Captain Marvel

Yep, there’s another Marvel movie out. Fortunately I quite like them as an example of modern competent blockbustering – there seems to be a lot of complaints out there that there are too many of them, that they’re all the same, and they suck all the blockbuster energy out of the rest of cinema but … let’s be honest here, the stuff that makes the most money is rarely the interestingly fringe stuff that most people who write about movies are really into, and integrating spectacle, character work, social commentary and intriguing hints on what’s coming up next in the ongoing saga has turned out to be a lot harder than Marvel have made it look – the number of collapsed wannabe-franchises left in Marvel’s wake is ever-climbing. But as a standalone film, how does this one work out? Well, mostly pretty good. There are a lot of elements in here and not everything is served wonderfully – in particular, two characters who return from “Guardians of the Galaxy” have basically nothing to do (the linkages between Marvel films can occasionally be a little tenuous and threadbare). But, goddam it, you get Ben Mendehlson in his natural accent getting to add to his recent stockpile of villians in an interesting new way, you get Samuel L. Jackson, de-aged back to his mid-90s prime and having the most fun he’s ever had in the role of Nick Fury, and you get a thoroughly awesome ginger cat called Goose who scenes a whole lot of scenes. Plus there’s Brie Larson as the titular female superhero, Carol Danvers, showing guts and determination along with charm and ease, introduced in a deliberately slightly disorienting way in media res as a space soldier who doesn’t really know her own past, and whose arrival on earth proves to be her way of unlocking those secrets and finding a cause she really believes in. There’s also way-too-brief glimpses of Annette Bening who uses her usual sly awareness in dual roles as two different mentors, both only really glimpsed, to suggest she’s full of secrets and they’re probably really interesting (plus one kicker of a cool shimmy to a Nirvana song), another great Stan Lee cameo and some decent character work. For me the pleasure of seeing these films done this well overwhelms any sense that it’s just another obligatory stop along the way to another film in a month and a half.