Foggy’s review published on Letterboxd:
Indie directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck get pulled into the Marvel filmmaking fold with admirable aspirations and Flash Gordon-esque visuals blended with 90’s-attitude tone, however I feel the film suffers an identity crisis unlike some of Marvel’s more stellar entries.
Brie Larson does shine as Captain Marvel, bold and confident, it’s refreshing to see a superhero film that instead revolves around a hero becoming something new and instead becoming themselves. I believe that’s what Boden and Fleck attempt to bring new to the table here, however I think they find themselves at odds with the Marvel formula, and the film suffers from being stuck in two worlds.
Attempting to shape the film into a different tone from the rest of the MCU, Captain Marvel becomes a buddy cop film between Larson’s Carol Denvers and Samuel L. Jackson’s (under de-aging computer effects) rookie agent Nicolas Fury. It’s a novel idea, taking the larger than life scale of the film with this odd couple dynamic, however the film is busy, and the chemistry between Jackson and Larson just isn’t quite developed enough by the time the film hits the road.
The few 90’s jokes in there are fun although it never quite captures the aesthetic like I had hoped. The highlights are definetly the gags revolving around Goose the Cat and Ben Mendelsohn’s villainous Kree leader. And I think a lot of the special effects are really fantastic here, plus the sound design and score have a bit of a unique build around them, even if the soundtrack occasionally falls into standard blockbuster b-roll during more frantic action moments. But I think most of all there are some really great shots and moments that get to the heart of the appeal of the film, and it is a film with it’s heart in the right place.
Whilst it has the confidence that all Marvel movies possess, I think it lacks the real engrained investment and cultural deliberation of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther or even the sheer bravado of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman. I hope I’m in the minority on this one ever so slightly (and from the sounds of it I am) but in the end I just struggled to match up the pulse with this one, although I admired it greatly.