James’s review published on Letterboxd:
Meandering Marvel.
The film follows Captain Marvel as she teams up with Ms. Marvel and Monica Rambeau to stop the leader of the Kree from stealing natural resources from other planets.
Well, as a fan of that first Captain Marvel film, I had high hopes going in to this one. I hoped the naysayers would have been wrong, and that this movie would be far better than people were saying prior to release, but it really is just yet another middle of the road entry for Marvel. That said, middle of the road Marvel still usually comes with some benefits, the most obvious of which is its cast. Brie Larson returns as Captain Marvel, and she's pretty great here. The movie really delves into why she disappeared all those years ago, only to come back when half the universe was at stake. You get to see what she's been up to (even if I wish it had been explored more thoroughly, it really feels like we're missing an entire movie worth of information between the first and this one), so it was nice to get some gaps filled in. Iman Vellani is also great as the returning Ms. Marvel, and she's quickly proving to be one of the most entertaining and likeable new characters the MCU has introduced post-Endgame. Teyonah Parris also does solid work as Monica Rambeau, but it feels like she is given relatively little to do until the third act. Outside of the main crew, Samuel L. Jackson is once again dependable as Nick Fury (even if he feels a bit too light hearted straight after the events of Secret Invasion) and Zawe Ashton does what she can with yet another thankless, dull villain.
I'll also say that I think that Nia DaCosta brought a decent amount of style to the film. There is a lot of really fun action on display here, with the film frequently taking full effect of the location swapping shown in the trailers. The rules for the swapping are easy to follow, and it is really fun to see how DaCosta and her creative team will use it next. Even outside of the action, there are some pretty cool visuals on display, with one early scene featuring some solid notebook style 2D animation which was really fun to watch. This is also one of the most colorful Marvel films outside of the Thor films from Taika Waititi, which breaks up some of the visual monotony that some of these Marvel projects can hit you with. Admittedly, some of these cool visuals suffer from some really underbaked CGI effects (some look great, some look downright dreadful, especially when you consider this film cost roughly a quarter billion to make), but for the most part it looks solid. Sadly, outside of the visuals and action, I cannot really say that I think DaCosta did a great job here.
The issue I have with DaCosta's direction here is similar to the issue I took with Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder, and that is that the tone is far too light hearted for its own good. The fate of many worlds are at stake here, but that trademark Marvel humor is here to make sure things never get too dark, lest they lose the younger crowd. Alarm bells admittedly started ringing for me well before release when DaCosta described the film as "wacky," and to her credit, it's a pretty accurate description of the tone and humor (which rarely worked for me (musical planet, I'm looking at you), but the Memory needle drop was perfect and had me laughing the whole way through), but it doesn't fit the world ending stakes of the story nor the emotional resonance that they are clearly going for. DaCosta also seems to have padded the film out with some really dull subplots (Kamala's family did not need to be on SABER, and we didn't need that much time with them, likeable as they maybe), even though this movie holds the honor of being the shortest film of the MCU. That said, the story itself is fine, but it feels like filler for most of the movie until the third act begins and things begin to fall into place about what comes next (lots of multiverse stuff between this and Loki's finale), but I cannot grade what is set up, only what I saw on screen last night.
In the end, this is still a fine Marvel movie, but I really want what's next to be great. If recent reports are anything to go by, though, I shouldn't get my hopes up about future Marvel properties.
