The female superhero self-discovery with a dash of grunge is worth the hype.
The stakes have never been higher for Marvel universe, with the Avengers-Endgame (The last nail in the coffin for Avengers, hopefully) around the corner and the first woman lead superhero movie released this week. Captain Marvel has a lot to live up to; especially how its competition is with none other than the highly acclaimed Wonder woman from DC universe (Can anyone even beat Gal Gadot and her sexy voice?).
To say that information loaded origin story of Vers/Carol Danvers lives up to the hype built around it would not be entirely wrong. It’s a two-hour package of women empowerment wrapped with visual magnificence you’d expect from a Marvel blockbuster. Writer-director duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck nailed it with the whole 1990s vibe whilst playing around the humour of dial-up internet, slow loading CD-Roms and ‘top-notch’ pager.
The whole fighter-pilot-turned-space-warrior narrative lead by Oscar winner Brie Larson is a power sacked punch released especially on International women’s day. On a discovery to find who she truly is, lead character Carol Danvers reflects what women, no matter which galaxy they belong to (be it a shithole like C-53 or Kree empire) has to go through to prove their mettle. Non-objectification of women, diverse characters, non-existence of ageism, women supporting women and not having romance seeping into the movie line shows how 21st-century Marvel universe is rising to an era of excellence redefined.
Having a very young Jude Law cloaked as Antihero, two-eyed Nick Fury with a head full of hair (Played by Samuel L. Mother-fricking Jackson) and might we say a rather cute member of ‘flerken’ species were the showstoppers of this inter-galactic universe set in the 1990s. The diverse array of characters representing half the world’s population encompassing every gender, race, and age (Or galaxy if you count Kree and Skrulls representation), puts Captain Marvel alongside the undeniably feminist ‘Black Panther’.
The character of Captain Marvel is far from perfect and fights battles with her own demons from past but the final verdict we can take out from the superhero is to ‘fall down seven times, get up eight’ and her being stronger even than the cosmic core-Tesseract (Even Ronan agrees to this).
The striking air-borne battle scenes accompanied by grunge-rock soundtracks from none other than legendary rock bands like Nirvana, Elastica, No doubt and Hole forces the audience to tap their feet and bob their heads to the beats of the 1990s.
The only backlash the movie may receive would be the lack of fighting sequences and the absence of a strong villain against the ultimate powerful fists of Captain Marvel. But this can be easily justified by the fact that it was an origin movie where storyline needed to be far more splendid than some boom boom pow.
The first female-led Marvel movie, an emotional yet action-packed robust cinematic experience, is a perfect mouth jarring set up to build THE AVENGERS (or the protector initiative) upon.
BY- TEJASVI KASHYAP
