The Captain Marvel Review Are In: Bleh

From the initial trailers, the movie looked weak. You could already tell Captain Marvel was going to be a flawless Mary Sue, like most female leads in action movies these days, and that appears to be the case.

Furthermore, the alien bad guys look generic and forgettable, and the whole movie is a CGI overload.

Here’s a shot of the “Skrulls,” the alien bad guys:

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So damn generic.

Now with Captain Marvel officially being screened for critics, and with the movie hitting theaters on Thursday night, reviews are coming in. And they’re not great.

A French movie review site gave it one star out of four:

“The first Captain Marvel review lands online as the movie has been released in France, and it is not good for Disney, Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, Brie Larson or the future of the MCU.

The French website Avoir Alire has posted their Captain Marvel review giving it one out of five stars noting (translated via Bing), “A monolithic heroine whose feminist struggle seems to be the only reason to exist. The result, without emotion, is closer to the silliness of a shortcut in time than a traditional Avenger.”

The review (again translated) goes on to mention how the titular character makes it clear she doesn’t need the help of men, with Brie Larson’s acting said to be cold and compared to that of an android. It’s said Larson doesn’t manage the slightest of an iconic pose, and that she is not sexy in the costume: “since the game of seduction is sexist and therefore irrelevant in the film.”

It’s also said Captain Marvel’s big “Superman” moment when she first flies is lacking and that Brie Larson and her powers “leave us totally cold.”

Brie Larson is an iceberg, so this makes perfect sense.

Next up is Kyle Smith of National Review (Smith is one of the few remaining bright spots at the once-great magazine):

“Two years ago, Wonder Woman proved a female-led superhero movie could reach the highest levels of the genre, with Gal Gadot proving robust and redoubtable, yet also charming and feminine. I spent Captain Marvel waiting for Gadot. What I got was Brie Larson: charmless, humorless, a character so without texture that she might as well be made out of aluminum.”

This seems to be a running theme: Brie Larson totally wooden.

“Just to be completely, unerringly, let’s-bubble-wrap-the-universe safe, Boden and Fleck decided to make [Carol] Danvers stronger than strong, fiercer than fierce, braver than brave. Larson spends the entire movie being insouciant, kicking butt, delivering her lines in an I-got-this monotone and staring down everything with a Blue Steel gaze of supreme confidence. Superheroes are defined by their limitations — Superman’s Kryptonite, Batman’s mortality — but Captain Marvel is just an invincible bore. The screenplay by Boden, Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet, with a story by the three of them plus Nicole Perlman and Meg LeFauve, presents us with Brie Larson’s Carol being amazingly strong and resilient at the beginning, middle, and end. This isn’t an arc, it’s a straight line.”

Mary Sue.

“Larson, who became a star in 21 Jump Street seven years ago and has not done anything better since (especially not her Oscar-winning turn in the appalling film Room), has quickly become one of Hollywood’s most humorless and insufferable actresses, and her personality rubbed off on the character. There isn’t an ounce of self-deprecation in her.”

That’s how these feminist bitches are.

And of course the movie continues this ridiculous trend of the Kick Ass Female trope, where 5-5, 125 pound women implausibly kick the living shit out of armies of male bad guys Because GIRL POWER!

“The trap the filmmakers set for themselves is this: They set out to make a girl-power statement — but feared acknowledging any differences between men and women. Despite Larson’s sylphlike build, there is no suggestion at any point that she might be overmatched by a guy who is 80 or 100 pounds larger, like Djimon Hounsou. If being female is defined as “exactly like a male, only more resilient,” how interesting is that?”

Not interesting at all.

Jeremy Jahns, a popular movie reviewer on YouTube with over 1.5 million subscribers, goes out of his way to avoid the “culture war” aspect of the movie and judges it simply on whether it was entertaining. The answer is no:

Boring, bad pacing, no flow–and definitely not as good a movie as Wonder Woman.

Jahns says the movie is obviously a “feminist movie” but that isn’t enough to carry a movie–it still has to be good. And Captain Marvel isn’t.

Here’s a round-up of other reviews:

“Massively disappointing.”

The Hollywood Reporter:

“Mundane”

The Atlantic:

“Never fully takes flight.”

And this review for AP was written by a woman, so no “Misogyny!” excuses:

“Entirely average.”

Screen Crush:

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“Never quite soars”

ABS-CBN of the Philippines says it’s “Just OK”:

Vox: “Captain Marvel deserves a better movie.”

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How about a better lead actor?

Collider tries to argue the movie’s Feminist Message is more important than whether the movie is actually good, which it isn’t:

Captain Marvel is mediocre and the universal bogeymen White Males are not to blame.

What’s with this nonsense that white men sabotage all movies with strong female leads?

I don’t remember any Fragile White Men sabotaging Wonder Woman? That movie was widely praised by men and women alike.

And what’s with this ridiculous revisionist history that somehow Captain Marvel is some landmark achievement for women, as if it’s the first time in American history that this has ever happened. Please.

For one, there’s “Wonder Woman.”

  • “Max Max: Fury Road”
  • And Star Wars now has a woman, Rey, as its main character.
  • The “Hunger Games” trilogy.
  • “Panic Room”
  • Motherfucking “Kill Bill”
  • Didn’t Halle Berry play Catwoman in the early 2000s?
  • There’s the Tomb Raider movies–the Angelina Jolie ones–which I enjoyed.
  • “Charlie’s Angels”
  • Does the name “Sarah Conner” ring a bell?
  • “Silence of the Lambs”

And last but not least, the original: “Alien,” which came out in 1979.

I guess if you exclude all those movies, then Brie Larson’s “Captain Marvel” is a landmark cultural achievement for women.

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