Movie Review: Captain Marvel (2019) – Why Captain Marvel Deserves More Love

By Patti Aliventi on July 6, 2026 • ( Leave a comment )

Written by Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet
Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck

By the time Captain Marvel was released, there had been plenty of set-up for the Avengers series that this was a part of. However, chronologically, the events here take place back in the 1990s, somewhat before any of the Avengers existed, except for Steve Rogers who was still frozen in the ice at the time. Captain Marvel was also the first movie released after Stan Lee’s death. I loved the tribute to him at the beginning. There’s also a Stan Lee moment during the film that lingers a bit for a nice tribute.

“Vers” (Brie Larson) awakens after a dream. She has a past she can’t remember and only knows her life on Hala, the capital of the Kree Civilization. She visits her mentor, Yon-Rogg (Jude Law), for a training session. Ostensibly, he’s trying to help her be the “best version of herself.” The truth is actually something more heinous.

“Vers” is actually a human earthling named Carol Danvers. She was kidnapped by the Kree, and her memory has been blocked so that all she remembers is what they want her to remember. She and her team, led by Yon-Rogg, are sent to do battle with the Skrull, who are the Kree’s enemy. The story she has been given is that the Skrull are the aggressors who want to eradicate the Kree. The truth is quite the opposite.

The Skrull have the ability to shapeshift. Their natural form is somewhat reptilian, but they can imitate just about anyone. This is their only real defense. As the team raids a village on a planet, they find that Skrulls are imitating benign locals in an attempt to ambush the Kree team. Vers is injured and taken captive by the Skrull. They manage to free some of the memories she hasn’t remembered, of her time on Earth as an Air Force pilot and her childhood, as they attempt to find the person whom Vers has seen as The Great Intelligence, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening).

Vers doesn’t believe those are her memories, though. She thinks the Skrull have put those images there. She manages to escape, destroying the Skrull ship in the process. She lands back on Earth in Los Angeles. Although she is able to hold her own in conversations with other humans, she doesn’t have memories of how to behave. She manages to contact Yon-Rogg, but they can’t get to her for at least 22 hours.

Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) arrives on the scene, along with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Vers tells them that the Skrull are trying to infiltrate the planet. They think she is insane. However, the Skrull choose that moment to try to take her out. She pursues them, but after a battle on the light-rail, loses them to the crowd. Nick Fury has his own encounter with the Skrull as one of them takes the form of Agent Coulson.

Of course, the audience knows more than Nick Fury. When he reports back to SHIELD, his supervisor is the man we knew as Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), the leader of the Skrull. Nick and Vers meet up again. She wants to track down Dr. Lawson and the light-speed engine that the Skrull believe she developed. Fury takes her to a secure base in the desert mountains, where they find records of the development of the engine. Vers also finds information that she once had a life on Earth that she doesn’t remember.

I enjoyed Captain Marvel the first time I viewed it and every time since. No film is perfect, but the hate this movie received from the mouth-breathing incels living in their parents’ basement ia an example of misogyny at its worst. Women can be more than girlfriends in need of rescuing, and Carol Danvers is a fantastic hero. Brie Larson trained for nine months prior to filming this role. I’ll bet not one of those complaining about her could achieve what she did in that time.

The story is crafted very well. The audience knows more of what’s going on than Vers does. It kept me on the edge of my seat wondering when everything was going to come together for her. I didn’t know if I’d like Brie Larson, but she did a great job. I also liked Jude Law quite a bit. As Yon-Rogg, he’s too full of himself to look on Vers in any way other than a mentor. He thrives on the adulation he’s built into their relationship. Credit goes to Samuel Jackson, who must act like a much younger version of himself. He’s de-aged through the use of computer effects, but must also be convincing physically. At times, it showed through, but mostly it just looked like Vers was in much better shape than he was. I could see an immediate camaraderie between Vers and Fury which also worked to build up the place she has in the MCU. The only stretch I have is that Fury didn’t call on her earlier in the series, but that’s a criticism of the overall story-arc and not this film.

For those of us who can remember actually living through the 1990s with Blockbuster Video and the AltaVista search engine, the film is a reminder of how far we’ve come. Watching Carol struggle to use the computer keyboard and get disconnected from the internet is likely alien to anyone born after 1995.

There is a scene in the credits that takes place after events in Infinity War. When viewed chronologically it rings different. We don’t know who any of the people are. Sure, it looks like Steve Rogers and going by events in Captain America the First Avenger we know he has a connection to Fury at some point in the future, but that story hasn’t been told yet. Trying to consider it chronologically, none of the people studying the specially-equipped pager Carol gave to Fury would be known to any of us yet. It makes for an interesting take. Now we’re going to flashback to tell their stories and just why they have that pager and not Fury.

I think Captain Marvel was criticized unfairly. It’s as good as any of the other MCU films which focused solely on one of the heroes who will make up the Avengers. The story is great, the acting is stellar, there’s some terrific humor, and the effects work all around. I also don’t think you have to have prior knowledge of any of the characters to follow it. I was never a comic book fan and I followed the story with no real knowledge of the whole Carol Danvers storyline in the comics.

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