Captain Marvel Spoilers

So a part of me wants to go and see Captain Marvel again, but based on my experience and my reflection on the film, I can’t say with full confidence that I want to spend money on re-watching this movie. It might be a redbox rental in a couple of months, but I went and saw it in theaters once and I’m happy about that.

That being said, with the surprise release of the Avengers Endgame trailer a couple days ago, I thought it’d be relevant to delve into those spoilers and give my uncensored thoughts on Captain Marvel now that I’ve been able to sit with it for a little bit. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw in some thoughts on the new trailer and how much I’m hyped for April 26^th.

Just a warning, this review is a lot more of a train of thought as I'm remembering parts of the film I couldn't talk about in the main review. In case you haven't noticed its becoming less and less convenient to talk about spoilers so I'm more trying to get to the point and relate it to the larger analysis of the movie. 

I started the non-spoiler review with what I liked so I’m going to start the spoiler review with the things that I didn’t like and that is relevant because the main things I didn’t like were the shameless tie ins to the larger MCU universe that felt really unnecessary.

Now I like the idea of Captain Marvel being a period piece setting up the origin of Carol Danvers before she appears in Avengers Endgame. I talked about how the marketing of this film wrote a lot of lessons from movies like Black Panther and Wonder Woman and taking a page out of Wonder Woman’s period piece origin story was a good choice for Captain Marvel. My issue is with haphazard retconning and poor utilization of greater Marvel property with the exception of Nick Fury. Agent Coulson looked like the rubber Tim Allen robot from The Santa Claus 2 and really didn’t contribute anything to the movie besides a gratuitous cameo. If you’re gonna use the delightful Clark Gregg, use him!

Including Ronan the Accuser was a bad idea. Not only was he a gratuitous cameo as well, but his cameo only served to remind the audience that this movie exists in the MCU, something we already knew, and vaguely hint at a sequel that may or may not happen. This all feels like Phase 1 Marvel and I was starting to feel like we had moved on from that childish nonsense.

Including the tesseract was confusing. The more I think about the tesseract in this film, the more it validates complaints that the plot is convoluted and choppy. The source of Mar Vell’s light speed engine could have been anything, it could have alluded to a new power that we’ll see in Phase 4, it could just be a pointless mcguffin. But because it was needlessly the tesseract, suddenly there’s a bunch of questions about continuity. Did Howard Stark find the tesseract then give it to Dr. Lawson/Mar Vell? I think we all just assumed it went from Howard Stark to SHIELD, why add the extra step?

While we’re on SHIELD, Captain Marvel messes with the SHIELD timeline because in Iron Man, Coulson says that SHIELD is still working on its name. I get that SHIELD has been working covertly for quite a while, but suddenly it has its name and logo all set up by the 90s so Nick Fury can just throw a hat at Carol and say, we’re SHIELD?

And while we’re on Nick Fury, you’re telling me that when he was saying that the last time he trusted somebody he lost an eye, he was talking about Goose the cat? Seriously?

And while we’re on Goose the Cat, they never really explain where he came from. They never explain why Mar Vell had an alien monster cat.

A lot of these things are nit picking. The fact that Nick Fury lost his eye to a cat did not break the movie for me. The fact that they didn’t follow continuity with the naming and organization of SHIELD or the movement of the tesseract, doesn’t ruin the film for me. It’s just the overt connection to the MCU that bothers me and took away from the new parts of the film I really liked. Not only were these things distracting, they rewrote canon, making it just annoying.

Really small thing, everybody seemed way too cool
with sacrificing the scientist Skrull on the right... RIP

But I’ll talk about the new things I liked. I liked the Skrulls. I think one of the most clever things about this film was making Ben Mendelsohn the main skrull, giving him the illusion that he was the bad guy and then turning it around and saying that he’s actually a good guy. I think Marvel was being smart with Ben Mendelsohn’s reputation as the pompus bad guy and turned that on its head.  I also think the idea of the skrull returning is super fascinating. You have a race of aliens that can shape shift into anybody, and despite the fact they’re portrayed as victims in this movie, they could easily say another sect of the Skrull are evil and try to invade Earth with a… “secret Invasion”.

Having Jude Law and the Kree be the bad guy was kind of predictable. I mentioned in my non-spoilers review that I was confused on why it felt like I was being tested on obscure political points from Guardians of the Galaxy, because I couldn’t quite remember who the Kree were and that they were essentially bad in Guardians of the Galaxy. Why would that be different in this film? They do a halfway decent job at trying to convince you otherwise but they could have done better. I think Jude Law unfortunately will go down as another mediocre bad guy, which I find really unfortunate and a waste of a talent like his. Again, it kind of feels like parts of Captain Marvel were a step back.

I think the other reason I’m disappointed with how they didn’t play up the shifting alliances enough was the way they executed Carol’s change of heart. For me, it felt more black and white than a situation like this warranted. She’s very quick to just abandon the people who had been her family and friends for the past 6 years because green Ben Mendelsohn said otherwise. I would have been more pleased if they had played off the nuance of that long lasting war, underlined the bad decisions of the skrull and weighing the two evils against each other. That or really play up the idea of Skrulls messing with her mind. Jude Law suggests that they messed with her head and there is a period of time that some mind shenanigans could have gone down, I think they could have played up the uncertainty of which side to support more than they did.

