Captain Marvel: A Feminist Film Looking For A Cause

Captain Marvel is built for one particular demographic, people who don’t know the Marvel source material. If you fall into this group, and know nothing about Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, and only have a passing interest in the MCU movies, then this film is right up your alley.

However, if you happen to fall into the other camp, people who know the original source material, or love the 20 movies that comprise the MCU, then you might leave the theater with a bad taste in your mouth, or, at the very least, shaking your head, wondering how Marvel Studios got it so wrong.

To briefly recap and keeping the spoilers down to minimum.

Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) is assigned to a mission for Starforce, an elite group of space bad-asses like the Green Lantern Corp in DCEU. Captain Marvel and her fellow Starforce buddies are tasked with helping to rescue a Kree spy, who has infiltrated a group of Skrulls (shape-shifting aliens), the Kree’s sworn enemy. However, the mission doesn’t go as planned, resulting in her crashing an escape pod on Earth in the 1990’s, which immediately gets the attention of SHIELD agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).The two team up and fun, mayhem and product placements (90’s pop songs like Just A Girl by No Doubt) ensue.

Considering that Marvel Studios has twenty plus movies under its belt, one would think that a movie like Captain Marvel would be polished and ambitious, but sadly that is not the case. Despite its huge budget and extravagant action set pieces, Captain Marvel feels like a MCU phase one movie, i.e., Ironman, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger. The 2 hour plus movie is an uninspired origin story that doesn’t break any new ground, and suffers from a fair amount of glaring plot holes that contradict established events in previous MCU movies.

Moreover, like most phase one movies, Captain Marvel suffers from uneven tonal shifts, pacing issues and poorly written and underdeveloped characters. However, unlike past entries in the MCU, Captain Marvel manages to introduce a villain into the narrative, Talos (Ben Menedelsohn), the leader of the Skrulls, that is both, more interesting and relatable than any other character in the movie. Unfortunately, the character of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel is bland, boring and very uninteresting. 

Unlike Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Elizabeth Olsen, Zoe Saldana, etc, Brie Larson has no gravitas and comes across as a stiff and unlikeable character in her own origin story. She spends most of the movie walking around, fist clenched, beating bad guys down, and blowing things up, but her character is strictly a one dimensional superhero trope that isn’t developed in any meaningful way. Oscar statuette not withstanding, Brie Larson is clearly not the right actor for the role, and no amount of 90’s pop songs accompanying expensive action scenes can't  hide that fact. 

Last but certainly not least, Brie Larson has boldly proclaimed that Captain Marvel is an unabashed feminist movie, and truth be told … she is telling the truth in all its shiny, and CGI glory. 

In the movie, Carol Danvers is constantly being held back by men who tell her she is not good enough, strong enough, capable enough, etc. Girl empowerment is front and center throughout the movie, and it becomes rather annoying and distracting from start to finish. 

Obviously, Kevin Feige (President of Marvel Studios) thought it would be a good idea to embrace and endorse a “wokeness” agenda rather than just deliver a good piece of cinematic entertainment. It doesn’t happen too often but even Marvel Studios goes off the reservation and gets it wrong. Captain Marvel, the first MCU movie of 2019, is essentially Marvel Studios answer to the DCEU Wonder Woman movie (2017).  

And for the most part, Captain Marvel gets everything wrong that Wonder Woman got right. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman was strong and powerful, and yet she was a character that was flawed, and vulnerable. By journeys end, she accepted some hard truths about humanity, good vs. evil, the futility of war and overcame them. In other words, she had a story arch.

Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel has a case of amnesia, and ultimately recovers her memories, but she doesn’t overcome any real human failings or weakness, she doesn’t learn anything other than she is a major bad-ass and not much else. Unlike, Ironman, Captain America, or Thor, her character is completely devoid of growth and remains unlikeable throughout the story.

With the exception of a terrible third act, Wonder Woman was a good DCEU movie that anyone could easily enjoy multiple times. Captain Marvel on the other hand, is a feminist movie looking for a cause, it’s a MCU movie that should be so much bigger and better than Wonder Woman … but its not.

Doctor Who: Resolution – A Classic Villain Revisit

After 13 years, Chris Chibnall, the new show runner for Doctor Who, and the BBC decided to give up to coveted Christmas Day time slot, and instead, opted to go with a New Years Day special.

Season 11 of Doctor Who (which I reviewed on 12/15/18) decided to focus on new monsters throughout its 10 episode run. And despite all the positive reviews and testimonials about the greatness of the stories and ensemble cast, the series as a whole felt like a huge missed opportunity punctuated by a lack of memorable monsters and time shattering threats.

