Hardly a game changer, but a promising start.

Rating: 6/10 (11 March 2019)

Before the highly anticipated Thanos and the Infinity Stones storyline comes to its long awaited conclusion in next months Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios transports us back to the 90's for a cosmic origin story centred around Larson's Carol Danvers/Vers, A.K.A Captain Marvel. Amidst an intergalactic feud between the Kree (noble warrior heroes, as described by Vers) and the Skrulls (green-skinned shape-shifting aliens), Vers is sent hurtling towards Earth after barely escaping with her life following a botched stealth mission. Stranded on Earth, she meets Nick Fury (Jackson), who is at first reluctant to believe her intergalactic stories. When the Skrulls arrive on Earth shortly after, morphing into humans to disguise themselves, Fury and Vers team up to stop the imminent alien threat. Following their team up, Vers learns that she may once have had a life on Earth as air force fighter pilot Carol Danvers.
Captain Marvel garnered quite a lot of hype leading up to its release, with fans eager to learn how the titular character will eventually integrate with the surviving Avengers in Endgame. Unfortunately, Captain Marvel is hardly the game changer it was hyped to be. Instead, it settles as being a perfectly fine comic book film, and that's all there really is to it. Brie Larson is serviceable enough in the title role, but her performance isn't exactly the most memorable, which is a surprise given her terrific work in the past (just check out 2015's Room, a career best). From a narrative standpoint, the film is a little disjointed and doesn't always engage as well as it should. It takes a while for the film to pick up the pace, and even when it does, it never reaches the wonderous heights of previous MCU films. Directors such as Taika Waititi and James Gunn brought their own unique styles to their MCU instalments, but Boden and Fleck don't establish a style here, resulting in a film with very few memorable moments. As for the action sequences, they're fine, but that's it. There is nothing in Captain Marvel that comes close to the brutal fight between Captain America and Iron Man in Captain America: Civil War (2016) or the bombastically mad clash between Thor and the Hulk in Thor: Ragnarok (2017). Sadly, the final battle is anticlimactic and not at all exciting, and I never once felt as though I was completely engaged with what was going on.
Having said that, there are some noteworthy elements to the film. The chemistry between Danvers and Fury is strong and their buddy-cop dynamic that runs through the film is great. The friendship between Danvers and Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) is well written, and the heartfelt Stan Lee tribute at the very beginning of the film is perfection. The digital de-ageing of Samuel L. Jackson is accomplished brilliantly, and the Skrulls also looked great, but were written differently to their comic book counterparts. In saying that, in the context of the film, I felt as though the change worked, even if it sacrifices a major comic book storyline from being adapted in future MCU instalments.
Captain Marvel isn't one of the strongest MCU films, but overall, it's a perfectly fine watch. It's definitely flawed, with some storytelling issues that could have been reworked, but the dynamic between Danvers and Fury saves the film from falling completely flat on its face, and there are some chuckle worthy moments in there too. It's a very standard origin story, but there is promise for much greater things to come.