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I wasn’t thinking that I was going to be seeing any movies for a while after seeing Into the Spiderverse. I’m the type of person that sees maybe one to two movies a year, so that wouldn’t be rare for me. Then, Captain Marvel was coming out, and I was super HYPED. I just couldn’t wait to see this new film! I even went by myself, which I never do, just to make sure that I would be able to see it this week. Boy, I was definitely not disappointed!
Let me start off by saying that in hindsight, the trailer was a bit misleading. I honestly had no idea what the movie was going to be about from watching the very first one, and was only starting to sort of piece the story together in the second one. Honestly, these were some of the most confusing trailers that Marvel has ever released. Nevertheless, the movie was not confusing at all.
You start off the movie with Vers (Captain Marvel) on the Kree capital planet of Hala. She is training to be on a sort of military team that has been tasked with fighting the Skrull, but she is struggling to control her powers during her training with her boss. Honestly, the training seemed to be that typical Marvel superhero train and flirt session, so I thought that this dude was going to be a love interest. I wasn’t mad about it, but I wasn’t exactly delighted either. He wasn’t though, Vers doesn’t seem to have any love interests in this film, which was a nice touch. I was sick and tired of female superheroes being beaten by love (cough Kara Danvers Supergirl cough).
Anyways, she is taken during a mission and torture-interrogated by the Skrull. She manages to fight her way out, but she is too far away from her platoon when she lands on Earth in the 1980s. She is on a mission to find a scientist that was locked away in her memories, hoping that she will find the rest of her memories with that woman. While waiting for them to show up, she catches the attention of the Skrull coming after her and a young Nick Fury working for the FBI. She brings Fury up to speed with what is going on in her world, and as he sees more and more proof of the aliens being real, he agrees to help her find the scientist she is looking for.
This is when the movie really starts to get fun. Fury was always pretty serious, but it was hilarious to see a younger Samuel L Jackson! At first, I thought that it was just an incredible makeup job. Then I Googled it and figured out that they had to digitally age him down for every single scene in every movie. Whoever did that had a very tedious job, but they did so well! Vers/Carol Danvers and Fury had such fun and playful banter that it made me crave for more scenes with them! Carol was finding out things about her real life that she couldn’t remember, and she even started to remember a little bit more about the last minutes of her life.
Once she finds out about her friend, she goes to visit her in Louisiana. I loved the interracial friendship that they had, they were like sisters, and her friend’s daughter called her Aunt Carol! Their friendship was my favorite part of the movie. Rambeau was just as capable of a pilot as Carol. She could have even been on the mission with Carol and the scientist, but she was worried about dying and leaving her daughter. She never gave up hope that her friend might still be out there somewhere, and she barely hesitated to help her current friend on her new mission.
This movie really hit home with me once we got into the main plot. Once Carol remembered that she got her powers from the energy core blast on her mission with the scientist, she realized that she had been fighting on the wrong side of the war the entire time. The Kree were moving in on the Skrull land, wiping out the species, and taking their planets. The Skrull were not technologically advanced enough to fight the Kree, and the Kree continued to bring their armies. Armies that Carol was a part of. The scientist realized this and was trying to find a way to get the Skrull off of their hiding places and thousands of lightyears away where the Kree couldn’t hurt them any longer. Now, it was up to Carol, young Fury, Rambeau, and Talos (a Skrull refugee) to save the Skrull species.
I know that this was just a fantasy film, but it did make a pretty strong statement. The Skrull knew that they had done some bad things, but they were trying to protect themselves from the Kreee who had struck first. The Kree media were constantly painting the Skrull as demons, even though the Skrull were mostly acting in self-defense. No Skrull was going and killing thousands of Kree families, the Kree were killing thousands of Skrull families. It seemed almost like a statement as to what’s going on in America currently, on a more drastic scale. I don’t know if the graphic novels had the same story as this or if it was the writers of the movie making a statement, but it really stuck with me. America has been on the “wrong side of the war” a few times, just like the Kree were, and it takes a strong, smart person to recognize that.
The rest of the movie was mostly just Carol saving the Skrulls found on the scientist’s old space station and fighting her old Kree military team. It was an awesome scene when she found Talos’ family, and it was definitely epic when she broke free of the limiter that the Kree had put on her to dampen her powers. Rambeau and Fury didn’t stay out of the action either, they got a little help from a cat and managed to help fight off Carol’s former teammates. I don’t know why the team didn’t listen to Carol at all, I guess they were all in on it and wanted the Skrull to be demonized? This wasn’t really explained all that well.
My last favorite part of the movie was when Carol’s boss tried to do a “last stand battle for honor” sort of thing. He wanted her to fight him in hand to hand combat, to “prove” that she was stronger than him. She just blasted him with her powers and sent him back to Hala. No one has time to do last stands! That always got me so mad when villains would just talk and talk and the hero would agree to their demands like they are the VILLAIN for a reason!
Overall, this was an absolutely amazing film! I will definitely be watching it again when it is put on Netflix, and I would definitely recommend that everyone I know sees it! Of course, if you haven’t seen it, you shouldn’t have read this rambling post with spoilers, but still. If I didn’t convince you to at least watch it for yourself, I don’t know what will. This one was good!
Overall Rating: 6 out of 5 stars!
I just saw this today and I absolutely loved it (really don’t see why it got some hate) and I totally agree with you about how it sort of parallels with our current situation on America fighting on the wrong side. Just one thing, I think she landed on Earth in the mid 90s because when she and Fury were looking at the scientist’s files Fury mentioned how she died in 1989 and that was “6 years ago” meaning it’s the 90s. Either way, great post! 🙂
Oh okay, thanks for clearing the years up! And yea, the hate was apparently because of something the actress said? Which alright, she may have said something wrong, but tons of actors and actresses in loved movies in the past have done questionable things so I don’t see how this was really different. Thanks for commenting!
I took a group of ten pre teens to the movie, and they all loved it as much as I. I just wanted them to see a strong character, who has built her own family, who has strong friendships and isn’t saved by the male character. A great lesson for all of us. And we’ve been talking about it ever since. Thanks for the great review!
Thanks for commenting! This was definitely a great role model movie, I’m glad that your students enjoyed it. I can’t wait for the second film, hopefully by 2021!
2021!!! That’s so far away……yes the children certainly took on board the messages…..my tween and I sat through it again on Monday, because I loved it so much!
I already bought my tickets for Endgame, which she will be in, so I’m pretty excited for that at the end of the month! And yes, normally a Marvel film about an individual character only comes out once every two years or so. Like Spiderman came out in 2017 and his new movie is this summer. SO I think that spring of 2021 would be a pretty good estimate, unless Marvel speeds things up all of a sudden.
I can’t wait for Endgame – better get onto the cinema and see if I can get tickets, was hoping to find a fundraising premiere for it, as they are so much more fun with folk in costumes etc….
Have bought the tickets!!! So very excited…..
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