Captain Marvel is the 21st Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, released this past Friday, March 8th. Rated PG-13 with the a showing time of 124 minutes, it was directed by the duo of Anna Boyden and Ryan Fleck for their first major blockbuster film. It stars Brie Larson in her debut as the titular character, with Samuel L. Jackson in his 9th role as Nick Fury in the MCU (the first of 3 this year). Additionally, it was the debut of Ben Mendelsohn as the Skrull  Commander Talos. 

In the film, the Kree warrior Veers and her mentor Yonn-Rogg, played by Jude Law, are on a mission to extract a Kree spy in the ongoing Kree-Skrull War from Skrull hands. During the battle, Veers has to go to Earth to stop the Skrulls and Talos from setting up base there, which sparks her attempt to find out where the engine drive –which is what the Kree are also looking for. The search then sparks her own attempt to find out her origins, in part due to a dreams of hers that seemed to take place in a past life.

Jude Law and Ben Mendelsohn are both impressive in their acting and it makes me wish for more from the both of them in order to flesh out the Kree-Skrull War, and potentially set up the Secret Invasion story-line in the MCU. Jude Law would certainly set up an interesting project with Disney Plus, the new Disney streaming service, with a show about the Kree military.

The film primarily goes for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it also makes an attempt to grab female viewers who saw Wonder Woman but are not generally into superhero films with its female empowerment message. All in all, it certainly is solid as an MCU film, along with its 20 predecessors. 

The visual effects on the Skrull transformation into humans and vice versa is one of the coolest and slickest VFX Marvel has done–next to of course, their revolutionary de-aging process used for the first time in a whole movie with Samuel L. Jackson’s role as Nick Furry, and for a short snippet with Clark Greg as Agent Coulson. This made the 69-year-old Jackson look like he was right on the set of Pulp Fiction.

The film is certainly a great romp in space, and sets Captain Marvel up wonderfully for Avengers: Endgame. In all honesty, it is most similar to the first Thor and Captain America films in that she is an alien from another world coming to earth. Although, it is an original movie not set in the present, with the character going off to not be seen for a long period of time. It certainly does Thor better than what Thor did. The film is solid but may eventually become forgettable if it does not pick up on the loose ties left at the end of the film.