It was worth the admission, 6/10 stars and a good afternoon diversion, but like many of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) films, it didn’t particularly move me. There have only been a handful of MCU films which I was really excited about, and this wasn’t one of them.

Stoic, all business, battle hardened.., Brie Larsen has taken a lot of flak during the marketing build-up to this film, one of the criticisms being that her appearance in press materials was emotionally void, however given the character I think she played it about right. Captain Marvel IS wooden, not supposed to have any emotion, so of course playing it flat made sense. Mind you.., if she were a great actress, we could have perhaps been treated to the portrayal of the cast-iron, brainwashed super-soldier and have been able to empathize with her. That’s why I go to the movies, anyway. Is there a human in there? It was hard to tell. We don’t know how much better the character could have been because we have no other version to compare it to. There is no Christopher Reeve standing beside a Henry Cavill (both cast as Superman) in the case of Captain Marvel.

Perhaps we can compare Captain Marvel to Captain America; also a super-soldier but one who radiates both strength and warmth and genuine affection for the human race. Part of that appeal is in the scripting, but part is what the actor does with it. Sadly, we may never know if another actress could have brought something more to the role of Captain Marvel. The MCU has tied the knot with Brie for the next half dozen films.

In any case, personally, I’d have written her differently. I’d have written her whole story differently.

Her origin story, though they tried, just isn’t core or epic or relatable enough as with the great characters. Great comic book characters are like viral memes; you have to try hundreds of times before you strike gold. You can’t just create them on demand according to some formula, and Captain Marvel’s story simply didn’t have the magic. That’s probably why they’ve had to re-boot her comic like, eight or nine times due to rotten sales. It doesn’t grip and grab the reader by the soul. There’s nothing for a regular person to latch on to; the living with a bright soul inside but not being able to express it, leading to the wishing and the unfairness and the human hurting, “If only I had a chance..!”

The best characters are often underdogs, or they experience moments of soul illumination where they completely switch sides. There’s power in a soul transformation.

Captain Marvel is a functional plot device and that’s all. She was given power without asking for it, without valuing it, without earning it. She was programmed to fight, and her Terminator-like performance fit that scheme. But we only loved the Terminator when the Terminator learned love. Captain Marvel’s lukewarm moment of illumination, (I barely even noticed it frankly, and it came off as tinny), didn’t convince me that she was a real hero.

The key revelatory moment even seemed as though it were politically motivated by hot topic real world events, (in this case, migrant refugees). If this was a deliberate insert, it might explain why it felt so lackluster as a motivational moment for the character; allowing a story to become a vehicle for political activism is often a dangerous dalliance with the 4th wall. -Not just for the writer, who is no longer thinking of the character’s well-being first and foremost, but for the audience. In this case I think Marvel, to their credit kept their politics light enough to avoid full-on collision with viewer opinion.

Whatever the case, it’s never a good idea to betray your audience by tricking them into swallowing a manufactured argument while they are dissociated around the camp fire. Being smacked with a “Gotcha!” will snap people out of a narrative and fill them with distaste and disbelief in further travel in that world. When you dream, you are trusting the narrator with your soul and betrayals are rarely forgiven. This is story-writing 101; a writer must learn the difference between story, satire and propaganda. -It can be done effectively, but you have to subconsciously warn people ahead of time, and further, they have to agree to participate in the thought experiment. Star Trek is an excellent example of testing social theory through lots of small experimental story arcs, and viewers both recognize and happily embrace this aspect of Star Trek. The MCU, however, is not set up in this way, so a critical left turn rings false when previously, political environments served as backdrops for personal heroic journeys, not the other way around.

Anyway.., moving ahead… If Captain Marvel kills Thanos in the next Avengers film, it would be basically a long, drawn out and disappointing example of Deus Ex Machina. Lazy writing.

I’m hoping it won’t go like that. It would be very strange, in fact, quite out of keeping with the past story world vibe. The Marvel movie writers have demonstrated that they know how to make the real victories the result of spiritual struggles, not material contests.

Given the competence of the MCU’s writing for the most part, I think that the much anticipated Avengers, End Game will have enough twists and unexpected new story elements that it won’t come down to such an easy solution as a personal vendetta realized or a simple “I’m stronger!” contest. After all, most of the big characters, from the Hulk to the Racoon and everybody in between, have been personally hurt in such deep ways that any one of them could be justified in delivering the victory. (Except Captain Marvel, that is. Thanos took nothing from her.)

I’m hoping that with such a well crafted villain as Thanos, the solution will be more psychological. I’d like to see him realize, like Doctor Manhattan in Allan Moore’s Watchmen, that he’d made a critical error in his earlier judgment about the value of life and reverses his decision. That would be beautiful!

The whole “Overpopulation” motivation behind killing off half the universe was flat out nonsense, and I feel like even little, meaningless me could have talked him around over coffee. And part of my soul strains to see him recognize the error in his ways. I’d like to see him illuminated. That would be a reward and make for an epic story!

-Mark Oakley

Wolfville, Nova Scotia,
March 13th, 2019