Brie Larson is back as Captain Marvel in a movie which should have been called The Ms Marvel Movie. Not only does Iman Vellani steal the show in most of her scenes, but the film is also genuinely much more about her than it is Carol Danvers. It has got a rough time in the press and at the box office since it came
The film has come under a lot of negativity due to its large budget, short run time and its reliance on audiences having watched an extensive list of other movies and shows as an entry point. Unfortunately, a lot of the negativity is justified, and my feeling walking out the cinema was that the movie was OK, but far from great. The good news is that it wasn’t the worst MCU film of all time, and was generally more enjoyable than Ant-Man 3 and Thor 4, but that still doesn’t mean it was all that good.
Criticisms that the film has a lot of homework to watch before you should dive in is somewhat true. As what is Captain Marvel 2, it’s reasonable to think that audiences should at least have watched the first Captain Marvel film. I reckon that is fair, but truthfully, of all the stuff you should have to watch to follow this film, the first Captain Marvel is probably the one you need to see least.
After this, you definitely need to have seen WandaVision to understand who the Monica Rambeau character is. She was someone who met Captain Marvel in the first movie, but was just a little girl, so to follow most of her backstory you needed to have seen WandaVision. Without it, you won’t have seen Teyonah Parris in the role at all, won’t have learned that her mother Maria Rambeau had passed away and you won’t have learned how Monica gained superpowers. The film gives us some flashbacks, but this work as a reminder and I doubt would be that effective as the only way you find out about Monica.
Next up is Ms Marvel. She has a lot more character development throughout the film, but to understand where she came from you really did need to see the Disney Plus Ms Marvel series. Without this, the main plot being about a villain trying to get Ms Marvel AKA Kamala Khan’s bracelet that her grandmother gave her does seem a bit weak. They try to be creative with an animated sequence to clue non Disney Plus viewers who exactly Kamala is, but this film doesn’t do a good job to set up much other than she is borderline creepily obsessed with Captain Marvel.
A big revelation at the end of the Ms Marvel show was that Kamala is the first mutant character in the MCU and therefore will be linked into the future X-Men storylines they have planned. This teaser in the Ms Marvel show played absolutely zero part of this movie which was a disappointment. An issue this film had was that in so many ways it is totally missable.
The film had a generic baddie in Zawe Ashton as Kree warrior Dar-Benn. At some point in the past Captain Marvel may have caused issues for her home world, and now Dar-Benn seeks revenge against Carol. What I was clear on is if this was supposedly since Captain Marvel became the hero during the course of the first film or it was something she did before she got her memory back and was actually working with the evil Jude Law. Dar-Benn may actually be the most forgettable of all MCU villains. She doesn’t look cool and her, nor does she say or do anything that memorable. Also she has a Star Wars sounding character name.
Other than this revenge story aspect, the only thing going on in the movie is that Carol meets up with Monica and its super awkward between them for no reason at all. When Carol realises she could meet Monica she overhears that Monica doesn’t want to speak to her whilst Monica is trying to do a space mission. Fair enough. Then it turns out that Monica is upset that Carol said she’ll be right back and didn’t reemerge for thirty years. This didn’t work for me. Carol met Monica as a child for all of three hours and its crazy to think that adult Monica would still be holding this over Carol. If she had at least said that she was upset because Captain Marvel should have returned to help fight Loki or Ultron or save her mom (which she couldn’t have done anyway) then it could have been that she was upset that the superhero she met didn’t meet an expectation. But no, it was just ‘you said you would come back and you didn’t’. They were strangers to each other.
And the way Carol just seems awkward around her was like she met someone who she had accidentally walked in on getting undressed in a clothing store and now they’re at the same party kinda of awkward. Then there is a scene where Carol apologises to Kamala for no reason whatsoever.
The premise of bringing Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel and Monica together was something to do with them all having light based powers. And for some reason this meant that they would teleport and swap places when they used them. This wasn’t explained well and there was a lengthy action sequence where the characters kept swapping places and whilst ok, it made no sense. As soon as a character appeared on screen they just continued the fight against some random underlings without missing a beat. It actually looked like those early days AI videos where each frame continued a characters movement but had a different design.
The film has some fun in it, but it’s littered with bad writing. Kamala’s parents and brother do the tired old ‘we’ll just sit here as crazy superhero fights happen around us’ routine and then they are taken onto a space ship for no good reason just so they’re still in the movie. Captain Marvel also flies up into the sky when it’s already established that using their powers will cause them to swap place. This flung Kamala into the sky, and because she can’t fly Kamala started to fall to what would be her death. This was peril that was totally avoidable and only caused by Captain Marvel being careless. Kamala’s parents and Nick Fury then stand there and casually talk about solutions with no sense of urgency or panic. This is also used as the point where Monica has to find her ability to fly, and she does so super easily with simple encouragement from Samuel L Jackson. Like, if she was going to get the ability to fly this easily, they should have said she can fly from the start.
But hey, I could keep picking apart things like this. And a lot of superhero films have these kind of problems. It’s just this one has more than many others and less great stuff to make you not mind.
