly positive role model. But as somebody it's possible to care about, she has Carol beaten hands down.