Doctor Who, like any long running sci-fi series, is only as good as the monsters and threats that populate its universe, and it was only a matter of time before the new series would revisit an old arch nemesis. Therefore, the New Years Day special entitled “Resolution,” and written by Chris Chibnall, is an attempt to embrace the show’s 55-year history by re-introducing a fan favorite … the Daleks.

The episode itself is a run-of-the-mill story that doesn’t break any new ground: a dormant Dalek infiltration unit, is inadvertently revived by two archeologist on New Years day, the Dalek captures one of the archeologists and uses them to craft a new body, and call the rest of his Dalek army to invade Earth, the Doctor along with her “friends/family” (the term "companion" is frowned upon and is no longer used by the new show runner and the cast) runs in with sonic screw driver in hand and saves the day. 

Truthfully, the episode is a plot hole filled mess, that relies on predictable sci-fi horror tropes and Brexit gags to move its narrative along. But in the interest of fairness, it must be noted that the 2019 special is also light-years ahead of any episodes that comprises season 11. However, I suspect much of that has to do with fact that we are getting a classic Doctor Who villain, running around and menacing us lowly humans rather than Chris Chibnall stepping up his writing game.

Nostalgia makes suckers of us all.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the New Years Day Special didn’t distinguish itself in terms of ratings, and drew in 5.15 million overnight viewers in the U.K., a 22.4 percent share, the lowest rating for the annual Doctor Who event since 2005. In retrospect, giving up the Christmas Day timeslot, and by default, ending a long standing Doctor Who tradition is a move that, like so many other decisions made by Chris Chibnall and the BBC, makes very little sense. 

Beyond the overnight ratings, the BBC must also contend with the embarrassingly low audience score on Rotten Tomatoes that stands at a dismal 15%, whereas, the critic score ranks at a whopping 94%. Admittedly, the critics’ score on RT can be taken with a very skeptical grain of salt, but the audience score represents a snap shot of a very frustrated and highly unhappy fandom. 

From a writer’s prospective, the long-running format of a show like Doctor Who is not easy to change in any significant way, and usually, any attempt to do so is a risky idea that ultimately hurts the brand and draws the ire of the fan base. Moreover, new stories and villains are supposed to test and confound the hero of the adventure, make them face their inner demons and shortcomings. If executed correctly, the villain forces the hero to confront their own morality and the limits of their determination. In most cases, defeating the villains or monsters, is merely an exercise in self-discovery that shapes and defines the protagonist by forcing them to accept hard truths that they would rather ignore.

In that respect, Doctor Who needs its classic villains like the Daleks, Cybermen and the Master. And Chris Chibnall has failed in making his iteration of the Doctor have any memorable moments because this version lacks gravitas and any real inner turmoil. Unlike the previous iterations of the Doctor, the Jodi Whittaker version is devoid of moral conflict and by extension; there is no character growth because there are no inner demons to be confronted or questions about the real nature of the embattled Time Lord.  

Chris Chibnall’s version of the Doctor and her “fam” amounts to a racially diverse group of plucky “white hats,” and they don’t need to waste time asking themselves hard questions, i.e., is the Time Lord really a good person … is the greater good being served by showing mercy … can evil be defeated with a moral-speech-of-the week? Long gone are the days or moral angst and heartfelt pleas for forgiveness because a darker path was chosen or a big red button was pushed. Chibnall’s, “Team-Tardis” are essentially always right and that should be enough …  but it’s not, and it feels rather disappointing. 

Moreover, despite Chris Chibnall’s vow to shake things up and make Doctor Who must-watch TV again, the villains and monsters of season 11 have all been bland and uninteresting, and sadly, the re-introduction of a classic Doctor Who villain in this episode is rather pointless, because it too, is rather bland. Truth be told, after 55 years and countless of plots involving the subjugation or destruction of Earth, the Daleks have grown a little long in the tooth and are mostly running on autopilot. Outside of nostalgia, there is nothing new in this classic villain revisit that adds to the established canon or the wow factor.

In the closing moments of series 7, Matt Smith spoke about the existential elements that comprise any personal change, specifically, he said, “you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you use to be.” Truer words were never spoken, but sadly, Chris Chibnall and the BBC have forgotten the people the Doctor use to be, and instead, they rather tell themselves that the daft old man that stole a magic blue box, is not relevant or sufficiently progressive enough for the new direction the series is moving towards. Gone are the days of the angst driven Time Lord trying to make amends for past transgressions and breaking the hearts of the fans each time he came up short. The most we can now hope for, is an occasional revisit of a classic villain to remind us of past glories …