As excited as I was to get more heroes in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it was more “Guardians of the Galaxy”-style cosmic adventures that I was really anticipating. Captain Marvel’s debut movie started out by dropping us into the middle of her day as a Starforce operative on the Kree homeworld of Hala (very far from Earth). It was great sci-fi fun to watch Vers (aka Captain Marvel aka Carol Danvers, played by Brie Larson), with team leader Yon-Rogg (played by Jude Law) and team mates Korath (played by Djimon Hounsou) and Minn-erva (played by one of my new faves, Gemma Chan) hunt down some sneaky Skrull baddies (yes, we get a new shape-shifting enemy alien race). Unfortunately we’ve got a few flashbacks/memories that lead us and all the characters back to Earth (90s-era Earth, no less!), where most of the remainder of the movie takes place. The space adventures will have to wait.

Rather than a standard origin story where we see our future hero get zapped or bitten or somehow given powers, then watch as she learns to use them to become a superhero, this time around a lot of the tale is told in flashbacks and memory fragments. We get glimpses of Carol Danvers’s previous life as a pilot, who is somehow connected to another female pilot, and some kind of scientist (played by Annette Bening). Though I may give points for trying something different in the narrative, I found the flashbacks rather confusing and contrived (conveniently revealing the correct memories as needed) and made the movie feel a bit disjointed. I didn’t care very much about Vers and what she was doing since I knew so little about her. The plot of the movie (between the flashbacks) started to feel very simple and routine: she’s a space-cop chasing some shape-changers onto Earth, so that’s why she’s got to tussle with that old lady on the subway. Space-cop then teams up with Samuel L. Jackson (looking younger than ever, thanks to the many hard workers in the CGI business) as a young and green Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, who buddy-cops with her to help stop the Skrulls in their midst.

All the money they must have spent on de-aging Jackson was worth it, I have to say, because his banter and chemistry with Larson were pretty much the main fun of this movie. There were also a few big plot twists, and a valiant attempt at some 90s sight gags (most obvious being Vers crash-landing into a Blockbuster Video and blasting the head off of an Arnold Schwarzenegger advertisement). Because of how it helped the tone of this movie, I will even overlook how big a logic gap it felt to me that Vers would talk and act like a normal American girl just by changing her Starforce outfit for street clothes. At first she mentioned her universal translator device (since she was probably speaking Kree the whole time), but in later scenes she wasn’t even wearing it. Anyway, Marvel’s movie-making machine is definitely well-equipped to dress up a relatively standard superhero story with the right blend of humour, flash, and sentiment to make it enjoyable, because I still liked this movie and found it fun.

Everything, of course, looked great. Action was well-done: full of spectacle and energy. Larson does a pretty good job as a tough but fun-loving young hero. Jackson is his usual smart-mouthed grump with his usual rough edges also smoothed out a bit. There’s a bit of the “girl power” theme running through, but I think Wonder Woman was probably more of a ground-breaker for female superhero movies and served the cause better than this one. I’m looking forward to seeing Captain Marvel with the other heroes in Avengers: Endgame, but otherwise she’s not my favourite character by any stretch. Now that the wheels are turning again on Guardians 3, I guess I’ll get my space-heroes fix soon enough. (3.5 out of 5)