There is a planet that they go to where the inhabitants (that look exactly like humans – very lazy Marvel) can only communicate through singing. This was dumb, but actually made me laugh out loud. And that is kind of my feeling with the movie. It’s not great, but if you watch it with your mind set into low power mode you can have fun with it.
This film much more of a comedy than the first Captain Marvel film. That film had one comedy cat alien thing, so this one has twenty-nine of them. When Nick Fury’s space station comes under attack they concoct a plan that the cats eat everyone…because somehow the people can be spat out. This was funny, but again oh so dumb. Literally everyone ran from the cats like they didn’t want to be eaten even though as Nick Fury’s agents they should have been some who would brace themselves and take it or just understand that they’ll be safe. Also, how did they know they would be safe? The cats were all kittens and didn’t seem to have any way of communicating that they wouldn’t actually just eat the people. It was fun, but you really have to not think about it to get the most out of it. Still, when you’re talking about cats that have stomachs like the Tardis, who is to say how it can make sense?
Ther movie should have been called the Ms Marvel movie as I said earlier. It starts and ends with Kamala and the aim of the villain is to get her magic bangle thing. Also she has the most character development and all of the secondary characters are her family members. It’s weird how many Marvel projects have made the lead character secondary in recent years. Black Widow’s sister was the true lead of the Black Widow movie. Silvi was more important than Loki in Loki, Kate Bishop in Hawkeye, and the list goes on.
Speaking of Kate Bishop, the final scene of the movie proper is Kate Bishop, who was only ever seen in the Disney Plus Hawkeye show returning to her home and finding Kamala sat in her house in the dark. If you didn’t know who Kate is, this film does nothing to explain it. At all…And then Kamala gives a word for word speech that Nicky Fury gave to Tony Stark at the end of the first Iron Man film to set up the MCU. How this is possible is another head scratching moment, but also this was done to set up an eventual ‘Young Avengers’ team.
The difference is that Iron Man was billionaire genius Tony Stark, and he was being courted by Nick Fury, leader of SHIELD. This was a fan of Hawkeye, who has no powers, nor any training as a cop or military person being courted to join a team by Ms Marvel, who is a teenager who has a magic bangle. Do Disney and Marvel not see why recreating this scene with watered down superheroes may explain why the recent Disney shows and movies have been flopping? They also mentioned the idea of Ant-Man having a daughter…but so what? They would have no way to know she wore a Ant-Man suit and had an adventure in the Quantum Realm.
Jumping back to the Marvels defeating Dar-Benn for a moment, I forgot to mention that Dar actually managed to get Ms Marvel’s magic bangle and this is ultimately what defeated her. She sought power and then it was too much and killed her. This meant they could have just let her win from the start and it would have solved the issue without any conflict. One issue though was that it ripped a hole in space time and showed a gap in space that would lead to another dimension…OK, let’s deal with this for a moment. MCU are doing what they call their Multiverse Saga, but it’s been a complete mess so far.
Up to this point in the MCU, we had Wanda do her magic and ended up with an alternative version of her brother Quicksilver making an appearance. That was from Wanda’s doing. Then Loki focused on Loki surviving in the events of Avengers End Game which he supposedly wasn’t meant to do. This caused issues to the multiverse. Girl Loki then killed a version of Kang which meant there could be lots of dimensions bleed into each other. But then also Spider-Man and Doctor Strange also both caused issues which brought people from the wrong dimension into our own in their movies. And then there is the Spiderverse, and what Sony is doing that showed Vulture from the MCU arrive in Mobius’s universe…How can all these things be happening at once? It’s so confusing! It’s like none of the writers of the different projects spoke to each other or they were all told they needed to be the ones to write how the multiverse story will get started.
Monica for some reason decided to repair the rip in the fabric of the universe from the wrong side and then needlessly trap herself…for no reason. I don’t think there was any reason she alone had to fix the rip, or that it had to be done instantly. They could have roped in Thor, and Bruce Banner and the Guardians of the Galaxy all to work on it and fix it. But either way, the post credits scene has Monica wake up in another dimension. No explanation as to why after sealing the rip she ended up unconscious or in need of rescue, or how she ended up in a room to be woken up by a variant of her own mother…who also looked the same age as her. It was like the moment form Back to the Future where Marty wakes up and says ‘mom, mom is that you?’ and it was! Then a CGI Beast from X-Men shows up and says that he’ll have to speak to Charles and walks past an X branded door like we saw in the past X-Men movies.
Kelsey Grammer is back as the voice of Beast, so with Patrick Stewart and Hugh Jackman also being in the mix of the MCU now it looks like Marvel is going all in on the original X-Men live action cast, and who knows if Michael Fassbender and his crew will get a look in.
Conclusion
Yeah, I’ve picked this film apart, but hey I’m doing a review. Despite this, I did think there was some fun to be had. Captain Marvel was married to the singing prince so I guess is now technically a Disney Princess. Some of the fight scenes were fun, and there are some good one liners. Nick Fury was on better form than seem in Secret Invasion and the alien kittens were also fun.
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