Captain Marvel

By: Maggie Stankiewicz

Captain Marvel is tasked with the seemingly insurmountable chore of introducing who might just be the Marvelverse’s most powerful hero while managing to weave her present significance with her past uprising and somehow…it manages to pull it off. In fact, Captain Marvel’s only true downfall is the amount of time dedicated to exposition and backstory – though the film cannot be faulted for this as the coverage is a necessity for one of the film’s target audiences – those who are simply looking for a new hero. Marvel fans may be apathetic towards the backstory and will notice a few key differences from comic-lore, but overall the film does a good job at setting up Captain Marvel’s canon importance while still balancing her cultural appeal.

Now that the formalities are out of the way we can discuss what’s really important about Captain Marvel – Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) herself. We meet Carol during a time in her life where she isn’t completely sure of who she is and in a series of flashbacks we can deduce that her (literally) blue-blooded insurgence as a soldier had led her to where she is now – training beneath Yon-Rogg, an upper-level Kree fighter played by a particularly reptilian Jude Law. At this point in time Carol is going by the name of Vers and her life is largely dictated by her fellow combat ready Kree and a shape-shifting higher power known as The Supreme Intelligence. The enigmatic Supreme Intelligence presents itself differently to each member of the Kree race. To Vers, it appears in the likeness of Annette Bening, who plays a figure cloaked in mystery and repression. Vers cannot remember anything about her past and is unable to recall the significance of the Supreme Intelligence’s performance.

Yon-Rogg is preparing Vers for a battle against the species’ shape shifted enemies, the Skrull, fronted by Talos (Ben Mendelsohn). Yon-Rogg makes it apparent from the get-go that though Vers has potential – she is “too emotional” to ever fulfill it. Nevertheless, she persists and embarks on an intergalactic journey to rescue a comrade on Skrull territory. The mission goes awry and Vers is separated from her unit. This mishap results in Vers’ crashing landing on Earth, right through the ceiling of a Blockbuster video store…in 1995. Shenanigans ensue and Vers is quickly introduced to Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), who are still relatively new to the S.H.I.E.L.D. and extraterrestrial game.

Vers, not quite keen on the clandestine part of dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D., conspicuously runs through the city of Los Angeles and her own past with Nick Fury by her side. Their relationship reads like the best parts of any buddy-cop film, if one of the cops had the ability to disintegrate buildings with a single catastrophic photon blast. On their adventure through time and space Vers discovers that her entire life as a Kree was fabricated in order to both stifle and use her exceptional abilities. Vers, as she learns, was once a human soldier who had piloted in the Air Force inspired by Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening) and her best friend Maria (Lashana Lynch). It is now that Vers steps back into her human persona, Carol Danvers. The reclamation of her humanity is when she truly evolves into true power. Carol is left to reconcile the fragments of her past with the betrayals of her present, all while saving Earth and the entire Skrull race after learning the Kree’s true malicious intent.

Accompanied the entire time by Nick Fury, a “cat” named Goose, Maria, Maria’s daughter Monica (Akira Akbar) and the memory of her late mentor, Carol Danvers breaks through the ties that bound her and defied the expectations of those who wished to keep her powers dampened out of their own fear. Captain Marvel has a busy plot and at times you may feel like a fighter-pilot trying to keep up, but the twists and turns are the G-forces that will keep you glued to your seat.

Captain Marvel is already being compared to Wonder Woman and those critics are just as foolish as Yon-Rogg was for oppressing a woman he knew he couldn’t name, control or keep. Captain Marvel is her own woman, her own force and she deserves to stand alongside Diana Prince, not against her. More than the world deserves another female superhero – it needs one. Captain Marvel is there to answer the call.