Captain Marvel Reviews – A Trip to the ’90s

Here we highlight some of the more interesting quotes from our choice of Captain Marvel Reviews. All the reviews are mostly positive. This all goes along with a $150 million predicted first weekend for the Marvel movie.

New York Times’s Captain Marvel review by AO Scott

• It’s pretty good fun.
• It’s not too long, not too self-important, and benefits from the craft and talent of a cast that includes Annette Bening, Jude Law, and Ben Mendelsohn.
• To watch the digitally rejuvenated Jackson riding around mid-90s Los Angeles, sort of like he did in Pulp Fiction, is to indulge in a bit of Gen-X nostalgia.
• The last and least surprising thing we learn about her is that “Captain Marvel will return in Avengers: Endgame,” a scrappy little picture that will be released in seven weeks!
• You’ll shuffle out of the theater feeling both satisfied and empty.

(our reading of the review)

 

LA Times’s Captain Marvel review by Kenneth Turan

• Marvel’s first female stand-alone title character makes quite an entrance of her own.
• Far more complex than business-as-usual superhero origin stories.
• Those who remember the period will be delighted at the meticulous re-creation.
• It’s not only heroes who can have superpowers, movies can have them too, and you can add “Captain Marvel” to the small list of those that do.

(our reading of the review)

 

Entertainment Weekly’s Captain Marvel review by Darren Franich

• Captain Marvel is a messy origin story with some clever twists.
• Co-directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck can’t really find a coherent tone.
• In pure MCU terms, this is a step down from the demented toonscapes of Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor: Ragnarok, but a step up from the tech-corridor blandeur of something like Ant-Man and the Wasp or any movie where various Avengers hang out in offices.
• Captain Marvel is Not Bad!

(Rated B in review)

 

Hollywood Reporter’s Captain Marvel review by Todd McCarthy

• It is the first Marvel Studios film to be built around a female superhero, and it is the least of the Marvel productions made since Kevin Feige took the reins and launched the brand into the stratosphere. The picture is not dull, exactly, just mundane.
• By far the strangest and most prominent special effect in the movie, that of Jackson playing a guy in his 40s, with a full head of hair and, in this role, two eyes — no eye-patch yet. It’s simultaneously fascinating and distracting.
• The focus and big selling point here is Captain Marvel herself and Larson’s impersonation of her.
• Larson makes Carol/Captain focused, solid, ever-alert to what’s going on around her, a quick learner, a determined and unafraid warrior.

(our reading of the review)

 

The Guardian’s Captain Marvel review by Peter Bradshaw

• This is an engaging and sometimes engagingly odd superhero action movie from directors and co-writers Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, a weirdly nonlinear mashup of past and present, memories and present experience, Earth and non-Earth action.
• The film hinges on a fierce performance from Brie Larson, though I think it could have showcased her in a stronger, clearer starring role and assigned her more of the script’s funny lines.
• She has to practice her martial arts in one-on-one dialogue jousts with Yon-Rogg (Jude Law).
• Law is sprightly enough, but Larson’s chemistry is much more on Earth with Jackson, whose young Nick Fury here is very good.

 

 

One thing of note, of all these Captain Marvel reviews, all the reviewers are men!

Rating summary

New York Times

LA Times

Entertainment Weekly

Hollywood Reporter

The Guardian

 

Captain Marvel Overall Rating