Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck & Geneva Robertson-Dworet.
Directed by Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck.
★★★
The 21st entry into the MCU is really a prequel episode if you want to take the timeline in chronological order. We not only meet Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) in 1995, but also we get our first looks at Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) 13 years before they would have met Iron Man.
We first meet Captain Marvel as "Vers", a Kree warrior who's part of the fight against the Skrulls. You don't really need to know much more about the blue-tinted Kree v. the shapeshifting Skrulls, as it doesn't take long for the battle to spill to Planet C-53, aka Earth, where Vers finds herself having memories as though she used to be human. A young Agent Fury wants to investigate this lady who supposed fell from the sky to put a hole through the roof of the local Blockbuster video store, and we're off!
Larson and Jackson have natural chemistry together, and it's fun to see Jackson let his hair down, so to speak, as a younger more optimistic Fury, who has yet to deal with Loki and Hydra and everything else he's going to face. I really liked the way Vers was written, but I can't say I'm always a fan of the way Larson portrays her. I thought her coldness in the previews was going to be due to her being an alien, but there's definite humor and playfulness written in the character that Larson doesn't always pull off.
I really liked that it was set in the 1990's and all of the fun they had with that. (The music cues, the slow internet speeds...)
I thought Ben Mendelsohn (Rogue One, Ready Player One, Robin Hood) was going to be playing his umpteenth cardboard villain as Telos, Skrull leader, but the character had a lot more depth than I expected and that to me is when Mendelsohn is most interesting.
This is one of the few Marvel movies where it's best to avoid spoilers, as the story did take a turn I wasn't expecting. And yes, stay for all of the credits.
Carol will be back in Avengers: Endgame, which is only a few weeks away, and I'm looking forward to seeing her interact with other Marvel characters, especially Thor and Ant-Man. (Everyone should meet Ant-Man!) Besides, Larson will be more comfortable in the role by then.
