Reviews with Sam

Last night I went to see the newest Marvel comic book movie Captain Marvel, and I must say, I was disappointed with this film. I had no expectations going into it, but as I saw it all unfold I was mostly unsatisfied with it all. If I’m being honest, the only thing I thoroughly enjoyed about this was Samuel L. Jackson’s performance and the loveable cat, Goose. Beyond that, The storyline was boring, Brie Larson’s acting was cheesy and unfitting for the character, and the movie had no real stylistic appeal to it and was just visually boring.

The storyline follows Carol Danver’s, who has spent the last six years of her life training for an alien military force on another planet, with no memory of her earthly life. They are at war against the Skrull, a race of shapeshifting terrorists, and I won’t go into spoilers for how that plays out, but I will say that it too is mediocre, predictable, and overall just not very captivating. As far as watching Carol uncover her memories of who she was and what her life used to be, it’s rushed and void of any emotional weight. There was never a point where I really cared about her old friends and the life she had, it was just poorly done and shoved in our faces without any real buildup to make us feel that it matters.

A lot of people believe that Brie Larson is a captivating actress in her films, and I’m sure that’s true, although I haven’t seen many of her other films to judge her by. Regardless of any other good roles she played, I can definitely say that was not captivated by her performance in Captain Marvel. Her line delivery was cheesy and never felt natural, and her acting throughout the movie was void of emotion and expression. Like I said before, I’m sure she is capable of doing well in other movies, but she was not a good fit for Captain Marvel and it wasn’t some of her best work.

After seeing movies like Marvel movies Black Panther, or Thor Ragnarok, I expected this movie to have a strong stylistic approach to it, but it did not. There wasn’t any theme for coloration or cinematography, it just went shot for shot, only filming what needed to be seen without doing anything to make it look artistic or appealing. It didn’t look bad by any means, but there was nothing about it that was captivating or striking, just visual information that conveyed a mediocre story with mediocre fight scenes and character building.

I wanted this movie to be good, and no part of me entered the theater with expectations for it to be bad, but all in all, I was disappointed, and no part of me feels the desire to go watch this movie a second time. I give this movie a C, it wasn’t terrible, but compared to what we’ve seen marvel do, it’s very underwhelming and not nearly as good as it could be. I’m not saying it isn’t worth watching, you should still go and see it for yourself, maybe you’ll enjoy it more than I did.