The most winning quality about Captain Marvel is the fact that it is neither too self-important nor does it make much fuzz about being the first ever woman-centric Marvel film. It's apt perhaps, for Marvel to not want to gloat about making a feminist film. After all, they are a little too late to embrace the women's rights movement and had, very blatantly until now, only cheered for the male superheroes despite having some sassy and strong women characters in the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Captain Marvel (played by Brie Larson), however, proves that no matter how late they are to board the feminist boat, they know how to steer it in the right direction.
There are some marvellous nods to women heroes, female friendships in the two hours and five minutes of Captain Marvel. At no point in the film do we see Brie Larson's character being defined by her gender. Had the role of Captain Marvel been played by a man, he would have done the same things that Brie does. She doesn't flash her legs or wears a sexy backless dress and shows up to a ball like Wonder Woman. She puts on a rubber suit and fights, like any other ordinary superhero.
Unlike Wonder Woman -- which was DC's first woman-centric venture-- in Captain Marvel, there is no love interest, familial ties, or a cool origin story set in an exotic world. In fact, this film's sense of exotic-ness stays delightfully limited to our very own 's***hole' aka Earth or planet C-53, as it is called in the film, circa 1995. When we meet Brie Larson as Vers (Carol Danvers), she is already a fierce soldier of Starforce from Kree. Her only belongings are snippets of memories from her life on earth, which she has completely forgotten after a mishap. As the movie proceeds, and through the various turn of events she finds herself returning to Earth, where all her memories flood back.
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Read: Who is Captain Marvel?
But the film whooshes past those customary bond building, angsty origin tale, emotional investments and romantic entanglement, and gets straight to the point. Captain Marvel is our introduction to the most powerful superhero in the MCU and filmmakers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck waste no time to show us that.
If Avengers: Infinity War introduced us to a supervillain like Thanos who can annihilate half of the universal population with just a snap of his fingers, an anti-hero so powerful that the world's mightiest of heroes -- the Avengers -- will not be able to stop him, Captain Marvel is an exercise in building a superhero who can be a worthy opponent of such an anti-hero.
The character of Captain Marvel neatly packs many strengths of individual Avengers. Like Captain America, she is always too stubborn to give up and comes with a sense of moral superiority, like Hulk she struggles to control her powers but when she learns to accept and channel them well, she too is a brute force like the green guy. Six years of being a part of Kree's StarForce also makes her equipped with state-of-the-art gadgets much like our very own Iron Man and she can absorb and control various energies like Thor. She has Black Widow's spy skills, given her history of being part of many covert operations for the US airforce. All these skillsets combined together, she is a befitting nemesis for Thanos.
While it is common knowledge that Captain Marvel is a pivotal film for the Avengers franchise and will lead the fans to the final film of the series, Avengers: End Game, if you watch this movie you would also know that it acts as a connecting bridge between many old and new films of the MCU.
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This film is a prequel to the entire Avengers series (including Iron Man films) and happens in 1995 much before Captain America wakes up from his beauty sleep and powers up to save the planet. Captain Marvel tells you the story of the same Tesseract (one of the infinity stones), with which Captain America had initially plunged to his supposed death in Arctic Waters around 1945.
It was Howard Stark, the father of Iron Man, who had discovered the tesseract and handed it to over to S.H.I.E.L.D. In Captain Marvel, we see project P.E.G.A.S.U.S, where the Tesseract was being studied by Dr Wendy Lawson (aka Mar-Vell) and understand how the tesseract might be the reason for Captain Marvel's powers.
Much before an eyepatch-sporting Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) brought the team of superheroes together and called them the Avengers, the initial project to find more superheroes was inspired by Captain Marvel whom Fury shadows throughout this film. It was initially called 'The Protector Initiative' but he later changed the name to Avengers instead of 'protector', and that too has something to do with Captain Marvel. Also, the one damaged eye of Fury has a very interesting history, which is revealed in this film. Two Kree dwellers -- Ronan (Thanos' ally) and Korath (Ronan's follower) whom we had already met in Guardians of The Galaxy make cameos in this film too. There is also an aww- worthy cameo by Stan Lee that makes you miss him even more.
The most important thing that Captain Marvel does is that it gives us a sneak peek into how the Avengers and Captain Marvel will come together in Avengers: Endgame to defeat Thanos, and while we all know that it is bound to happen, as the filmmakers unveil the details of it, pre-end credit, it is hard not to be completely blown away by it.
Captain Marvel does a neat job of joining all the missing pieces of the MCU films and placing everything together on a timeline before the ending begins. More importantly, it gives the audiences a superhero(ine) who keeps our hopes alive and every Marvel fan desperately needed some hope (including the team of Avengers), especially after the disturbing, gut-squashing ending of Avengers: Infinity War.
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