Friday, 20 September 2019

I have nothing to prove to you (Captain Marvel 2019)




231.
Captain Marvel
 
 
 
 7/10
 
As we were on the home stretch to the Endgame, we needed to find out the story of who Nick Fury sent a beeper message too. We know it as Carol Danvers, more know as Captain Marvel, but what is her story, where did she come from and where has she been all this time. A lot was made of when Brie Larson was announced as the role and it wasn't hard to notice that the reaction was pretty much split 50/50. I was intrigued by the choice after seeing Larson's performance in both Room and Free Fire, I was optimistic for her. We know that the movie is going to be set in the '90s, meaning that a lot of the references for the other movies may be lacking but I can imagine we are going to take a trip for memory lane for nostalgia. We are also going to be introduced to some Skrull, with Ben Mendelsohn a favourite for me as a villain right now, as their leader. Along with Samuel L. Jackson back as Nick Fury, minus the eye patch and Jude Law playing Yon-Rogg, the cast is shaping pretty well. By the trailer alone, there was something about Jude Law's character that didn't sit right. I'd be keeping an eye on him but for now, let's find out with this movie is truly something to marvel at.
With the film starting away from Earth, going through some scenes of Vers, Larson's character, combat training and going on missions, we are quickly thrust into some dreams that are troubling her and ones that Yon-Rogg blames for holding her back.


 On their mission, they are ambushed by the Skrulls and Vers is taken and put into some machine to read her mind. The Skrull are searching the same memories that she dreams about but has no idea what they actually mean. On escaping by using some of her powers, she crashlands onto Earth and into a Blockbuster Video, our first piece of nostalgia. She communicates with the rest of her team off-world as Fury and the team turn up to investigate. With this being set earlier in the timeline, even Coulson is around. The Skrull have made it down and disguised their screen skin by transforming into humans.
Now as the movie gets on, there is a lot of focus on trust and Vers finding out who she really is. We even catch glimpse of the pager from the after credits of Infinity War, which Vers takes the piss out of. In the archives, we find out that Vers name is Carol Danvers, a fighter pilot feared dead in a training exercise. He dog tag exploded at the crash and all that was left and collected by Yon-Rogg's lot was the Vers on the end of Danvers. Her memory has been wiped since. The leader of the Skrulls has now taken human shape and is in full Mendelsohn flow. He is acting as the head of 'S.H.I.E.L.D', which I have a massive problem with for the continuity of the MCU. Now in Iron Man, they call themselves by their full name and are made fun of, by the end, they are called Shield. How come years before then, they already go by Shield?


The story moves on and things start to unravel. Yon-Rogg is on a team with Ronan the Accuser from Guardians of the Galaxy fame. Knew there was something about his character. They are trying to wipe out planets and species, Skrull included in order to rule the rest. They know that Danvers is something special and are trying to hold her power. With Danvers looking for her old co-pilot, we are finally going to get some answers. Talos, the Skrull leader has even turned up and explains that they mean no harm. They are simply refugees. There is a black box from the crashed plane, finally revealing what caused the crash. Danvers and the woman she had been dreaming about were shot from the sky whilst attempting to make it into space. As the crashed, we always saw the scenes of a Skrull walking from the smoke to finish the job against Danvers but now, the truth and the memories flow and it was actually Yon-Rogg. They are after an experimental energy core which was created by Danvers' boss Lawson. They were trying to destroy it before it fell into the wrong hands and Danvers shot it after the crash to make this a sure thing. Instead of it simply being destroyed, her body absorbed all of the energy and she was then transported to Hala to keep her under wraps. The energy was to help Talos and the Skrull escape from the Kree and the rest of the Skrull were in Lawson's hidden station in space.
One thing we haven't mentioned is the wait for Fury to lose his eye. We've seen a car crash, which didn't do the job but since then, we have been introduced to a cat, which has been taken everywhere. On the space station, Yon-Rogg has brought his gang to kill everyone and steal the energy core, which turns out to be the tesseract by the way but things don't go to plan. It turns out that the Kree implant which was meant to give Danvers Kree powers was actually used to limit her own. Once she fights back and kicks ass, she finally gets everyone to safety and even Fury who has taken a scratch from the cat and lost his eye. The cat is also being used as a smuggler as it's swallowed the tesseract. Ronan has even turned up for support and after Danver's destroys the missiles fired at Earth, he quickly retreats. Where now where his timeline takes him, to an extent, but let's find out what happens after our Captain Marvel defeats Yon-Rogg.
 



 She decides to help the Skrull find a home. This is the reason she has been away for so long and is contacted by Fury, just before he turns to dust. As for fury, he's sitting in his office, getting the start of the team together and after seeing one more picture of Danvers, the name on the side of her plane reads Avenger, leading to the name of the Avengers Initiative. The only things left to mention would be the end credits scenes and yes, I did say scenes. Neither is relatively long this first is the remaining Avengers look at Fury's pager with intent until it stops beeping. Turning around, we seeing Danvers pop the question of where Fury is. The final scene is the cat coughing up the tesseract.
I'm a little bit torn with this movie after only seeing it the once so seeing it a second time was a must for me. The second time really helped and this MCU installment was pretty decent. I enjoyed it a lot more than Black Panther as an introduction movie and I think it had a lot more interesting factors to it. I always figured that the Skrull are actually bad and this was how 75% of the movie portrayed them. When it came to the twist and although I knew something was up with Law's character, I was pleasantly surprised as Mendelsohn's character had grown on me a lot. This leads us nicely into discussing the cast. Mendelsohn once again gave us a real solid job, playing what we thought was the villain and was actually quite deceptive to then becoming a good character. He brought humour along with seriousness when reunited with his family. Larson would be the main talking point of this movie as beforehand, a lot of critics said that she had no emotion within the movie's promotional posters. Come on, posters a simply a photo and anyone can look like a mime in one. I think she gave a pretty good account of the character as she has forgotten a little what it is actually like to be human. I had no qualms about the portrayal. Even Jude Law deserves an honorable mention as his MCU introduction again was a pretty strong one. The style of the movie reminded me of Ant-Man with the aspects of seriousness sometimes being broken up with a good amount of humour and after Thor Ragnarok, this brings about a bit of a regular occurrence now. The rest of the talking points, including the special effects, have come to a formality now but another thing I enjoyed was the number of nostalgic references. From beginning to end, they either included old shops, songs or even 'nods' towards other movies, such as Talos drinking from the same fast food cup that Sam Jackson's character did in Pulp Fiction. This is not going to be a movie that I will be clambering to buy on DVD or even rushing to the cinema to see a sequel too but it was still a decent filler movie for us to answer a couple of questions regarding Captain Marvel and experience what a pivotal role she may have when it comes to the Endgame!


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