Random Movie Review - Captain Marvel

The first Marvel film this year as well as the penultimate film before Avengers: Endgame and quite interestingly, its controversial too. This is probably because of some things that the lead actress Brie Larson has said on Twitter which to be honest is just her wanting to be an advocate of sorts for diversity and to that I say good on her. In a world that is run by two buffoons who clearly have no idea about equal rights and diversity, those two things are being taken more seriously than ever despite still being an ongoing issue. But going back to the film, its one that at first I didn't really think it was that necessary and then I thought to myself that actually maybe it is because we still have some lingering questions about the past times of the MCU. So whether we get answers or not, let's look at Marvel's attempt at a good female lead superhero film:

The year is 1995 and we visit the planet of Hala which is said to be the capital of the Kree Empire. Starforce member known at this point of the film as Vers (played by Larson) who is suffering with amnesia and reoccurring nightmares of a mature woman from her past (played by Annette Bening), gets trained by her mentor and commander Yon-Rogg (played by Jude Law) to help control her abilites that had been given to her while others try and urge her to keep her emotions in check. A war brews between the Kree and the Skrull in which Vers is caught in the middle of and after being captured by a leader of the Skrull known as Talos (played by Ben Mendelsohn), she winds up in a Blockbuster store on Earth. There she meets SHEILD agents Phil Coulson (reprised by Clark Gregg) and Nick Fury (reprised by Samuel L. Jackson) and following a scuffle with the Skrull, Vers starts working alongside the latter to work out her past, discover who this woman is and put an end to the war while learning to be able to not rely on her powers to make her a hero.

So as I said, at first I felt the film was unnecessary, but I eventually realised that actually it is. Not only does it give us an origin story for Captain Marvel in preparation for her appearance in Avengers: Endgame, but it also answers the lingering questions of how Nick Fury became partially sighted (its not as impressive as one would think, but its pretty funny regardless), what was Coulson's first rodeo (as previously mentioned in Iron Man), what became of the Tesseract before SHEILD got their hands on it and what Korath (reprised by Djimon Hounsou) and Ronan the Accuser (reprised by Lee Pace) were like before their encounter with the Guardians of the Galaxy many years later. Most importantly of all the questions is how Nick Fury came to making and naming what would become the Avengers Initiative as well as how the communicator that Fury used at the end of Avengers: Infinity War came about and how Captain Marvel responded to the call. All great questions that had very satisfactory answers while giving us a great film that had 90s nostalgia throughout and make us wonder if the people we know and love may be shape shifters like the Skrull. The visuals are especially good as well. I will say that there were moments where I felt that Larson's character was being too much of a cocky arrogant know it all, but she ultimately won me over at the end of it all so I'm happy. Also liked the tribute to Stan Lee at the beginning which was nice, though his cameo this time (a man reading a menu of sorts on a train) wasn't his best one. 8/10