We saw Captain Marvel last night and it was AWESOME.
The movie is about Kree Warrior who has trouble fitting in to her honorable hero status in Kree culture. If you remember the Kree from Guardians of the Galaxy, Ronan the Accuser is part of the Kree Empire. The movie is set in the 90's and focuses on the story behind Carol Danvers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the dynamic of the Kree/Skrull War. Sounds like a lot doesn't it. Let's get into it.
***MILD SPOILERS AHEAD***
First, side note, there was a trailer for Frozen 2 and it was soooo good lol. Kinda thought it was for Game of Thrones at first but I really enjoy trailers that show quick clips, action sequences, and tell a story with out talking. There were zero words through out the whole trailer and it was awesome. Ok, back to the movie.
The movie opens up with Captain Marvel, known as Vers (Brie Larson), on the planet Hala fighting another Kree Warrior named Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). The whole fight, Yon-Rogg is telling Vers she needs to control her power, practice restraint and so on. He explains the Kree/Skrull war and how Skrull can shape-shift into anyone down to the DNA. It is clear that Vers is different than the rest of the Kree and has a problem with impulse control. It seems like this is a theme writers always use to describe humanity. Over and over again in shows like Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, even the Orville, Humanity is attributed to following your heart and trusting your gut instincts. Next thing we know, the Kree Warriors are called away to extract an undercover Kree agent who is on an outpost on the border of Kree space. The Kree have been having problems with Skrulls taking over boarder planets and do not want this operative captured because of what he knows.
Great Start to the movie! Carol Danvers origin was a little different and unexpected. With all the male Avengers, they get their power and basically immediately start using them. Here, she already has her powers and is being told to control it, don't act emotionally. With this movie coming out, of course people were going to talk about agendas and there were going to be different sides who wanted the movie to succeed and who wanted it to fail. I don't really want to get into that side, but this movie was a definite success with out sacrificing or attacking anything. Carol Danvers has no memories before 6 years ago, setting up a more full explanation of her origin later in the movie. We do get some glimpses of her past, images and events that don't make sense to her and it all makes sense later in the movie but there are some definite easter eggs to look out for in her flashbacks.
A battle breaks out during the rescue between The Kree and the Skrull and Vers gets captured. We jump to the scene from the trailer when Vers is upside down on a Skrull ship and get more exposition about Captain Marvels origin. Scenes from Carols past from when she was a kid to when she was a fighter pilot flash as the Skrull are looking for something or someone specific. Everything is hazy but we can gather that 6 years ago Carol Danvers ended up on Hala and was saved and trained as a Kree Warrior.
Vers breaks out of her Skrull restraints and breaks out of the ship, falling down to the planet below. It turns out, the Skrull were looking for a human in Vers' memories and they were in orbit above Earth. Vers falls through the atmosphere and we get our first glimps of how powerful she is as she plummets to the ground and smashes into a Blockbuster letting us know we are right in the middle of the 90's.
We get our first look at a young Nick Fury and I don't even know what to say about this. The CGI work to make Samuel L Jackson look that young is insane. I stopped noticing right away. You always want the CGI to melt into the background and not interfere with the story or become distracting and this delivers the ENTIRE TIME. We are living in the future my friends lol. It's crazy. I bet they will want to bring Alec Guinness back in the next Star Wars now that they have this black magic under their belts. I mean, look at this photo below. It's crazy!
The chemistry between Nick Fury and Vers is entertaining right away. Nick Fury has this calmness about him that we have never seen before. He jokes, he's optimistic, and has no idea about anything super or galactic. My only gripe is he kept saying S.H.I.E.L.D.. Every time he had to introduce himself, he said he was from S.H.I.E.L.D.. I may be wrong but in Iron Man, didn't Agent Coulson say "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division" Until they came up with SHIELD later in the movie. Did Howard Stark call it S.H.I.E.L.D.? Im not sure, comment below. Anyways, Nick Fury's curiosity about Vers drives him to help her while she looks for the Skrull infiltrators who also escaped the ship and landed on earth.
I was really excited to learn more about the Skrull and their story. They are set up as the main villain of the movie and I felt they were going to be really compelling and a challenge with their shape shifting and espionage tactics.
Ben Mendelsohn plays Talos, the leader of the Skrull and serves the purpose as the antagonist through out the first half of the movie. I want to tell you all about the Skrulls and how they fit into the plot but it will probably be more fun to watch it so I will just say Mendelshn does an awesome job and even gets to play a character out of makeup as himself. His character has a lot of depth and continually does unexpected things that drive this movies plot and helps Vers/Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel become the Captain Marvel we all know.
Let's talk about Goose the cat.
Goose the cat almost steals every scene he's in. He's always around and you don't know why he is so important but, as the movie goes on, Goose plays an increasingly bigger role. I had to tell my wife that yes, the cat is an alien called a Flerken hence the title of this post. Thinking back though the scene, the thing that really made goose stand out was his interactions with Samuel L Jackson. Nick Fury is a cat person everyone! Those two bring some light to heavy scenes time and time again and I always laughed when those two were on screen.
By the time we get to the climax and the turn, Vers finds out that they gave her that name on Hala because they found half of her dog tags from a crash (Carol DanVERS), she has some emotional moments with her old Air Force friend Maria Rambeau and Rambeau's daughter that bring her back to her humanity and almost re-alligns her motives and morals. The big reveal when she fully becomes Captain Marvel is amazing, the cinematography is great through out but I really enjoyed the whole look and feel of the movie from the scenes in Hala and Space to the moment Captain Marvel shows us why she is called the most powerful being in the MCU.
I really enjoyed this movie and had a great time from start to finish. I didn't any real gripes either. Maybe it's because I didn't know everything there is to know about the character like Batman or Flash but either way, this was a great movie and you should go see it.