SHE IS STRONG, SHE IS INVINCIBLE, SHE IS ...

MOVIE

Captain Marvel
Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Jude Law
Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

Review Ray Chan

Set in 1995 before the Avengers were created, the movie tells the story of a test pilot from Earth named Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who inadvertently absorbs cosmic powers and gets kidnapped by alien race the Kree to serve as a weapon on their home planet of Hala.
    Brainwashed of her memories, she gets captured by the Kree's enemy, the shape-shifting Skrulls, who, in probing her mind, trigger flashbacks to her time on Earth, or planet C-53, as the aliens call it.
    Danvers, referred to as Vers because that's all the name on her damaged dog tag reveals, manages to escape her captors and crash lands a spacecraft somewhere in the USA (like they always do). More specifically, she plummets into a Blockbuster video store, which of course were ubiquitous at the time. 
    (In a curious case of poignant timing, the movie opens in cinemas the same week as the second last Blockbuster in the world, situated here in Perth, shut its doors.)
    But this isn't the only time stamp for the period, as directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck throw in other reminders of an era when teenagers stomped to grunge music, Happy Days memorabilia abounded and Internet users still flocked to Alta Vista search engines.
    To find out more about her origins, Vers rediscovers herself with the help of her old pilot comrade, Maria Rambeau, and the young S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Coulson and Fury (Clark Gregg and Samuel L. Jackson, respectively), who are bound for greater glory in the future.  No doubt enhanced by a touch of CGI, the pair look suitably de-aged, with Jackson in particular standing out with his chubbier face, healthy crop of hair and two good eyes.
    Indeed, the character of Fury is one of youthful exuberance, untarnished by the darkness of the many inter-galactic adventures that are to befall him and that he will share with the batch of super-heroes that will emerge in the next decade. While in the present he is a jaded, grim, cold fish, here he even cuddles up to a friendly feline, whose presence ends up stealing the show.
    Ultimately, the crew work together to dodge the Skrulls (led by a Cockney-speaking Ben Mendelsohn) and, later, the mega-weaponised Kree, led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), both of whom are after a light-speed engine whose possessor will control the universe. 
    Rambeau, while helping Vers fill in the missing chapters of her life, refuses to give up her life on the farm to help fight the aliens. Unimpressed, her frizzy-haired daughter Monica chirps in with “Consider what kind of example you’re setting for your daughter!”, a line that will resonate well with audiences who know that, in the comics, Monica also ended up with the Captain Marvel mantle.
    While lots of superheroes feel conflicted about using their powers, this blonde bombshell is different. Inherently decent and with a sound moral compass, she still doesn’t hesitate to employ her super flight, photon blasts or invulnerable fists, but the whirlpool of action around her is so confusing that she’s not sure whom to trust, or whom to help.
    In the end, our heroine, adapting the name of her Kree mentor Mar-Vell, defeats one of the races while leading the other to safety at the far end of the galaxy. It's a journey that has resulted in her absence from planet C-53 for 23 years. But, as we have seen at the end of Avengers: Infinity War, old comrade Fury manages to send out a distress call to her to help out against Thanos, signalling the possiblity of this super-powered woman leading the charge against the near-omnipotent villain in the forthcoming Endgame conclusion.
     And that, in itself, is this movie's greatest triumph. In much the same way as Wonder Woman did, this film empowers women and gives them the leading light without pushing the message in everyone's face. Given the responsibility of reconstituting half the world's population, including many of its most charismatic heroes, Vers now wears the burden of saving the Marvel Universe. And that onus is on the shoulders of an Earthwoman whose manner is as ordinary as her power is extraordinary.
     “You have no idea who I am. I don’t even know who I am,” she says early in the movie in one of her battles.  But then that’s what’s best about Captain Marvel. The title is a metaphor for every woman — or even every person — who is trying to figure out how to harness their own power.
**By the way, look out for a loving tribute to Stan Lee at the start of the movie and a bittersweet cameo within. 

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