I do have to give Jude Law’s character credit. He sees a woman who pointed a gun at him get blasted a ray of energy and says, let’s take her back with us and try and convert her to our side. That’s actually kind of impressive. But something I don’t think enough people have noticed is that there really isn’t a bad guy in this film, or not really a main one. The closest thing to a main villain is a three way tie between Jude Law’s character, who ends up being more of a lackey, the Supreme Intelligence who is barely in the movie, and Ronan, who again is barely in the movie. I won’t say this is a bad thing. I actually found it kind of unique.

I loved the homages to Stan Lee. Those were pretty special. I don't know if its the best Stan Lee Cameo but it is for sure the most heartfelt, especially in the wake of his passing. 

I don’t have a huge issue with Nick Fury naming the Avengers after her nick name, I think I would have just liked to hear someone actually say that nick name as opposed to it just being a nick name on a plane.

The post credit scenes were fine. I’ve definitely seen better. The mid credit scene is probably a scene directly from End Game so it’s not really a very unique credit scene. I do think it underlines something I really liked from this film which was the relationship between Carol and Nick Fury. I hope they don’t go down a romantic angle with those two, but I actually liked the plutonic chemistry between the two and it made sense why Fury would call her just as he’s starting to disappear.

If you want to get really nitpicky, you can ask the question of why Fury was just now calling Captain Marvel. They have been other instances where Captain Marvel would have been helpful… like the invasion of earth, whether by chitari or Ultron robots. The obvious reason is that the writers didn’t know Captain Marvel was an entity somewhere out there and fans like me are looking too into it. However, I do see the start of an issue that Marvel might find themselves in when it comes to a post-Endgame MCU.  

Captain Marvel being galaxies away is one thing, but what happens when Kevin Fiege needs to explain how there have been mutants around, or a Fantastic Four around since the beginning and we’re just discovering them now in the movies? The funny thing is that there is probably a guy at Marvel who this is his sole job. He needs to track the continuity of the films and make sure it all makes sense. And now it’s even more convoluted because he’s tracking the Sony Spider-man/Venom universe as well as the incoming Fox X-Men and Fantastic Four factors. Sounds like he has some work cut out for him.

Overall, I'm gonna try and not be too dramatic about Captain Marvel's role in future movies, namely Avengers Endgame. If you've seen the new trailer, besides not gathering a whole lot about what the story is gonna be about (which I love), you know that she's in the trailer... and its confirmed she exists in this next movie... which we already assumed. 

While I wasn't really wild about Brie Larson's performance in Captain Marvel, I'm not really worried about it for two reasons. 

The first one is that she is not the first superhero to have a so-so first outing and then shine in later movies. Captain America in the First Avenger was only okay and now he's everyone's favorite. I know Brie Larson is a good actress so I'm looking forward to her in these future movies. 

Secondly, and I don't wanna shit on the directors of Captain Marvel too much because I don't know their work that well, but I have more confidence in the Russos than the directors of Captain Marvel to give better direction to Brie Larson. That's something people aren't talking about, the fact that the Russos are in charge now and they've proven themselves. 

Also another note on that, the Russos are gonna do what the Russos are gonna do. They had a plan for Captain Marvel in parallel with the release of her standalone and they're gonna integrate her nicely. 

I'm amazed that people are already saying that it was a miscast when it's one movie. I think the consensus is that this is probably not Marvel's best outing, but I'm not ready to say that Brie Larson was miscast yet. 

By the way, can we talk about that Endgame trailer. Oh boy that's a good trailer. Mainly because there's not a whole lot to talk about in it because I still have no idea what the plot is gonna be. I know it's gonna be three hours long, I'm okay with that. I know they're dealing with the snap and trying to find a way to either kill Thanos in revenge or save their friends but I have no idea how. And I know that Hawkeye's (and probably Ant-Man's too) family probably got snapped. The first 15 minutes are probably going to break me because we're going to see a lot of people dealing with the snap and because these are such great characters, we're going to feel every bit of it. 

The one thing I noticed after a billion watches and something that will probably play into it is that I think there is going to be a skip in time at some point. I noticed that there are scenes where Black Widow has short white hair like the hair she had in Infinity War and then there are other scenes where her hair is longer and going back to red. Also Hawkeyes hair that I only hope evolves into a Rufio from Hook hairdo. 

There's probably going to be progression of time, and a coming together to do... something... 

There's not one hint of Thanos in this trailer and everyone's wondering why. I just think this has the potential to be a fantastic movie and the only people right now who have the ability to show that little and yet get me this psyched is Marvel. 

This is without a doubt going to be the culmination of 21 movies coming to this point and I could not be psyched enough for it. I think there is a conversation to be had about what happens after, what the Avengers and frankly MCU movies will look like moving forward, as well as where Captain Marvel is going to fit in with all of that, but I think I'll get to that in another post, this one is getting a little long. 

But what were your thoughts on the spoilers of Captain Marvel? What'd you think of the Avengers Endgame that dropped yesterday? Most importantly, is Hawkeyes hair going to turn into a full on Rufio in Avengers 5, because I will be disappointed if it doesn't. Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter, @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog. 

Thanks for reading!