Setting the table for the fight against Thanos
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is nearing a crossroads. This spring marks the culmination of ten years of filmmaking. There have been scores of movies. Some have been more successful than others, but most, if not all, have been blockbusters in their own right.
From Iron Man to Ant-Man, and a lot of other characters in between, the films have told one cohesive story leading to Avengers: Endgame and the final fight against the Mad Titan Thanos.
After that, however, the question is this: where do they go from here?
Many of the actor contracts for their flagship characters like Iron Man and Captain America are coming to an end. Will they recast these roles? Or will they move on to new characters in from the near endless stable of Marvel superheroes?
The answer may be a bit of both.
No one should be surprised if Steve Rogers or Tony Stark “die” during Avengers: Endgame. But no one should be surprised if they make a comeback as someone else either. I’d imagine the studio will continue these characters in the same way soap operas continue theirs—a cycle of death and rebirth always with a new actor playing the part.
But there are new characters as well, characters like Captain Marvel, who are meant to pick up the never-ending story and run with it.
There’s been something of a pattern in MCU movies. The first film, the origin story, is never quite as good as the sequels. This may be because audiences are tired of origin stories. There’s always an accident, a foundational moment, a power testing, and a final battle. Superhero stories rarely break the mold.
Captain Marvel is no different in this respect. There are some slight differences—the film is set in the mid-nineties and the origin is pieced together through recovered memories which leads to some complex narrative choices. But ultimately the film follows this pattern.
Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), aka Captain Marvel, is a test pilot for the Air Force who coincidentally finds herself in the middle of an intergalactic war between two alien species called the Kree and the Skrulls.
How she acquires her powers is woven into the story itself, but if you’re curious and not interested in seeing the movie, you can read up on how Hal Jordan, otherwise known as the Green Lantern, acquires his because both origin stories are basically the same (although Marvel Studios changed it slightly for the film to ward off this comparison). Comic book writers love to borrow from each other, it seems.
The choice to set the film is the nineties is meant to serve the later narratives in Avengers: Endgame, as Captain Marvel appears to be something of an ace in the hole for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Thanos. She’s the cavalry, the rescuer, the ultimate Marvel power who can change the course of the battle.
As such, her character is somewhat bland. Like Captain America and Thor before her, she is at once perfect and too capable, showing no struggles or personality. This, too, is an issue with the origin story, as well as the setting. We know she’s going to survive and we know Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is going to survive because we see the pager at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. Therefore, the stakes simply aren’t very high.
It’s as if the film was only made to introduce the character rather than give the character a purpose, which, of course, it was. It’s not a bad movie-going experience, but it’s not exactly mind blowing, either.
Marvel makes competent films and this one is no different, although some of the CGI is distracting (particularly the cat). The de-aging on both Samuel L. Jackson and Clark Gregg (Agent Coulson) can take the viewer out of the moment, too.
Also, because I’ve seen all of these films more than I’d care to admit, Nick Fury encountering a dangerous alien threat in the nineties opens up something of plot hole from all the way back in 2012. During the Avengers, his excuse for creating weapons using the Tesseract is that Thor showed them that humanity wasn’t alone in the universe and that they were “hopelessly, hilariously outgunned.”
Either Fury was lying, or the writers forgot about that line. I can imagine it’s hard to keep track of everything over the course of twenty-one films and ten years. At certain point, I’d imagine they’ll stop trying.
When they do, they’ll be one step closer to their source material.