CAPTAIN MARVEL WAS MID
Sigh………. They’ve forced my hand.
I’m going to need some receipts on why Captain Marvel is a good movie. I’ve made people look silly in debates over the past week and not one person has given me a worthy opinion on why this is a good film. Not one. I want specifics. Even the fake positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes gives no solid opinion of why it’s good which leads me to believe that people WANT it to be good but it’s not ACTUALLY good.
First I get the “I hate feminist” card or “You’re sexist” card. The “You hate it because it’s a female lead” comments. This is the best people can do I suppose. But for the sake of argument I’ll accept being a hater of feminism and a sexist. Okay? So now that we got it established that I hate women (Sarcasm). Please for the love of Jesus Christ just give me a straight answer of why you think Captain Marvel is good movie.
The worst thing about Captain Marvel….. IS CAPTAIN MARVEL! When the worst part of a film is the main/lead character there’s no way the film will be good. Could you imagine Al Pacino as Michael Corleone being the worst part of The Godfather Part 2 and it still be a good film? Of course not. The damn Cat/Flurkin was better than Captain Marvel. I’m all for supporting cast members stealing the show but if the lead of the film has no presence and isn’t memorable then the film is going to suffer.
Captain Marvel is very robotic and bland as fuck. She’s not interesting. She had the personality of an empty toilet paper roll. The whole movie her emotions are in one gear. Nothing changes. No matter the scene it’s the same stoic look and personality. I wish she could’ve done shrooms just to give the audience some type of emotion. Honestly Carol Danvers was just an asshole in this movie. She was snarky for no reason in so many spots in the movie and it was so unnecessary. That would be cool if we see some type of reasoning behind it but we don’t. She’s just an asshole to everyone.
Lashana Lynch is literally acting circles around her showing emotion and passion and there’s no chemistry because of how boring Carol is. Maria should’ve been Captain Marvel instead I guess. Remember in the beginning of the film where she’s training with Jude Law and he tells her to control her emotions? After the movie I laughed because I soon found out that she has no emotions to control so that scene was kinda irrelevant. She’s T-1000 from Terminator 2 except she talks. Jude was implying that her emotions are tied in with her powers but as you watch the film that’s not the case because she has no emotions. If you want a great of example of emotions and powers tied together Think of and watch movies like “Akira” then go back and watch this film and see how lackluster it is.
Carol reminded me of Clark Kent in Man Of Steel but worse. Clark at least showed some sort of emotion in the movie. They only came at tragic moments such as him losing his foster parent and him killing someone but the one knock on that movie was the character development. This movie suffers from the same shit but times 2. Carol Danvers as a character was terrible. The goal for characters who are super strong is to make them relatable in someway so the audience can connect to them. I’ll give you a simple example of a character that is amazingly strong, relatable and has good character development.
In The Sandlot the best baseball player is Benny Rodriguez. He hangs out with friends who are not in the same stratosphere as him in terms of baseball skill. Even Benny’s enemies respected his skill. Remember “Except for Rodriguez you all are an insult to the game.” So how does the writers make Benny relatable and a good character despite him being this baseball legend in his neighborhood?
They show his passion for baseball. He was willing to play in any condition, he would be the most notably upset person when baseball couldn’t be played, he gathered his friends every morning to play. Good or bad, everyone is passionate about something to the degree Benny was about baseball. The audience can relate to that.
The average kid with Benny’s skillset would not give a fuck about Scotty Smalls. They made Benny empathic towards Smalls and had him invite Smalls to play and had him teach Smalls to throw and catch. It showed that Benny accepted people for who they were and everyone has a place in something. That made Benny likable as a character.
They showed vulnerability. Benny was afraid of “The Beast” just like his friends were. That was Benny’s weakness. So the latter half of the movie is spent on ways to outwit the beast. So the moment where Benny has the dream and decides he’s going to go against the beast was the moment that Benny won you over. He faced a fear by going for what his peers are saying is suicide. You see him become a hero and professional baseball player and everything is tied in to baseball, the beast, and his friends. Benny was a well thought out character that you could relate to and care for. Carol Danvers was not. Everything she did was predictable.
There is NO character growth. The same woman you see at the start of the movie is the EXACT same woman you see at the end.No vulnerability at all. When we met Thor in “Thor” he was an arrogant prick. By the end of his movie he was humbled. Iron Man in The Avengers was a terrible teammate who wasn’t willing to sacrifice anything. He put his own life on the line to protect others by the end of the film. They changed. They learned lessons.
Remember the montage at the climax where it shows Carol falling down over and over again and she picks herself back up each time. It was a great message and montage very inspiring except for one problem. The problem is that we know she grows to be a boring and bland superhero with super strength and that’s it. You’re not connected to the character so the Montage is essentially wasted. They basically attached a montage with a great message to a cardboard box. I felt like I didn’t grow with the character. It was just a bunch of scenes and she just happened to be there.
