Oh Captain, my Captain

The Internet is 30 years old which makes me feel ancient, but I can't help but feel that it has grown into something that nobody could predict or expect. While it is one of the single most important technological advances of the last  century, it is also a grim cesspit of some of the worst examples of humanity this slowly toasting world has to offer. Rest assured, if you need to find useful examples of how badly educated, socially maladjusted, and down right prejudiced the human race has become, you'll need nothing more than a decent connection, five minutes or so and a strong stomach. Social media is just an increasingly frustrating trawl through unregulated articles, the newly coined Fake News and enough idiots peddling their bullshit as gospel truth to make the plot of Idiocracy look understated. It's OK though, because you have my increasingly erratic ramblings to balance everything out.

I mention this mainly as a follow up to the last post where I mentioned the concerted efforts of basement dwelling dudes with presumably tiny penises trying to bring Captain Marvel down before it had even got out of the blocks. Seriously, a few months back I had never heard of the Incel movement (Involuntary Celibates; basically too douchebaggy to attract any member of the opposite sex, but dead set on the idea it's somehow the fault of all women ever. Yeah, go figure) but now they're apparently influential enough to lower the Rotten Tomatoes metascore of a Superheroine movie. Wow, take that feminism. Fortunately for the right minded amongst us two things are basically true; metascores are clearly pointless and nobody gives a shit about the opinions of sweaty keyboard warriors who reek of Cheetos and shame. I say this because Captain Marvel smashed it at the box office and is, more importantly, a decent movie.

Let's be honest from the start; there is a lot of pressure on this movie. It's the first female-lead entry into the MCU, it's another origin story, to the casual audience it's a slightly lesser known character and frankly we're all just treading emotional water until April 29th when we finally get closure on The Snap-ocalypse. It would be dishonest to say this was the best Marvel movie of recent years but it certainly wasn't the worst. We start out in the cosmos and see a few familiar faces in the Kree Star Force in Korath and Ronan and it isn't long before the long awaited arrival of the Skrull, some light kidnapping and flashback foreshadowing and suddenly we're falling through the roof of a Blockbuster Video into a 90's-by-numbers Earth and some heady nostalgia. At this point, it would be remiss not to mention the de-aging digital effects that are 50% ingenious and 50% unnerving as all hell. The first few times they did it, they hadn't quite got it nailed; you could kind of see the join like a bad face lift and there was this tiny but noticeable latency like the face was catching up to where the head had moved to. Not so here; Samuel L Jackson and Clark Gregg are both treated to the digit-Oil of Olay and both look absolutely spot on. If anything, I felt like we could have left coming to Earth a touch longer, but it's hardly a massive problem as the pace does pick up once we get out of the stars. The Kree want a macguffin, the Skrull want the macguffin too, Captain Marvel may have its location stored in her fuzzy unconscious and away we go.

There is a slight issue, in that there isn't much groundbreaking about Captain Marvel, aside from the obvious, aforementioned female lead. It's a shame because there's a metric shit ton of potential in the whole 'who's a Skrull and who isn't?' bit that isn't really explored and even when it is, they're pretty much telegraphed. Ben Mendehlson is really good as Talos, but despite having his fair share of the available screen time, I still feel like they could have done more. There are a couple of twists that I genuinely didn't see coming and that I won't spoil here, but I will say this; Marvel are very consciously trying to blur the lines when it comes to their bad guys and making them relatable. Killmonger and Thanos for example, really genuinely had a point even if their methods were less than humane, but it doesn't quite work as well in Captain Marvel and it falls a little flat. Overall it exists in a weird limbo where it's a decent watch with some good action set pieces and a script with enough wit to carry us through the now-standard two hour run time, but never really gets out of the blocks and feels like it has more in common with some of the very early Phase 1 titles. Brie Larson does a fine job without really setting the world on fire, but she does what they needed her to do; pave the way the abject insanity that Endgame will inevitably be. Be under no illusions, this is utterly a bridge between Infinity War and Phase 4 and beyond, but in terms of injecting Captain Marvel into the MCU timeline it was a fun watch full of little nods and Easter egg. And Goose. Goose the cat is unabashedly the best thing in the movie.

One thing Captain Marvel has at least done is give the box office a good shoeing and therefore all those silly childish trolls got one as well. I have a feeling that in the long run both Carol Danvers and Goose are going to be more instrumental than we think when April finally rolls around.