sunnuntai 10. maaliskuuta 2019

Cosmic nostalgia

Captain Marvel (2019) is the first Marvel superhero movie with a woman in the lead. Previous similar case was DC's Wonder Woman (2017), which I failed to see on the big screen, despite my best efforts. Captain Marvel, however, I managed to see at the premiere. This is an English version of the movie review I published in Finnish on this blog mere hours after the premiere.

Captain Marvel is a classic Marvel superhero originally from 1960's, but there has been numerous incarnations of the character over the decades. They have in turn continued their adventures under a different name, resulting into a rather confusing tangle of characters, and history between them.

To make things even more complicated, there is a completely different Captain Marvel as well. The character begun his adventures in 1940's in comic books by Fawcett Publications. The character became popular, and was soon in the teeth of National Comics, the publisher of Superman. National claimed Captain Marvel to be a copy of Superman, resulting into a years long legal fight. Eventually, Fawcett got fed up, stopped publishing superhero comics altogether, and sold the character to its rival, now called DC Comics.

Captain Marvel stayed as a part of DC's superhero roster until Marvel Comics sued DC in turn, claiming they owned the name, because they had their own Captain Marvel now, and DC's hero had remained unused for too long. As a result DC was forced to change the name of its character to "Shazam", which is the word Captain Marvel used to turn into a superhero. The movie of the same name that's about to hit theatres soon is based on this character.

The first Marvel Comics' Captain Marvel was Mar-Vell, a member of Kree space race. The Avengers came into the contact with the character, which led them to a cosmic slugfest, both with human resembling Kree, as well as vile, shape-shifting Skrulls. Eventually Captain Marvel died of cancer, somewhat atypically for a superhero, and remains one of the few Marvel characters not yet brought up from the grave.

Since then, Captain Marvel has been a white woman as well as a black one, as the writers have tried to keep up with the changing times. The most popular of the modern versions is probably the former one, an ex US Air Force officer Carol Danvers, who is also the one holding the title at the moment. It is also the version the Captain Marvel movie now in theatres in based on.

Most people I spoke with about Captain Marvel before the premiere had high expectations of the film. A big reason for this was the fact this was indeed the first time there would be a Marvel superhero movie with a woman in the lead. As we all know, we never got to see a Black Widow movie, or one of her and Hawkeye, which is why their characters were so thin in the Avengers movies. In fact, when it comes to MCU, women in general have mostly been in the sidelines.

I admit being sceptical about the film, partly due to all of the pre-hype. Not because there was a woman in the lead, but because I had seen over the years way too many superhero origin story movies with the same formula. Superhero gets one's powers, learns to use them, grows as a person and finally beats up the main villain. Wonder Woman (2017) for example was a something of a disappointment for me, even though I am a big fan of the character.

They could have made such a Captain Marvel movie, as well. With basic Marvel's baddies like the Skrulls around, there would have been an ideal opportunity to make a story in which the titular hero beats them as well as the big main Skrull bad guy at the end, saving the Earth. Therefore I am pleased to say Captain Marvel avoids these pitfalls quite nicely, and manages to be a refreshingly different kind of a superhero movie. It even succeeds to surprise the viewer a few times, since everything is not what it seems in this movie.

Chronologically, the narrative has been broken up in the film. The viewer gets dropped in the middle of the action, into the life of Brie Larson's character as a Kree, a life she remembers only for the past six years. As the movie progresses we get to know who and what she really is.

The character's origin story and the growth as a person are there, but done in different way than usually. It seems the writers of the movie realized the audience has seen the same story countless times already. They only need to refer to the childhood of the character, and the audience knows how to join to the dots to form the whole picture themselves.

In the course of the past ten years, Marvel has showed an admirable diligence as it has built a cinematic universe of movies that work together seamlessly. However, with some of the movies it is hard not to sense a feeling of staleness, simply because you can tell the same story only so many times. For me Ant-Man and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, as well Ragnarök have been breaths of fresh air. Therefore it is positive Captain Marvel's strong points lie in the same direction.

Whether or not the character's gender plays a role in the movie is a hard thing to define. One could quite easily to see a man in the role, because what the titular character does in the movie has nothing to do with gender. However, there are a couple of scenes where the question of gender plays an important role, for example as the character picks herself up from the floor near the end of the movie. I would even call it a key scene. I also noticed one reference to the criticism expressed by male fans claiming that Brie Larson doesn't smile enough.

Still, as I watched the movie as an assumed male I didn't feel any way not belonging to a target audience, or that it was intended primarily for women. Reason for this may be the lack of any kind of romantic sub-plot, something that seems to be a must in movies these days. Therefore, the film's two-hour-long duration was more or less tightly-packed action, with the just right amount of sentimentality involved.

When it comes to gender, it is also noteworthy that Brie Larson's character wasn't objectified or even sexualized at any point. The costume used by her is commendably functional, and the movie doesn't include a single unnecessary clothes change or shower scene. In the absence of a romantic sub-plot there isn't a compulsory bedroom scene either. The film even passes the Bechdel test with flying colors.

The film being set in 1990's has gathered understandable attention among the fans and media. The film contains a nice amount of references to the era, and even though they could have used it even more, it was most likely a wise decision not to overdo it. There is a lot of nostalgia especially in the early part of the film, as the titular character crashes into the Blockbuster video store, these days better known as Netflix. The nostalgia can also be heard on the soundtrack, most successfully in a scene where the hero kicks some ass with the No Doubt's "Just A Girl" paying in the background.

Brie Larson plays a tough, hard-bitten, human character who is not dolled up and is delightfully far from the stereotypes reserved for women in adventure movies. Equally important in the movie is the character of young Nick Fury, and Samuel Jackson manages to steal many of the scenes he is involved in. What makes the film work is the undeniable chemistry between the two characters. As I've understood, Larson and Jackson became friends during the filming.

The rest of the cast is largely overshadowed by this duo, including the bad guys. In fact, the movie doesn't even include one main villain, only a number of individuals who do what they do, all for their own reasons. The film also plays with genre clichés and expectations based on other similar movies.

The character's origin story follows the comic book version quite faithfully, even though taking liberties necessary for the character to sit in with the cosmic storyline rapidly approaching its conclusion in Endgame. The movie is also a nice prequel for the other MCU movies, and tells what happened before Iron Man (2008), including where, how and by whom Nick Fury lost his eye.

And naturally, the movie includes Stan Lee's last, very fitting cameo. A tear escaped my eye, as the movie was already progressing with full speed, as I realized that was it. Safe travels, Uncle Stan. The opening titles also include a beautiful, funny Stan Lee tribute, that was given a spontaneous applause in the premiere. The same was heard after the ending titles.

As hard as it is for and old DC fan to admit, it seems Marvel is indeed becoming victorious in the cinematic fight between the two comics giants. While DC continues to make basic action movies and doesn't even want to create a single universe, merely to produce movies that make money, it seems Marvel is genuinely trying keep up with the times air and to responding to the needs of its audience. The two Deadpool films and now Captain Marvel are a proof of that.