Like all she did was stand. They didn’t show the audience the outcome of those situations that she failed. Did she ultimately succeed at climbing the ropes? They didn’t show HOW she overcame these obstacles. If you don’t show the audience how the main character overcame failures then how do you expect the audience to care about them when they finally achieve success? Struggle creates growth. We never really saw her struggle. She just had the attitude of a person who has everything figured out. They never give you anything to be invested in. At the end when Jude Law challenges her to combat without her powers that would’ve been the perfect time to showcase growth for Carol where she controls her emotions and beats him in hand to hand combat. It would’ve been different from the first time we seen them spar at the beginning of the film but NOPE! They had her hit him with an energy blast and any shred of growth was killed at that moment. Proving she learned nothing at all and never changed and that her way was the right way all along. It was AWFUL character development and a huge disconnect.
Take a movie like Bridesmaids. Kristin Wiig’s character was insecure, ignored red flags from terrible men, was always seeking approval, and risking her friendship over trivial things. We see her struggle throughout the film by comparing herself to another woman and refusing to be herself to appease others. By the end of the film you see her grow stronger as a woman and she realizes that none of that silly shit matters and she just wants to be the best friend she can be. She was a different person by the end of the film.
Then the order of the Captain Marvel film was just super odd. Just from the movie alone we know she will eventually become Captain Marvel but starting it out in space where she’s already Captain Marvel wasn’t good to me. It’s basically like showing Benny on The Los Angeles Dodgers at the beginning of The Sandlot. You know what he becomes so you don’t connect to anything in the movie. It kinda loses it’s punch. At the beginning of Captain Marvel they show clips of all her memories and it’s like “Why?” Just start the film on Earth and take us for a ride. The Bourne Identity did this perfectly. Instead of showing us Jason Bourne’s memories, you’re learning his past as he’s learning his past. It feels like you’re involved which connects you to Jason.
I dislike comparing a great movie like Wonder Woman to this film but I remember when Gal Gadot was casted for Wonder Woman she was met with so much hate and then when the movie came out she shut everybody the fuck up. She OWNED that role. I can’t picture anyone else playing Wonder Woman because of her. I don’t feel that way about Brie Larson’s portrayal of Captain Marvel. The way Gal Gadot portrayed the naivety of Wonder Woman, the flaws she displayed, the emotional connection she had with Chris Pine in the film, the action sequences in Wonder Woman are worlds better than Captain Marvel. It would’ve been easy for Wonder Woman to be a film that bashes men but it was neutral even though there is a whole first act on a hidden island of nothing but Amazon women warriors. That’s why it’s great. They had the chance to go the conventional route and instead they went unconventional. Captain Marvel failed at that.
Captain Marvel relied on “Anything men can do, women can do better.” Wonder Woman relied on “She’s Wonder Woman and she’s better than anyone.”
Captain Marvel used men as a measuring stick where in Wonder Woman there wasn’t a measuring stick at all because the women of Themyscira didn’t give a flying fuck about what a man did, spoke, or thought. Men were irrelevant to them. They only cared about the opinions of their sisters. Their womanhood and sisterhood was their blueprint to success. That was their measuring stick. Not a man. That’s what feminism is supposed to be like in my opinion. When you heard Brie Larson, the directors, and Marvel studios say it’s a feminist movie it was clear that they tried to use feminism to carry Captain Marvel instead of having Captain Marvel give it’s own creative definition of what feminism is. The movie suffered from that premise and it made Carol Danvers forgettable. They made her a character that can’t stand on her own. It felt like this movie was used as a pawn instead of focusing on building great characters and storylines.
As I stated my dislike for changing the gender of Walter Lawson in the first review. Let me explain why I wasn’t a fan in sense of the story. They changed the gender of The original Captain Marvel/The Supreme Intelligence and she tells Carol that’s she’s too weak and then it cuts to the touching montage where Carol is falling in front of men and getting back up over and over. The montage is touching but it doesn’t fit because The Supreme Intelligence is telling her she’s weak because of her humanity. The montage makes it seems like she told her she was weak because she’s a woman. Now if they never changed the original Captain Marvel’s/supreme intelligence gender and a man told her she’s too weak and that reminded her of the men that told her she was weak for failing on Earth then the montage makes sense. A man told her she was weak and that pissed her off and made her unleash her untapped power. See? Simple storytelling.
This movie isn’t like Batman Vs Superman bad but at least a trash movie I can find entertainment in. This film is just uneventful with a forced identity so it’s hard to find entertainment in it.
In conclusion. It’s a film with subpar storytelling and it wants you to take their word for things in the story instead of showing and building actual arcs and emotional connection. No you shouldn’t see why Maria and Carol are connected just take their word for it guys. They truly love each other.
Tell me why this movie is good with actual specifics so I can make you look silly.
Peace
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