j* Movie Reviews 2019

Captain Marvel (2019)

This movie is chock-a-block with the most 90s feels and femme fighter pilots to the front.

This movie is so 90s. Soooo 90s. Maybe not everyone's 90s, but it totally nails my 90s. And it does it in a mostly immersive, non-intrusive way, like little bits of the 90s just keeps showing up and I felt all excited for them. Not in a sort of over-the-top period-piece way. Best and most 90s soundtrack in a film in ages... but potentially in that way that girls/non-fussy music lovers remember the 90s, as a seamless mix of grunge-rock and pop-punk. I feel I probably know 90% of the words to all the songs used.

I haven't felt as entertained by a female superhero since probably Suuuuusan! Aka Ginormica in Monsters vs Aliens. And there's a lot of Susan's spirit in Carol Danvers, who is sort of /maybe/ apparently Captain Marvel even though she never ever uses the name herself.

There is a real and still (sadly) novel wonder in seeing a woman bringing subtle feminine touches to the screen whilst kicking arse. That casual hair-blow from her pissed off face, that cat-walk swagger whilst enraged, hilarious and well needed appropriate use of bitch-face. Carol is great! And whilst her suit is kickarse, she spends most of the movie in excellent grunge get up, right down to the waist-flanno.

What's particularly good about Carol is once her powers get all off-leashed she just goes crazy full-on with them, in a really quite gleeful way. There doesn't seem to be any annoying kryptonite thing to limit her, although I'm sure they'll wheel it out at an appropriate moment in the next film to bring extra-tension. She really is a bit like the embodiment of Gaia, from Captain Planet... you know, once in a while the Planeteers can't deal so they call Captain Planet and then he can't deal so Gaia shows up to sort stuff out? Carol is like that. She's the top level sorterer-outerer.

She's also a pilot. And her best friend Maria is also a pilot. Like jet-fighter test pilots. Because in the 90s women couldn't fly combat. Maria has a funky daughter. They've worked for this clever female scientist. I bring all this up because seldom does a superhero movie feel so free with female characters. And there are guys in it too, great guys like Samuel L Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, and Benny really gets to let his Aussie accent be super loose in this, which rocked. But I guess my point is that this film doesn't just pass the "Bechdel Test," it reinvents it into something more like Bechamel, a smooth creamy mother-sauce for women in fiction. I'm sure there are all sorts of jokes to be made about that concept.

Heaps of excellent fighter pilot references, like The Right Stuff, and a ginger cat called Goose (Top Gun) plus heaps more. Although not as many actual piloting scenes as I would like. The cat is worth mentioning because it does a lot of cool things, a LOT. If you're a cat person, this cat called Goose is probably one of the best cats in film since, maybe that Aliens with the cat? LOL. Good use of kitty as plot point. Actually, good use of kitty as multi-plot point.

And finally, with slight spoilers, this has an excellent Stan Lee cameo. It's no secret that I think Mallrats is one of the greatest and most 90s films there is. It's also not really a secret that I think that is the greatest Stan Lee cameo... one that transcends both before and beyond Marvel films and has him playing himself in a comic book store in a Mall. And in this Captain Marvel film, he's playing himself on a train rehearsing his lines for Mallrats from a clearly labelled Mallrats script. Beautiful. I also loved seeing Kevin Smith waxing lyrical in all the forms about how amazing it feels to be the guy who's always been referencing the comics, and finally the comics referenced back. Apparently they also had to use voice recordings made for Mallrats to over-dub Stan's voice in Marvel, as he was pretty weak when this was filmed.

There were a few bits in this where I did get a bit bored, like the confusion of flashbacks near the start. But the fights are all pretty rocking and the story moves along at a decent if not super-memorable speed. That girl-Carol gets-back-up montage though, that is an excellent, wonderous thing.

J* gives it 4 stars.