Review: Captain Marvel is a powerful ode to self-determination

10 years and 20 films deep into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we finally have a female-led superhero entry. Those aren’t great stats, but the arrival of the highly anticipated Captain Marvel seems poised to shake up the old boy’s club up in a number of ways.

Brie Larson stars as Carol Danvers, a fighter for the alien Kree Starforce. On the futuristic city of Hala, she is plagued by recurring dreams of a past she can’t remember, a notion she pushes out of mind via training sessions with her mentor Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). During meetings with the Kree Supreme Intelligence, a formless AI being that takes the image of someone who means the most to each individual, Carol is greeted by a woman she doesn’t remember (Annette Bening). She is taught to suppress her emotions in order to succeed in combat, a story element that comes into play numerous times throughout the film.

While out on an undercover mission to rescue a Kree agent, Carol is captured by the shape-shifting Skrulls, a green-skinned alien race with the power to physically impersonate anyone they lay their eyes on. The Skrulls probe her mind in search of critical information their race needs in order to survive their ongoing war with the Kree, which also allows for some nifty backstory to be filled in as the Skrull soldiers liberally fast-forward and rewind through her memories like they were a beaten-up VHS tape.

Breaking out from her captor’s ship using her photon blasts, Carol crash lands on Earth (or planet C-53, according to her alien pursuers), falling right through the roof of a large Blockbuster Video, the first sign that this film is actually set in the mid-90’s (don’t worry, there are plenty more 90’s references peppered throughout to remind you of those crazy times). After breaking into a Radio Shack and hooking up a GameBoy to some random wires, Carol is able to send a quick message to Yon-Rogg alerting the Kree of her presence on Earth, before running into a CGI de-aged Samuel L Jackson, reviving his fan favourite role as agent Nick Fury.

While Fury smiles and nods as Carol describes her role as a Kree Starforce warrior while standing in a mall parking lot, they are attacked by a Skrull soldier, which pushes Carol and Fury into working together to combat the oncoming “invasion” of the Skrulls.

With their 90’s action buddy film banter, Larson and Jackson provide the film’s best laughs in these scenes together. They’re about as unlikely a pair as you could imagine, and even Jackson’s uncannily precise de-aging process never hinders the sheer fun of their back-and-forth exchanges, often paired with snippets of 90’s radio gems from the likes of TLC and Elastica.

In order to gain a glimpse into her past life, Carol manages to track down Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch), who she comes to discover was her best friend and fellow pilot in her life back on Earth. Along with Rambeau’s young daughter Monica, they provide a true sense of normalcy in Carol’s life, and help push her onwards to uncover the truth about the woman Carol keeps seeing in her dreams. Once that revelation comes to light, they also help push her to continue her pursuit for justice.

Without delving into spoilers, the war between the Kree and the Skrulls is not all it appears to be. When confronted with the truth of the long-running war, Carol has to decide which side she is on, and what she is willing to do to help those most in need.

Superhero origin stories are getting very stale (there’s a reason why Spider-Man: Homecoming made a joke of skipping right over it), but there’s a fundamental difference here — everyone knows how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, but very few know who Carol Danvers is, and what makes Captain Marvel one of the post powerful beings in the Marvel universe. The writing and directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (previously known for low-key dramas like Half Nelson) do a good job of working in the details of Carol’s backstory as a sort of game, revealing bits and pieces as they come to her throughout the film. It gets rids of that dreaded first act of superhero movies where the audience is just waiting around for something important to happen to the main character, and lets them focus on the story playing out in a more organic way.

That said, there is a lot going on in this film, and like with most Marvel movies, large information dumps often slow down the narrative to a steady drip. While the cosmic space politics may be cumbersome to those not deeply steeped in 70’s Marvel comics history, in many ways Captain Marvel is one of the most accessible MCU films to date. At its heart, this is a film about a young woman coming into her own, accepting her powers and strengths despite being told by men to suppress them throughout her life.

Some of the other themes here are a little murkier — this is a decidedly anti-imperialist film that was made with the direct support of the US Air Force (during a pivotal scene Carol even changes the colour of her costume to match the Air Force design on a shirt Monica is wearing). That the film tackles colonialism and the plight of refugees as issues worthy of superhero intervention while still supporting the US Military may be problematic to some (especially outside of the U.S.), but at its heart this is a film about looking past superficial differences, something that can’t be hammered home enough these days.

There are a lot of expectations for this film (both good and bad, depending on which side of the troll spectrum you fall on), and the filmmakers seem keenly aware of how they want to position Captain Marvel for her debut. Brie Larson is great in the title role, managing the tricky task of playing someone in a fugue state for most of the film, while still retaining a sense of fun and wit so that the film never gets too dour. “I have nothing to prove to you,” Carol utters in a climactic scene, a message which resonates not only within her character’s arc in the film but also to the legions of online trolls looking for an excuse to knock this film down. It’s a powerful message of self-determination that hopefully inspires legions of young women watching Captain Marvel all across the globe, and one much more meaningful than any Rotten Tomatoes score.

Captain Marvel is in theatres now.