Captain Marvel

Official Australian release date: 7/3/19. Viewed: 9/3/19.

Directors: Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck

Actors: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law

Genre: Sci-Fi / Action

Rating: M

‘Captain Marvel’ builds the bridge between ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and does a good job of it. Most of the film works well as the standalone origin story of Carol Danvers (Larson), as she pieces together her past. Starting with her already on the Kree (the blue aliens, as seen in ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’) home world is smart and saves dealing with the whole aliens on Earth thing. Vers is being trained by Yon-Rogg (Law) and has almost no memory her life on Earth, save some snippets of Lawson (Bening) and Maria (Lynch).

After Carol ends up back on Earth, she starts to unravel the mystery of who she is, with the help of Nick Fury (Jackson) and (to a lesser degree) Coulson (Gregg). She reunites with Maria and deciphers that they both used to be pilots – which leads to some good jet battles later on! The main plot though is that Carol is caught in the middle of an intergalactic war between the Kree and the Skrulls (the green aliens, shapeshifters). Talos (Mendelsohn) is a Skrull and does a great job – great to hear his Aussie accent when he’s in Skrull form! Ronan (Pace) is back for some scenes, but the other Kree offsiders don’t have that much to do.

There’s still a bit of jigsaw-piecing-together going on (stay for the end credit scene), but when Larson and Jackson are on screen, it’s a very solid action/adventure film. There was more laughs than I was expecting, especially with the “flerken”! It’s not ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, but the 90s film and music references are fun to see/hear. Great to watch Carol’s powers develop and the “twist” just after halfway through. It’s not too long and there’s under seven weeks until ‘Avengers: Endgame’ (likely to be the highest-grossing film ever) comes out!

Overall: Another well-made Marvel super-hero origin story.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.