Captain Marvel: Blast from the Past

Captain Marvel is confusing. At least at the start.

We are thrown into her story, on a faraway planet, where she appears to be part of a police force in the Kree civilization. She also appears to be a human but is she? Her blood is certainly not a color we’re used to.

She also doesn’t have any answers, suffering from memory loss, though she dreams about her past.
And from the start, we begin seeing her backstory, going all the way back to when she was a little girl on Earth?

It’s a mystery that takes the whole movie to explain, but it’s revealed among the quiet moments, and also the most action-packed, and that’s not a plot device we’ve seen in previous Marvel movies. There are other twists and turns along the way that are a welcome relief from the typical superhero tropes.

Captain Marvel, played with a grounded toughness by Brie Larson, appears to be Carol Danvers, a former Air Force test pilot, who was thought to be killed on a mission that isn’t what it seems and leads to the powers she wields at her fingertips for the rest of the flick.

She ends up back on Earth in the 90s, and there are some great references to the time when we were just tip-toeing around the internet, along with all of the those time-killing downloads.

She clashes with, and then teams up with a young Shield agent named Nick Fury, played once again by a digitally de-aged Samuel L. Jackson.

Along the way they come among cats, and aliens known as Skrulls, but nothing is ever quite what it seems, until towards the end.

That’s when all is revealed, including the fully formed powers of Captain Marvel, that appear to put her on the same level as a certain Superman.

This flick is already getting mixed reviews, but according to the 10-year-old sitting next to me it is “the best Marvel movie ever.”

I won’t put it ahead of the first Iron Man or the second Captain America, but it’s up there in this ever-expanding universe.

And by the end, there is no confusion over who will drive the next movie, Avengers: End Game.

Captain Marvel is here to save our universe.